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Probably the most difficult Norgard disc to get into for mos

Christopher Culver | 11/23/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"What you get out of this disc might depend on whether you like lieder in general. Per Norgard is my favourite composer and I've been very entertainment by almost everything he has written, but the simple combination of solo voice and piano has never really appealed to me. Here Lars Thodberg Bertelsen sings baritone, while Norgard himself provides the piano accompaniment.



The lesser material here is typified, I think, by "Drommesang". Though it sets the same Chinese-inspired poems as in Norgard's choir and percussion 1981 tour de fource "Drommesanger" (available on e.g. a Dacapo recording), here the baritone's intonation and loud intakes of breath just make this annoying, and the piano part which sounds like the background to a Wild West saloon bar fight doesn't help. For all of its importance to the nascent Danish environmentalist movement, "Du skal plante et trae" (1967) is just too short to leave much of an impression at all. "Himmelfalden" (1985) is going to attract one only in the Christmas season. The Ib Michael setting "Star Mirror" works much, much better in its transmutation for mixed choir in the piece "2 Nocturnes" (on another Dacapo recording).



About all I really liked here was "Aret" (1976). It's a setting of Ole Sarvig's poem with the same infinity series-derived melody that popped up in many other works of the late 1970s (the Symphony No. 3, "Frostsalme", "Winter Hymn" etc.). When Norgard's infinity series pieces often explore a ever growing garden of musical lines, sometimes it's nice to hear things at their more basic in such pieces as this.



This review is mainly directed towards those contemporary music fans who share my ambivalence about lieder. If you like the genre, however, you'll probably get a great deal more pleasure from this disc."