SACDs - Wallin

Håkan Hardenberger has earned a reputation of breaking new ground for the trumpet, commissioning works from the world’s foremost composers.

On this disc, he shows a different side to himself in arrangements of his favourite songs and film themes.

Hardenberger is joined by his long-standing collaborators: the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the pianist Roland Pöntinen, who also has orchestrated several of the arrangements.

Wire and String is a musical portrait of the internationally renowned contemporary Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin. The disc presents three works: “Imella”, a newly-written fiddle concerto, the album’s title piece for sinfonietta, and Drei Gedichte von Rainer Maria Rilke for soprano and chamber orchestra.

The Bodø Sinfonietta is conducted by Christian Eggen, and the soloists are Susanne Lundeng (fiddle) and soprano Siri Torjesen. As is often the case with the compositions of Rolf Wallin, on this new album we hear folk music interacting with contemporary idioms. The concerto "Imella" ('in-between') was commissioned by the Bodø Sinfonietta. It borrows its title, and also the titles of its individual movements, from the debut novel by the American author Ben Marcus. This wonderful and highly unusual book describes a world that defies earthly laws of nature, but that still seems to have its own set of laws and logic, consistent, yet ungraspable. The Rilke poems used in the Drei Gedichte are very different in terms of form, subject and atmosphere. Liebes-Lied is about deep and strong but painful love, Buddha in der Glorie is an account of religious ecstasy, and Slußstück is about death, existing right in the midst of us, in the middle of life.

The Norwegian pianist Håkon Austbø, internationally known for his work in contemporary music, here performs a collection of 20th and early 21st century works by his compatriots, Fartein Valen, Klaus Egge, Finn Mortensen, and Rolf Wallin.

Written between 1935 and 2001, the mu sic on this album forms a unique line from teacher to student in Norwegian piano music through 66 years. Norwegian composers after Grieg for the most part wrote in a nationalistic style, with one exception, Fartein Valen who became a true internationalist and developed his unique style out of German late romanticism and the 2nd Viennese school. His pupil Klaus Egge started out writing music much in relation to folk music, but developed toward a less tonal and more polyphonic style. Finn Mortensen started taking lessons with Egge just before the Second World War, but soon disappeared into the underground resistance and never completed his studies.

After the war he came into contact with the electronic studios of Stockhausen in Cologne, and is given the credit for bringing musical modernism to Norway. One of the most prominent of his students is Rolf Wallin, a composer with a very personal style incorporating distinctive harmonic colours. Norwegian pianist Håkon Austbø is internationally known for his work in contemporary music. Having lived and worked out of the Netherlands for more than 30 years, Austbø has recently returned to his home country. His numerous recordings, among them the complete piano works of Messiaen, have received many awards.