Search - Per Norgard, Tamas Veto, Signe Asmussen :: Per Nørgård: Mythic Morning - Works for Choir, Vol. 2 [Hybrid SACD]

Occasionally entertaining, but all in all minor Norgard

Christopher Culver | 09/14/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Through each period of his career, Danish composer Per Norgard has always produced a great deal of choral music closely linked to the same innovations he displayed in his purely instrumental works. On this DaCapo disc--one of many fine collections of Norgard's music recently released by the Danish national label--we are fortunate to have several works from after the turn of the millennium, along with one of Norgard's classic pieces from over two decades ago. Except for a bass clarinet in two pieces, the works here are a capella, and appear in performance by the Ars Nova Copenhagen conducted by Tamas Veto.



The oldest work on the disc, "Wie ein kind" (1980), is one of Norgard's most well-known, having been recorded several times already and being frequently performed. It marked a dramatic shift in his music, for it left behind the worship of unity in its hierarchical ("infinity series") music of the 70s and ushered in an interest in schizoid repetition of fractured cells and the contrast of idyll versus catastrophe. This great change occured after Norgard discovered the drawings of the mad Swiss artist Adolf Wolfli, and in this first "Wolfli-period" work Norgard places a Rilke poem on childhood (the "idyll") between two of Wolfli's poems (the "catastrophe"), which are evocatively titled but consist only of nonsense words and clearly the creation of a sick mind. The piece eschews virtuosity and can be convincingly performed by just about any ensemble--probably the reason for its popularity--and Ars Nova here does a fine job.



Two closely-connected works from 2000 gives this collection its name. Norgard was fascinated by Pia Tafdrup's poem "Mythic Morning", which itself contains the split between idyll and catastrophe of Norgard's music from the early 1980s. The first setting, the massive 20-minute "Mythic Morning", is for chorus and bass clarinet. Here the plain text of the poem is occluded by low dynamic and conflicting vocal lines, and most dramatically by the bass clarinet, which even solo is more than capable of submerging the choir. The barking-like sounds and aleatoric-sounding counterpoint of the piece's second half make this one of the most "avant-garde" pieces Norgard has ever written. It's a wonder, then, that from this musical flotsam and jetsam he was able to put together a simple little sister work, a strophic choral song called "Morning Myth". This second piece is pleasant enough but it seems unremarkable in comparison to most of Norgard's oeuvre. "Morning-Meditation" (2002) is a record of the improvisation the choir and bass clarinet may do before launching into Norgard's two works.



Finally, the disc contains two recent works which look back to music of a quarter-century earlier. The first movement of "2 Nocturnes" (2003) is a reworking of various choral writing Norgard undertook in the 1970s based on Ole Sarvig's poem "The Year". The Sarvig collaborations of that era are among Norgard's most stunning music, and this new effort based on the same melodies is very entertaining. The second movement consists of a poem, "Star Mirror", by Ib Michael which Norgard had previously set. "Ut Rosa" (2000), on the other hand, revisits the "Flos ut rosa floruit" melody Norgard first used in such 1970s pieces as "Nova Genitura" and "Twilight". This new choral work, however, is on the whole unremarkable, though some lovely chimes in the fourth part are quite appealing. This melody has an important link to the infinity series, Norgard's amazing fractal-like melody of generating line where all parts can be beautifully interrelated, but these properties were more interestingly explored in the recent Harp Concerto No. 2 "Through Thorns" (a lovely work, get it on the recent DaCapo collection of Norgard's harp music).



The liner notes are quite substantial. Perhaps a little too substantial, since it's difficult to remove the large booklet from the case without tearing it. It contains comments on these works and their place in Norgard's oeuvre, as well as the text to each in Danish (or Latin), English, and German. And while I can't comment on the SACD part of this hybrid disc, the standard CD portion has wonderfully clear sound.



While the works here are occasionally interesting, I find them lesser examples of Norgard's talent. One's first introduction to the composer's music in general should be the symphonies (get both the Third and the Sixth on Chandos), while for his choral writing "Singe die Gaerten" (on the Chandos disc "Frostsalme") or the "Winterkantate" (if you can find it, the recording is long out of print) are superb."