***** Another major triumph from OUR Recordings: required listening, beyond a shadow of a doubt


PELLE GUDMUNDSEN-HOLMGREEN Seven Solomon Songs. BENT LORENTZEN Erotic Hymns. NICOLAI WORSAAE A Shipwreck  Jakob Bloch Jespersen (bs-bar, perc); Peter Navarro-Alonso (org)  OUR 8.226935 (74:00 )

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (1913–2016) won the Carl Nielsen Prize twice (1972 and 2004), and the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1980. He taught at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Aarhus.
I was lucky enough to hear the UK premiere of Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s Incontri (immediately after a performance of Ruud Langgaad’s Eleventh Symphony, “Ixion,” again a UK premiere) at the Proms in 2011: the BBC Symphony was conducted by Thomas Dausgaad. I have never forgotten that occasion, and how I wondered why, in Blighty at least, Gudmundsen-Holmgreen was so unknown.
Here, we have the Seven Solomon Songs (Syv Salomon-sange, 2011). The score asks for solo voice, organ, and bass drum (which is to be played by the singer); it is published by Wise Music Classical in the present arrangement by Peter Navarro-Alonso. The original music is from Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s opera, Sun Rises, Sun Sets, converted into a song cycle. Good idea though that was, as the composer was busy moving house (!) at the time, he suggested that someone else do it. Although originally entrusted to Jens E. Christensen and Jakob Bloch Jespersen, when Peter Navarro-Alonso took over from Christensen as organist at Our Saviour Church, he started from scratch on an arrangement. In the opera, two singers sing Solomon’s songs (from the two parts of the Old Testament, Young Solomon and Old Solomon). Gudmundsen-Holmgreen was also very impressed by the Book of Ecclesiastes, its pessimism a parallel to the writings of Samuel Becket (a writer vitally important to the composer).
The opening is extraordinary: it could be an orchestra, an organ pedal against a bass drum’s repetitive, funereal pulse. The words decry vanity (“I saw deeds under the sun / and behold / it was all vanity”). The lie of the voice is at its lowest reaches, guttural, almost animal. There is a slight surge of energy at “og se”; and behold), as if there is some hope. But no. It is, after all, all vanity and the music returns to its organ pedal after a Fafner-like bass descent. Vanity is the transition to grief in a passage in which wisdom is equated with pain. There is a sort of post-Wotan aspect to this until, at one extraordinary moment, the vocal line threatens (but only threatens) to bloom into the bass-baritone solo from Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, “Herr, lehre auf mich.” Next, vanity is responsible for Man’s wish to see the future. The opening perhaps gives a sliver of hope, rapidly contradicted. The sheer nihilism of the fourth song is only emphasized by Jespersen’s jet-black voice.
The text of the fifth song is only three words (some repeated): madness, folly, vanity. All the while, the music becomes ever more intricate. But then a change occurs: a new lyricism appears at the words, “great were my deeds.” A sense of pride perhaps: look at what I’ve done, sings the protagonist. But when all is said and done, what is left? Well, vanity, the word-Leitmotif that appears with the certainty of a pendulum (or, indeed, the leaden pounding of a bass drum). The final song returns to the sentiments of the opening song, but the singer delivers the words with pained fusion.
This is unforgettable music. It is not easy to listen to, but it is music that should be listened to. In other Gudmundsen-Holmgreen news, Dacapo released the second volume of a cycle of complete string quartets by the Nordic String Quartet (with brilliant booklet notes by Andrew Mellow) last year; both volumes are required listening if this composer’s music is of interest. And while the biblical songs are unremittingly dark, try Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s Eighth Quartet, “Ground,” (1986) for his playful side, while marveling at his re-interpretation of the very concept of what a ground really is. And nothing is too ambitious: Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s Ninth Quartet is scored for “string quartet and ocean,” while the Tenth (“New Ground”) takes Pachelbel’s famous canon for a walk that might well involve hallucinogens.
The composer Bent Lorentzen (1935–2018) is new to me, although not to the Archive: there are several pieces there, mostly played by Jens E. Christensen. Lorentzen studied at the Royal Danish Academy at Copenhagen with, among others, Vagn Holmboe. Based on religious texts, Lorentzen’s Erotic Hymns was commissioned by Jespersen for the 300th anniversary of Saint Saviour’s Church. There are two poets, each treated differently: the first is a song by H. A. Brorson; Lorentzen sets it in almost Wagnerian fashion: vocally, this could be one of the Dutchman’s monologues. The organ reminds us that this is not Wagner (but who knows what Wagner might have written had he lived in the late 20th century!). The second is a poem by Ole Sarvig from 1981; the vocal line is more parlando supported by chromatic lines on the organ. Brorson’s text of judgement day and the awakening of the dead is appropriately dramatic, even cinematic, from the organ, while the sung line seems to invoke a chorale: this is Bach gone wild. There is beauty here, too: the fourth song, “My precious treasure,” opens with bejeweled organ ceding to the most gorgeous lyricism: and Jespersen’s delivery is appropriately honeyed. Brorson’s “Jesus, sweet rose cheeks” is an anguished outpouring against an organ that presents a slowly-revolving harmonic kaleidoscope. Sarvig’s “My breath, so close, so close” is (ironically) a soliloquy against held-breath organ contribution. Against the instrument’s atemporality the voice narrates (albeit to a notated line). “How shall I meet you” presents the protagonist’s imagined marriage to Jesus (text Brorson); it is delivered like Titiurel’s contributions to Parsifal. Jespersen’s delivery of the whispered opening of Sarvig’s text of the eighth song is brilliant; a true highlight of the cycle, as night falls and the world is a dark (in the other sense) place. Brorson closes, with the unashamedly erotic “I lie so close upon Jesus’ beasts,” slow-moving, darkly luminescent.
Finally, a piece by Nicolai Worsaae (b. 1980): A Shipwreck. Worsaae lists Abrahamsen and Sørensen amongst his teachers, and he also traveled to Graz in Austria to study with Beat Furrer. The piece places the soloist as the captain of a ship at the mercy of the elements, while the singer is a sailor. The tale ends badly for the protagonists. The text is from Simon Grotrian’s works. The composer suggests this is “almost a small church opera unfolding within magical old woodwork, where the performers are hidden from our sight.” They certainly are on a recording, anyway. “Faith” is the first movement, the organ like a pair of behemoth bellows. A bell sounds (presumably by the singer). Other sounds are like none you might imagine from an organ, except in a nightmare. Squeaks, findings, sounds as if the church itself is breathing. A magnificent reimagining of the scoring, Worsaae immediately establishes himself as a major compositional voice. The second piece is a passacaglia (The world dome swings silently,” the passacaglia presumably representing the slow oscillation). While more conventionally notated (so it actually sounds like singer and organ), the music is undeniably ominous. “The Lightning,” seen as a representation of the Christian god, seems an extraordinarily graphic depiction of the phenomenon; and yet, never cheap. At one point the singer seems to use some means to disguise his voice. The “Recitativo” is a banshee’s floating line; Jespersen is remarkable in his ability to convey so much. The music transitions across movement via atmospheric oscillation. “The Night’s Funeral Procession” is identifiably a funeral march (sometimes), while “Revelation” is hardly a glowing opening into the Light; it seems to involve animal (dog?) noises, shards of sound from the organ, bumps, and bells. The sense of singing against organ is visceral; and yet, occasionally the singer seems to join with the organ’s timbral language. Finally, “The Waves,” a grotesque sonic picture of waves smashed by a hammer, of man’s agony against an Almighty Other. The arrival of a tonal construct, almost like Ravel’s “Sunrise,” is swiftly subverted, twisted slightly on each re-occurrence. I have no doubt that Nicolai Worsaae is a major composer and a name to look out for.
Another major triumph from OUR Recordings. Not for the faint of heart, and probably best to take the pieces one at a time if you don’t want to succumb to melancholy or worse. But this album is required listening, beyond doubt. Colin Clarke