4 stars
KREK Three Autumn Songs. Vöra bije. Salmo XLII. Samono ugibanje. Vester, Camenae. ELSE MARIE PADE Korsetser. Völo-spa hoc est. Maria • Marina Batič, cond; Danish Natl Voc Ens • OUR 8.226924 (68:06)
This is a splendidly recorded disc of obscure choral music by little-known composers with vastly different compositional styles: Uroš Krek (1922–2008) from Slovenia and Else Marie Pade (1924–2016) from Denmark. I have spelled Pade’s name in full in the headnote lest, by last name alone, she be confused (as she has been in the Fanfare Archive) with the male composer Steen Pade. The star of the show is the choral ensemble, the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, which sings immaculately.
Krek was something of a Neoclassicist, whose only other entry in the aforementioned Archive is a Concertino for Piccolo and Orchestra, which was positively reviewed by Raymond Tuttle in 48:1. The choral works on this disc are skillfully written, and according to the program notes Krek was a talented linguist. The compositions include three songs to poems by John Gracen Brown, written during the Slovenian conflict of 1991: Vöra bije (The Clock Ticks), an arrangement of an emigrant song; Psalm 42 (in Latin), also from 1991; Samotno ugibanje (Solitary Speculation), originally composed in 1987 and revised in 1998; and Vester, Camenae, a 1994 setting of a poem by Horace. Each work is well crafted and generally easy on the ears, but I found nothing memorable here.
Dade is, by contrast, very avant-garde. She was Denmark’s first female composer of electronic music and is viewed as a pioneer in the field. In 1954, as a recent conservatory graduate who had studied composition with Vagn Holmboe, she got a job at Danmarks Radio, where, with the support of the radio station technicians, she was allowed access to the sound laboratory and created her first electronic music. Korsatser began life in the early 1950s as a song cycle for voice and piano, and 50 years later was resurrected and rearranged for mixed chorus, sometimes with an electronic accompaniment and sometimes, as in this recording, a cappella. Next, based on a ninth-century Icelandic poem, Völo-spa hoc est (This is the Prophecy of the Volva) dates from 1956 and is scored for four-part women’s choir and combines Gregorian chant with contemporary harmonies. Maria has no relation to West Side Story but is instead a 1980 work for tape, coloratura soprano, bass-baritone, speaking choir, and seven trombones, punctuated with sound files of electronic sounds.
The performances here are very fine, and I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this disc. None of this music made a lasting impression on me, however. I can’t even say this is a disc that could wholeheartedly be recommended to fans of mid-20th-century central European music (Bartók, etc.) or, alternatively, late 20th-century electronic music of the sort produced at Columbia and Princeton. Nevertheless, those who love off the beaten track choral repertoire, beautifully sung, and electronic sounds in small doses may find this to their liking. Keith R. Fisher -May/June 2025
https://fanfarearchive.com/articles/atop/48_5/4850120.aa_KREK_Three_Autumn_Songs.html