Gramophone (UK)

Gudmundsen-Holmgreen · Lorentzen · Worsaae ---‘And I gave my heart …’
Gudmundsen-Holmgreen Seven Solomon Songs, Lorentzen Erotic Hymns, Worsaae A Shipwreck
Jakob Bloch Jespersen bass-bar/perc, Peter Navarro-Alonso org, OUR Recordings (8 226935 • 74 • T/t)

The very notion of ‘sacred songs’ might seem to be an anachronism in the present era but, as this collection confirms, it is alive and well in Denmark, albeit with a distinctly sardonic edge.
Arranged posthumously from his career-defining opera Sun Rises Sun Sets, there could not be a more revealing portrait of Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen than Seven Solomon Songs (2025). Texts are derived from Ecclesiastes – King Solomon’s pivoting between defiance and despair in the face of encroaching death, rendered with due starkness by bass drum-wielding baritone and organ in music whose austerity is informed by more parodic or irrational elements. Motifs from one number re-emerge in others to make this more a cohesive suite than song anthology.
His extensive output may have enjoyed limited exposure outside his home country but Bent Lorentzen is well represented by Erotic Hymns (1996). Its nine numbers interweave settings of HA Brorsen and Ole Sarvig, the former’s metaphysical fervour thrown into relief almost 250 years on by the latter’s eloquent rumination on the nature of existence. Here longer-term connections are less motivic than expressive, across a sequence that accumulates emotional force prior to the ecstatic final Brorsen setting, which is also the highlight of this collection.
Now in his mid-40s, Nicolai Worsaae remains rather an unknown quantity but his album of song-cycles with Signe Asmussen (Dacapo, 2018) confirms a flair for word-setting no less evident in A Shipwreck (2017). Gnomic poetry from Simon Grotrian underpins a sequence where the organ assumes the conceptual and physical guise of a ship as this steers effortfully to its destination, its extramusical sounds as precisely delineated as are those of the singer’s stage positions in what becomes ‘a larger existential drama with clear religious undertones’.
Three diverse and demanding works for the punter as for the performers, though with artists of the calibre of Jakob Bloch Jespersen and Peter Navarro-Alonso, these accounts could hardly be other than definitive. The overall album is in no sense an ‘easy ride’ but for those who are willing to persevere, this makes for undeniably rewarding and, ultimately, cathartic listening. Richard Whitehouse, May Issue April 17th