American Record Guide

“I’m glad to have heard this interesting program. Great sound and fine performances from the Danish National Vocal Ensemble...
Else Marie Pade’s Maria (1980) [is] worth the price of admission alone!”

This program from the Danish National Vocal Ensemble brings together choral music of 2 European composers of the 20th Century. Both had close working relationships with their national radio stations, allowing them a certain freedom to experiment in their chosen styles. Slovenian Uros Krek (1922–2008) was drawn to composing for homogenous ensembles, starting out writing for strings, then later writing more for choir. The music here is warm, tonal, and inviting. He displays a remarkable ear for inventive, chromatic harmony—especially in the mysterious 3 Autumn Songs (1991). He is also a sensitive and perceptive text setter. My favorite of the bunch is ‘The Clock Ticks’ (1997), a setting of a 19th Century Slovenian folk song. It begins with gentle yearning from a young woman writing to her lover in America; the lover writes back and the music takes a dark, drastic turn as he writes of soulless factories, ending with heartbreak on the chilling words “It would have been better if my mother had not given birth to me, than America should become my doom, my destiny.”

Danish composer Else Marie Pade (1924–2016) studied with Vagn Holmboe and was Denmark’s first composer to experiment with electronic music. This area of her work is represented here with the program’s major selling point: Maria (1980), an ambitious, mystical electroacoustic work for coloratura soprano, bass-baritone, speaking choir, 7 trombones, and pre-recorded sound (including synthetic church bells and prepared piano). It follows the Apostles’ Creed; in each of the 11 movements, the soprano sings a single word on a lyrical, searching melisma, followed by the bass-baritone intoning the Latin credo and the choir speaking its sighing, melting, incantatory repetition. It’s a piece that screams avant-garde, but it’s composed with such structural and expressive clarity that it is never opaque or distant. It’s worth the price of admission alone.

For listeners less inclined toward the avant-garde, 2 beautiful works by Pade in a more tonal, lyrical style are included as well: Korsatser (1955, rev. 2009), 3 songs in the Danish song tradition; and This is the Prophecy of the Volva (1956), setting Nordic myths about prophecies of the world-ending Ragnarok, combining Gregorian chant with modern harmonies.

Both composers were unfamiliar to me, and I’m glad to have heard this interesting program.
Great sound and fine performances from the Danish National Vocal Ensemble.
Full texts and English translations. – FARO May/June issue 2025