Fanfare 2

****Three varied and surprising works for bass-baritone and organ that you are not likely to hear at your next Sunday service

On the face of it, this program (And I gave my heart...) of Danish works for bass-baritone and organ might make you think “How Lutheran,” but there is more to it than that. As OUR Recordings’ press release aptly states it, “When one imagines the sound of a magisterial bass voice accompanied by a pipe organ, one cannot help but imagine a glorious Vox Dei proclaiming eternal truths from the numinous beyond.” I’d be quite surprised (but delighted) to hear any of these three works in the context of a church service.
Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s work (Seven Solomon Songs) was adapted from his opera Sun Rises, Sun Sets. The composer himself had agreed to take on this task, but died (in 2016) before he could carry it out, and there actually have been two versions of Syv Salomon-sange—one created by Jens E. Christensen, and now this newer one by Peter Navarro-Alonso, the organist on this CD. Although the work is in seven sections, it gives the impression of being a continuous 25-minute work, like an operatic scene. bound together by reappearances of both sung texts and musical phrases, and also by the singer’s implacable beating on a bass drum. The work begins with King Solomon’s pessimism (“Bah! Vanity, endless vanity”). In the middle, he looks back pitifully at his deeds and riches, only to return to the darkness he began with. Truth to tell, while not laugh-out-loud funny, there is a bleak humor at play here, well-realized by bass-baritone Jespersen, and I was not surprised to read that the composer once described himself as “a failed pessimist.”
The nine Erotic Hymns of Bent Lorentzen set texts by Ole Sarvig and H. A. Brorson in which spiritual, divine love is experienced as sensual pleasure. In the final song, we hear, “I lie so close upon Jesus’s breasts, and am drunk and sated with love, with honey and sugar his hand clucks for the soul and makes my heart so merry and bright.” This blending of the spiritual and the physical is delicate, and difficult to realize. Messiaen was able to carry it off, and so has Lorentzen, although in a different musical style. Here, Jakob Bloch Jespersen’s gifts as a lyrical singer are in the foreground, and he finds an excellent balance between the work’s ambiguously contradictory elements.
A Shipwreck by Nicolai Worsaae is described as a “theater piece,” although it too considers the relationship between mankind and the Almighty, death, and the possibility of resurrection. In this work, one might say that the organ is the embodiment of the ship, the organist its “mad captain,” and the singer “a desperate sailor” trying to save himself, the ship, and his fellow crew. The composer writes, “It is almost a church opera unfolding within magical old woodwork, where the performers are hidden from our sight.” In the right church, with the right organ and the right singer, I bet A Shipwreck could be overwhelming, but even here, it makes a terrific and powerful impression. It also gives Jespersen an opportunity to take on a third “role” (which he does brilliantly), and Navarro-Alonso matches him wave for wave, and creaking timber for creaking timber. Worsaae puts the organist (and the organ) through his paces here, and there are lots of weird sounds which nevertheless suit the subject matter.
This program was recorded in Copenhagen’s Our Saviour’s Church between 2023 and 2025. The engineers have created an impressive sonic space for the music to live in, and have filled that space with clarity and color. Recommended, then, but keep the texts close at hand, unless you are fluent in Danish. Raymond Tuttle

4 stars: Three varied and surprising works for bass-baritone and organ that you are not likely to hear at your next Sunday service