Fanfare 1

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Poul Ruders's intelligence and integrity continue to impress in three new concertos for “old” instruments
RUDERS Transfigurations: A Double Portrait for Recorder Solo and String Orchestra1. A Movable Concerto2. Concerto for Harpsichord and Symphony Orchestra3 • 1Michala Petri (rcr); 2Peter Navarro-Alonso (positive org); 3Mahan Esfahani (hpd); 1,2Andris Veismanis, 3Leif Segerstam, cond; 1,2Kremerata Baltica; 3Aarhus SO • OUR 8.226937 (58:59)

Like Finnish composer Kalevi Aho (who is almost exactly the same age—that is to say, 77), the Dane Poul Ruders has had a long and productive career composing ambitious, intellectual scores and enjoying a close relationship with musicians and labels who have an educated appreciation for his work. This new disc (titled Transfigurations, after the first work on the CD) presents three recent concertante works for instruments usually associated with the pre-Classical era. OUR Recordings describes this as “Three Old Instruments, Three New Masterpieces.” I'm not sure that these are masterpieces, per se (I like to set that bar high), but they are masterful and are worth getting to know if you are searching for contemporary music that is honest and ungimmicky and that doesn't try to check all of the usual boxes, in terms of diversity and sociopolitical relevance. All three of these works were composed for the soloists who perform them here.

Of the three works, my initial preference is for the Harpsichord Concerto, which was composed in 2019. As I have remarked elsewhere, the harpsichord tends to bring out the dark and sinister side of modern composers' imaginations. Ruders's concerto is, for the most part, dark and driving, and in the martellato third movement, sometimes on the verge of confrontational. (The middle movement is more contemplative, but not less tense.) In the booklet note, the composer writes about wanting “to create the perfect symbiosis between 'yesterday' and 'today' (but without slipping into hackneyed neo-classicism)—not only stylistically, but also on a practical level.” This also means that the harpsichord is subtly amplified in order to hold its own with the orchestra, but that isn't a sin. Esfahani plays crisply and seems to relish the score's eldritch landscapes. Cult conductor Leif Segerstam is just the man for this task, and he and the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra bring out the score's fifty shades of grey. The engineering is warm and absolutely gorgeous.

The title work (2022) is in two sections, both marked Alla breve moderato. Each section starts with similar material, but works through that material in its own way. Ruders invites us to consider the implications of the word “transfiguration” and how that word relates to thematic development. Petri plays a series of recorders in this work, finally returning to the one she started with, so that is another “transfiguration” encompassed by this work. The mood throughout is thoughtful, but always changing and never extreme. The more you listen to this work, the more there is to hear. As always, Petri achieves feats of wizardry and displays her rock-solid technique. The strings of Kremerata Baltica play warmly, which creates appealing contrasts between the strings and the cooler timbres of the recorders.

Some readers might wonder what a positive organ is. (Others will be positive that they know.) It's a theoretically portable, one-manual organ, like the one you see in Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (the one with the grimacing angels). In other words, the title A Movable Concerto (2023) is a pun. As concertos go, A Movable Concerto has an unusual structure because it is comprised of five short movements or “pieces.” (The longest lasts six minutes, and the shortest less than two.) Again, the soloist is accompanied by a string ensemble, not a full orchestra. Ruders was thinking of Handel in this work, specifically of Handel's practice of inserting organ solos into his oratorio performances, and there are little Handel quotations (“slightly doctored”) within A Movable Concerto. The first piece (Alla breve) feels witty (not silly), with the soloist preoccupied over busy fingerwork. The second (Largo legatissimo) moves forward in a stately manner, although its dignity is ruffled. The third (Animato) is brusque and truculent, and brief fourth (Vivace) mercurial. The final Andante comes off as the most abstract of the five. It moves toward a sense of closure near the end, but the dense ending undercuts that. Navarro-Alonso, who has appeared on other OUR Recordings releases, plays the music cleanly and with sensitivity to its rapidly evolving colors and moods.
All three of these works are worth getting to know, and demonstrate that Ruders's abilities as a composer are as strong as ever. I think it was smart of the OUR Recordings team to structure the program in this way, and the performances are sound authoritative. Raymond Tuttle, July 16th, 2026