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Frederick Delius: Norwegian Masterworks

19,00 $

Bo Holten

Bo Holten was born in 1948 and in his native Denmark he is equally known as a conductor and composer. In 1991 he was appointed Guest Conductor of the BBC Singers, London, with whom he has worked on a regular basis every year, giving some 70 concerts and radio recordings. including works with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and several BBC Promenade Concerts. In 2000 he has also started to conduct the Nederlands Kamerkoor and the Swedish Radio Choir.
In 1979 he founded the vocal group Ars Nova with whom over some 17 years he undertook more than 500 concerts and 20 CD recorciings. In 1996 he founded the vocal ensemble Musica Ficta with whon he has now conducted about 150 concerts and theatre performances, and recorcled 10 CDs. With this ensemble Bo Holten pursues his interest in Renaissance vocal polyphony and 20th century music – with ventures into the baroque period. He also continues to work with the rich heritage of Danish song – making highquality recordings for a wide audience.
As a freelance conductor Bo Holten has guested a wide range of ensembles and choirs in Scandinavia and abroad. He is a regular visitor with most symphony orchestras in Denmark, often working with oratorios and contemporary music. This includes a series of collaborations with notable crossover composers like Jan Garbarek, Egberto Gismonti, Palle Mikkelborg and Barbara Thompson. Over the years Bo Holten has conducted more than 175 world premieres.
Bo Holten is also a prolific composer with more than 100 works on his work-list. Among these are 4 operas of which his third Operation Orfeo is the most frequently performed contemporary Danish opera, with some 85 performances worldwide. He has also written two symphonies, four concertos and two musicals. Among his most widely performed music are the 20 a cappella works which span his whole composing career. There have also been songs, chamber music and many film and TV scores.

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SKU: DACOCD 592 Categories: , , , , , , , , ,

Review:
This disc from Denmark is to be much welcomed. Bo Holten has a good feeling for the composer; his Eventyr is full blooded and his scoring of the Grieg-like songs is mostly skilful and idiomatic.
BBC Music Magazine
In short this is a completely recommendable version of Delius’s visionary dream of the high mountains and of the awed immediacy of mortality and transience that these high realms provoke.
Classical Music Web Editor’s Choice – Gramophone

Frederick Delius
1. Once upon a time (after Asbjørnsen’s folklore, 1915/17)

2. Sleigh Ride (1887 orch. 1889)

Five Songs from the Norwegian (Orchestrated by Bo Holten)
3. Slumber Song
4. The Nightingale
5. Summer Eve
6. Longing
7. Sunset
Henriette Bonde-Hansen, soprano

8. The Song of the High Hills (1911/12)
John Kjøller, tenor
Helle Høyer Hansen, soprano
Aarhus University Choir
Hummerkoret
Aarhus Chamber Choir

Aarhus Symphony Orchestra

Norwegian Masterworks ©

Each of the works featured on this recording may be seen as responses at particular periods of Delius’s life to quite specific Norwegian stimuli. Of two early trips to Norway that Delius made as a young man there remains no first-hand record. They were probably relatively short in duration, made as errant tours while in Sweden on his father’s business at the beginning of the 1880s; but they proved sufficient to instill in the youngster a mixture of awe and admiration of the country’s scenic splendours and, at the same time, an empathy with so many of the people he met in the course of his travels.
In 1887, however Norway was his sole destination as he set out on a summer vacation that neatly bisected the two student years he was then spending at the Leipztg Conservatory. So it was that at the age of 25 he spent some six weeks exploring the fjords, high moors and mountains that he would eventually come to regard as his spiritual home. Almost as soon as he arrived he was invited to a rural wedding, noting in his travel diary after he had met the bridegroom’s parents how ‘it really does one’s heart good to meet such honest, unaffected & unspoiled people.’ Two days on, and he resumed his journey, recording his impression of the high hills he was traversing:

Weather now very cloudy & the high mountains all hidden by mist. I have to cross the Ulvenaase, more than 3300ft high, & prepare for rather a wet time. Excessively steep, & after the last gaard is passed, scenery becomes more weird & rough. The view down towards Etne is magnificent. The sun.for a moment lashes a few rays over the long valley. I, from amongst the clouds, look now on almost a fairylike scene – the light & shade effects I never saw before, but only.for a few minutes, & then all is again bleak & misty, & I am getting wet through, with a cold wind sweeping down the mountain. At last I am at the top. Oh! how cold & bleak……Now I descend, dripping wet & in a short time come, so to speak, out of the clouds, & have a magnificent view of Skånevik fjord, all coloured deep blue, for the sun is shining there. In a few moments I have come from winter to summer…

RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 2002

CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 592

EAN: 5709499592007

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