LASSE THORESEN (b.1949): Concerto for Hardanger Fiddle, Nyckelharpa and Orchestra, Emergence - Juohti Boade!, Op. 28, The Sun of Justice, Op. 12.

Catalogue Number: 02L129
Label: Aurora
Reference: ACD 5058
Format: CD
Price: $18.98
Description: The concerto combines traditional instruments and folk techniques of Norway and Sweden with sophisticated modern concert-music idioms derived from the composer's study of Valen, and with Mortensen and in Utrecht and Paris. So the earthy intonation and rustic dances associated with the Hardanger and keyed fiddles (which appear separately in the first two movements and together in the last, complete with foot-stamping accompaniment to the Norwegian instrument) are presented in a setting often to the modern side of neo-romantic, but generally tonal or modally inflected derived from the material's folk-origins, and permitting, for instance, a verbatim quotation of the Boccherini minuet (for historical reasons). Emergence refers to the traditional chanting of the Sami people, symbolically represented by two trombones punctuating an orchestral tone-poem full of nature-sounds and grandly sweeping phrases of nature-painting. The symphonic poem The Sun of Justice is Thoresen's take on the 'mysterious sunrise to blazing glory of day' motif examined in music by a good number of other composers, here based on sun-worshipping rituals of indigenous South Americans. The most straightforwardly neo-romantic, and the earliest, work here, the piece builds to a powerful, rather cinematic climax, propelled by vigorous drumming effects, which gives way to a joyously dancing full-blooded orchestral triumph with deliberate echoes of Berlioz, Strauss and Bruckner. Arvid Engegård (hardanger fiddle), Bans Björkroth (nyckelharpa), Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; Ingar Bergby.