Lenore Engdahl

Someone opined a few days ago that the musical buck stops once you cross the alps and go South. In this guy’s august take on the scene, only classical music remains. But rock, folk and – for sure – metal take a nosedive to nothingness once you start cruising along the Po. And truly so, things change indeed, but not quite this way. From German precision, French bonhomie or the British stiff upper lip and lukewarm beer, you change into a more laid-back realm. But this does not mean non-existence of modern music, bad quality or – Loki forbid – a lack of intensity. Quite the contrary…

The imposing nature and sweeping expressive range of Joachim Raff’s Fifth Symphony has seen it become one of his most popular works in the genre. Its subtitle ‘Lenore’ refers to a lurid and macabre poem by Gottfried August Bürger in which the forlorn heroine forsakes God to join her dead lover on a wild ride through an ultimately horrific night. With its delicately scored and touching love music, celebrated march and brutal finale, this is a spirited and memorable symphony. The overture Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott uses Martin Luther’s famous melody to commemorate the drama of the Thirty Years’ War.

We ve all experienced how great it feels when everything clicks into place, when hard effort suddenly becomes effortless. It s usually at the long end of a struggle, at the moment just when we re about to give up. This was the case with Portland witch-folk band Lenore., formed by two songwriters Rebecca Marie Miller and Joy Pearson. Both had about given up on the music industry, Miller following her time as harmony vocalist in renowned indie band The Mynabirds, and Pearson after her divorce. But when they met one late night at a Pokey Lafarge show, it was kismet.