Mogens Daalsgard

Nordic Sound - Tribute to Axel Borup-Jørgensen was conceived as a musical memorial to the late Danish modern master, Axel Borup-Jørgensen. Five leading Danish and Faroese composers, Bent Sørensen, Sunleif Rasmussen, Thomas Clausen, Mogens Christensen and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, were commissioned by Edition Borup-Jørgensen and the composer’s daughter, Elisabet Selin to write a recorder concerto for Michala Petri and string orchestra. The choice of the recorder was both an outgrowth of Borup-Jørgensen’s decades long engagement with the instrument and as Petri’s personal tribute, who became a “second daughter” to the composer.

ØSC had been at the Black Tornado recording back in November but our friend Gary (Yawning Man) was in town and wanted to jam. It had been a long time since the main touring band of ØSC (Nick, Jiri, Mogens, myself) had been in the studio. We grabbed Martin, who plays with Nick, Jiri and Mogens in the Univerzals as well as with Jiri in his band, Fri Galaxe to play drums. He had played quite a few gigs with us in Denmark the last years. Nicklas from Papir, was a great choice to play with Gary as both are fans of each other and we love to play with Nicklas. We had a cool band.

The bulk of Buxtehude's oeuvre consists of vocal music, which covers a wide variety of styles, and organ works, which concentrate mostly on chorale settings and large-scale sectional forms. Chamber music constitutes a minor part of the surviving output, although the only works Buxtehude published during his lifetime were fourteen chamber sonatas. Unfortunately, many of Buxtehude's compositions have been lost.

The complete cantata recordings of a Bach conductor who defined performance standards of these works in his day, newly remastered and compiled together for the first time on CD. In the generation of Bach interpreters before Karl Richter who brought his cantatas to an international audience, the name of Fritz Lehmann stands out: and indeed might still have eclipsed Richter but for his early death in 1956, at the age of just 51 and significantly just before the stereo era would move recorded music into a new era. Lehmann’s recorded legacy is nonetheless significant on its own terms, made mostly for Deutsche Grammophon and encompassing the Brahms’s German Requiem, and a Christmas Oratorio which he was recording at the time of his death, completed by Günther Arndt and now reissued by Eloquence (4827637).

Even though the revival of Carl Nielsen's music in the late '60s proved to be nearly as revelatory as the slightly earlier promotion of Gustav Mahler's symphonies, the pace of recordings at the time was quite sluggish. Indeed, by the early '70s, the discography of Nielsen's symphonies included a smattering of releases by Leonard Bernstein and Eugene Ormandy for Columbia, Jascha Horenstein on Nonesuch, and Ole Schmidt on Unicorn, along with these utterly superior recordings by Herbert Blomstedt and the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra for EMI. The six symphonies were recorded between 1973 and 1975, and for their time were the best available recordings of Nielsen's music.

Mogens Pedersøn was a pupil of Melchior Borchgrevinck, later royal kapellmeister, and in 1619 he became royal vice kapellmeister. His major work, Pratum Spirituale ("Spiritual Pasture"), was published in Copenhagen in 1620, containing 21 five-part hymns and a mass, three motets, and a number of responsories. The works directly reflect the church-musical requirements of the time, which made available in print some kind of offerings for ultimately all situations of Lutheran culture. In addition to the hymns that were part of the core liturgical program for the three feasts (Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost), there are Danish hymns, ten psalm hymns, and nine "free" hymns, partly from the distinctly Danish hymn tradition, partly from Luther's closest repertoire. The stylistic world that Pedersøn reveals in "Pratum Spirituale" is unquestionably only a very narrow segment of what this internationally experienced musician mastered: schooled between organ playing, Italian madrigal, Venetian double choir and English "consort music".

The six symphonies were recorded between 1973 and 1975, and for their time were the best available recordings of Nielsen's music. They constitute the bulk of this 2008 box set, and though two smaller sets of the symphonies and the concertos were issued by EMI in 2007, this seven-disc compendium provides much more music at a comparable cost.

The most famous violin concertos ever written are well represented in this 10-CD set of Menuhin's finest performances-but so are many less-familiar works that Menuhin resurrected. Beginning with The Four Seasons by Vivaldi; Violin Concerto in E by Bach, and many more pieces by both composers, the set moves on to Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in C Major Haydn; Violin Concertos. Nos. 4 & 5 Mozart; Violin Concerto in D Beethoven; Violin Concerto in A Minor Dvorak; Violin Concerto in D Brahms; Violin Concerto in B Minor Elgar, and more!