Ole Ingstrup

Nino Rota’s reputation outside Italy as, at best, a civilised purveyor of minor theatre music is turning out to be hardly even a half-truth. BIS’s series of his symphonic and chamber works, and Chandos’s of the concertos, reveals a composer of incisive gifts and technical brilliance. Civilised the music certainly is, but often far more than that, its pervasive wit enhancing rather than detracting from the elegant suggestions of deep feeling. The wise and wily ‘neo-classicism’ of the Third Symphony sets out like an exercise in updated Mozart, but though Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony is brought to mind it soon becomes evident that a strain of acid melancholy undercuts the dapper phraseology. The model here, if there is one, seems more likely to be late Busoni, with disturbing cross-currents just beneath the surface. The Concerto festivo, more obviously a display piece, takes Italian opera genres (aria, cabaletta, etc) and reinterprets them in fairly irreverent orchestral terms, while the ballet music that Rota produced for the tercentenary of the death of Molière – almost his last work –insouciantly mixes Baroque, modern and popular styles, just as it mixes merriment and melancholy, with constant technical brilliance and utter lack of pomposity. The Swedish performers take to the Italianate gaiety as to the manner born. A delightful disc.

Norwegian composer Ole-Henrik Moe is just as happy to be referred to by his coincidentally sonically consonant initials – OHM – and Rune Grammophon's two-CD set, Ole-Henrik Moe: Ciaconna – 3 Persephone Perceptions, consists of two very long solo violin works performed by Moe's wife, violinist Kari Rønnekleiv. A one-time student of Xenakis, Moe is a very busy composer whose extensive work ranges from collaborations with the Arditti String Quartet and playing in jazz groups as violinist to his involvement in electro-acoustic projects like Deathprod and the Norwegian nouveaux-prog band Motorpsycho.

As is evident in these works, Børresen was a highly talented Danish composer. His first symphony bears some resemblance to Tchaikovsky's Sixth, in particular in the last movement that ends quietly like Tchaikovsky's. However, it is an independent, assured symphony that is well worth hearing. Indeed, after listening to it several times, it is difficult to understand why this tuneful and highly likeable work is not played regularly in concerts anymore. Ole Schmidt and the Saarbrücken orchestra certainly make a strong case for the music.