Stavanger

The profile of Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen continues to rise through her regular appearance on Europe’s major opera, concert and recital stages, and she is consistently praised for her compelling blend of radiant stage personality and purity of vocal tone. This is her first opera arias recital and is focused on Handel and Mozart. Previously on disc, Eriksmoen features on Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust with Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under Daniel Harding, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, both with Akademie für alte Musik Berlin under René Jacobs and Glyndebourne Festival conducted by Robin Ticciati, and in a ​“poised, elegant and persuasive” (Guardian) debut recital disc featuring songs by Grieg, Grøndahl, Wolf and Strauss with Alphonse Cemin (Alpha).

Celebrating his 80th birthday in 2012, Per Nørgård is undoubtedly one of the most important Danish composers since Nielsen. This disc brings together his two violin concertos as well as the orchestral work Spaces of Time. The music of Helle Nacht (‘bright night’) has several transparent layers, and at each hearing the listener will be able to experience the work differently. The transparency of the music is even more pronounced in the version for chamber orchestra, created especially for Peter Herresthal.

Jephtha (1752) was George Frederick Handel's final oratorio, and it was composed during a period of incipient blindness and declining health. Yet the composer's artistic powers were undiminished in this dramatization of the Biblical story, for the arias and choruses are as memorable as any from Handel's earlier works in the genre, including Messiah and Israel in Egypt.

Jan Willem de Vriend starts a new symphonic cycle dedicated to Schumann. This is the first recording with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra both for the conductor and for Challenge Classics.

An ardent nationalist, Geirr Tveitt found inspiration in the folk melodies of the Hardanger fjord and promoted this little-known material in his songs and orchestral works. Tveitt's music is tinged with nostalgia and Norwegian brooding, communicated in a familiar neo-Romantic style that was considered reactionary by critics, but was easily accepted by audiences. The Piano Concerto No. 5, premiered by Tveitt in 1954, is in three movements. The piece is agreeably melodic with modal inflections, yet it has enough muscularity and harmonic bite in places to suggest the influence of Ravel and Prokofiev. Nils Mortensen executes the piano part with hard-edged brilliance, and the orchestral accompaniment is strong without overwhelming the soloist. The Variations on a Folksong from Hardanger is, loosely, a concerto for two pianos and orchestra. Less coherent than the Piano Concerto No. 5, the Variations tend to ramble, and Tveitt's self-indulgence and impulsiveness may have contributed to this piece's episodic construction. Mortensen and fellow pianist Sveinung Bjelland are a solid pair, always synchronized and audible above the orchestra. The Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ole Kristian Ruud, plays with sufficient vigor and color, though this moody music affords them few opportunities to shine. The sound is fairly soft in places, so volume adjustments may be necessary.

The music of Frank Martin is most often characterized by exquisite craftsmanship, intelligence, subtlety, a tonal language that is neither overtly modernist nor overtly Romantic, and a finely calibrated but reserved, chaste expressiveness, which are not attributes likely to create wild popularity with broad audiences. For his admirers, though, his voice has a potent individuality and emotional depths that engender fierce loyalty, and this album should be like catnip for them. Its attractive program adds to its appeal; it includes an alternate, rarely heard version of his most popular work, Petite symphonie concertante arranged for full orchestra as Symphonie concertante; a genuine rarity, the suite from his opera Der Sturm, based on The Tempest, for baritone and orchestra, and Six Monologues from "Jedermann" for baritone and orchestra, with a text by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

Self-taught as a composer, Kleven at the age of 23 produced Lotusland, his first orchestral work, and was praised as a master of orchestration. Skogens søvn incorporates certain avant-garde tendencies and shows Kleven starting on a path towards expressionism. The 1926 première of Symphonic Fantasy turned into the greatest musical scandal of the decade.

Marietta Marcolini was an Italian contralto born in Florence in 1780. Rossini’s career would not have taken flight in so meteoric a fashion without a series of providential encounters, and that with Marietta Marcolini was to leave an indelible stamp on his entire output. By creating roles to measure for her, as in 'La pietra del paragone' and 'L’Italiana in Algeri', and exploiting this interpreter’s uncommon resources more fully than had other composers before him, Rossini ushered in the fashion for a new type of comedy, the brilliant, virtuoso comedy of which he was to remain the master until 'Le Comte Ory' (1828).