Frode Haltli (Photo: Antonio Armentano)
Frode Haltli has made the best of an open calendar due to the covid-19 restrictions. He has recorded and released three digital albums of not often heard pieces for solo accordion, most of them never recorded before.
Included in the list of newly recorded works is Leif Kayser's 'Arabesques' (1974-1975). Frode Haltli writes about the work:
"Composed in close collaboration with the Danish accordion pioneer Mogens Ellegaard (1935-1995), the 'Arabesques' (1974-1975) have become a standard work in the classical accordion world, all though very seldom performed in full cycle. The pieces are composed with great clarity and perfection, and the notation is extremely precise when it comes to rhythms and articulation. Even the fingering and when to turn the bellows is written in the score!"
About his personal relation to the work, Frode Haltli writes:
"Personally I got hold of Kayser’s self-published score in Iikalinen, Finland in 1989 when I was 14 years old, and I have loved this music since. Like in Debussy’s 'Arabesques', Kayser wanders through modes and keys, with an always expanding tonality. The pieces are delicate and transcendent, generally in soft dynamics. Throughout the 10 pieces there are traces of a whole musical life, absorbed into the composers own musical style: From the Gregorian chants he sang in the boys’ choir, his important studies with Hilding Rosenberg and later Nadia Boulanger, to his experiences with analysing and performing the music of Olivier Messiaen, as one of the first to do so in Denmark."
The albums Selected Solo Works Vol. 1-3 are released as digital albums on the label Svartskog Music Production (SMP) exclusively on Bandcamp where the albums can be streamed and downloaded.
Listen to all three albums here.
Buy the score for Leif Kayser's Arabesques here.