Adrianna Kubica-Cypek: Reflection Nebulae
Score / 3.2.3.2/4.2.2.1/3perc/pno/harp/12.12.8.8.6
The music of Adrianna Kubica-Cypek has its very own evocative and personal expressiveness that balances between a delicate, withheld calmness and an insisting intensity. When Reflection Nebulae was premiered by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the critic from Magasinet KLASSISK called it "one of the biggest promises for the future I have experienced in a Danish concert hall".
Mette Nielsen: Bevægelser (Movements)
Score / 3.3.3.3/4.3.3.1/timp.2perc/hp/str
"A new Nielsen in Danish symphonic music is born", one critic stated after having experienced the world premiere of Mette Nielsen's Bevægelser. The composer herself describes her work as an exploration of sound as an imagined physical element that the audience moves through and around.
Martin Stauning: Harp Concerto
Score / 3(picc).3(eh).3(bcl).3/4.3.3/2perc.timp.pno./harp solo/8.8.8.8.8.8
Composing Harp Concerto, one of Martin Stauning’s initial concepts was born of the thought of the harpist as a puppeteer pulling strings. In the score, that theatrical idea is realized in music through the solo harpist’s instantaneous and unequivocal effect on the instruments that surround it in the orchestra. "It's simply a ravishingly unique piece of music that Martin Stauning has put together," one critic concludes.
Bára Gísladóttir: COR
Score / 2(bfl).3(ca).3(2bcl)3(cbsn)/4.3.2+btrbn.1/4perc/0.0.0.0.7
Bára Gísladóttir considers sounds as living organisms, and in COR she seems to rouse a raging beast. The music begins with a primal bellow, of brass players and flautists growling into their instruments, percussionists screeching cardboard tubes across the surface of tam-tams, and oboes and clarinets interjecting rasps of rough multiphonics. Beneath it all is a deep E natural pedal tone, which acts like a chain shackling everything in place, keeping it just on the right side of control moving its way to the climax of the work, which Gísladóttir describes as a ‘mad percussion solo’.
Simon Steen-Andersen: TRIO
Score / Symphony orchestra, big band, choir & video
Simon Steen-Andersen's TRIO is a monumental multi-media work in which a symphony orchestra and a large choir are confronted with a big band, and all three are put into perspective by historic footage of their predecessors in concert and rehearsal. The result is an ultra-virtuoso collage and a profound and disarmingly funny journey into our own musical memory.
Steingrímur Rohloff: Concerto Grosso
Score / Horn, trumpet, trombone & tuba soloists + symphony orchestra (3.3.3.3/4.3.3.1/timp/2perc/arp/archi)
Storytelling is hardwired into Steingrímur Rohloff’s music. He can sense the profundity of a narrative arc, the power of emotional extremes and the fantastical capabilities of melody and harmony. Concerto grosso for four brass soloists and orchestra is precisely full of this beauty and finesse. Here Rohloff brings each individual instrument to its expressive limits and captures the virtuosity of the individual musician.
Christian Winther Christensen: Piano Concerto
Score / Piano, midi piano, and orchestra
Christian Winther Christensen's Piano Concerto undertakes an interesting reformulation of the genre as a close-to-silent homage to the piano concerto. Christian Winther Christensen often relates to music history through quotations and intimations and in Piano Concerto the piano functions both as a percussion instrument and as a narrative monster from the past. The instrument is already pre-recorded, and while contact microphones respond to the sound of the pianist’s nails touching the keys, a ’ghost pianist’ backstage is playing on a midi keyboard to control the pre-recorded material.
Line Tjørnhøj: ØR
Score 2 perc solo & 2.2.2.2/2.2.2.0/hrp/0.0.12.8.4
ØR is composed for percussion duo and orchestra and was written as a tribute to fellow composer Per Nørgård, who turned 90 last year. Line Tjørnhøj has drawn inspiration from Nørgård's piece for solo piano TURN (1973), but in ØR she has transformed the piano into a percussion instrument prepared with hammers, filters and copper screws that take the form of small creatures transforming the traditional instrument into something completely new.
Allan Gravgaard Madsen: Concerto Grosso
Score / String quartet & orchestra (3.3.3.2/4.3.3.1/2perc/arp/12.10.8.6.5)
Allan Gravgaard Madsen explains that with Concerto Grosso he is hoping to take the audience to a place they did not expect to go: “Through the first and second movements, I have earned their trust, so that they dare to follow me to the third movement and especially the fourth movement which is where it all starts to go a little crazy.”
Li-Ying Wu: Flamboyer
Score / 2 perc. soloists & 2.2.2.2/4.2.2.1/timp/perc/ondes martenot/hrp/pno/14.12.8.6.4
Li-Ying Wu's concerto for percussion duo and orchestra combines French and Asian timbres, and the music moves through various stages of fire, from a sparkling glow to roaring flames. The two percussion soloists play a large setup of both Western and Asian percussion instruments, and they must both improvise and move choreographically as part of the work.
Find a list of all orchestral works published in 2014-2024 in the feature here.