The evening includes ensemble works such as Mette Nielsen's Song I used to sing to the machines, Matias Vestergård's Six Elegies and Christian Winther Christensen's Festmusik as well as Indra Rise's Fanfare for violin, percussion and piano, Line Tjørnhøj's IR for solo trombone and Mette Nielsen's Under vandspejlet for solo double bass.
Matias Vestergård's Six Elegies appears to be formed of a set of six contrasting character pieces, but the music is bound together by its common basis in two chorales – one by Bach, one by Vestergård himself. The work is featured on Matias Vestergård's debut album released in 2022. Listen here.
Winther Christensen's Festmusik for sinfonietta includes several references to Beethoven - even though the title refers to Strauss who wrote Japanische Festmusik commissioned by Japan on the occasion of the 2600th anniversary of the Japanese Empire. Winther Christensen says of this: “There are passages where the string trio has to play in unison. They try to play the theme from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony “Ode to Joy”, which is extremely difficult since it is placed in an extremely high register so there is hardly place for the bow and fingers. It is so beautiful because while they are singing of being united it is quite impossible to play together.” Listen here.
Mette Nielsen says about Song I used to sing to the machines: "The title refers to a childhood memory I have of singing along to any kind of complex sound I heard (I still do it sometimes) - the neighbour in particular had a really good machine for cutting hedges, it had a big sound with lots of complex overtones that I would always sing along to when I heard it. I’ve taken a bit of a melody, that I wrote as a child and used it in the piece - most complete in the piano. The strings play natural harmonics in order to create little interferences with the winds, creating this unstable sound. Exactly which parts of the music is the machine and which part is the song is not clear - it all kind of blends together."
The programme also includes pieces by Per Nørgaard, Poul Ruders and Rune Glerup. The concert is curated by artistic director and conductor Bjarni Frímann Bjarnason.