Katrine Gislinge - Bent Sørensen: 12 Nocturnes (Live) '2021

Tracks list

	Tracklist

01. 12 Nocturnes: No. 1, Mignon, Und die Sonne geht unter (Live)
02. 12 Nocturnes: No. 2, Berceuse No. 2 Mondnacht (Live)
03. 12 Nocturnes: No. 3, Nächtlicher Fluss (Live)
04. 12 Nocturnes: No. 4, Barcarola (Live)
05. 12 Nocturnes: No. 5, in den Morgen tanzen (Live)
06. 12 Nocturnes: No. 6, Sigrids Kantate (Live)
07. 12 Nocturnes: No. 7, Mitternacht mit Mignon (Live)
08. 12 Nocturnes: No. 8, in Rosenblüten tanzen (Live)
09. 12 Nocturnes: No. 9, Sigrids Wiegenlied (Live)
10. 12 Nocturnes: No. 10, 304 Sterne in einem kleinen Fenster (Live)
11. 12 Nocturnes: No. 11, Wiegenlieder (Live)
12. 12 Nocturnes: No. 12, Und die Sonne geht auf (Live)
13. Walzer, Unter dem Meer (Arr. for Piano & String Quartet) [Bonus Track]
[Live]


Bent Sørensen’s 12 Nocturnes comprise a collection of short pieces of
great expressive weight. It is wonderfully atmospheric music with a vibrating
magical sound that recalls the stars at night, miles above us. Where
Chopin’s iconic 19th century nocturnes are dark and full of unease, Bent
Sørensen’s music is luminous, a sounding prism for the tonal spectrum,
the nocturne retransformed in the 21st century.

While working on the 12 pieces, which were composed one by one during the period
from 2000 to 2014, Bent Sørensen was inspired with a special love for the
piano, and with that came access to new musical zones: a new sound, a beauty, a
purity.

It began with an inspiration that came from within, Bent Sørensen’s
memories of humming lullabies for his two daughters when they were little, the
starting point for the eleventh nocturne, ‘Wiegenlieder’, which was
composed first. Added to those memories were some strange nocturnal experiences
in Copenhagen:

‘There is something about the combination of the piano and the night. I
have always been fascinated by the sound of a piano from far away, and many
times when I have walked through the darkness of the city at night –
I’ve been stopped by the sound of a piano that presses itself from a
window. The most beautiful night sound – enigmatic and mystical in a way
that is inexplicable’, says Bent Sørensen.

Despite his interest and the special aura that surrounds the piano, Bent
Sørensen has for many years had difficulty in composing for the instrument.
But when he met the two pianists, Leif Ove Andsnes and Katrine Gislinge, for
whom most of the pieces were composed, a new enthusiasm emerged and, explains
Sørensen, he discovered that music was capable of ‘swimming and
drifting’. ‘It is as though the piano has come to understand me,
and now I am enormously happy to write for the instrument.’

A number of the pieces are linked with other works by Bent Sørensen,
especially the trilogy Papillons, in which a central piano piece composed for
Katrine Gislinge introduces a shadow-play with a string quartet, ensemble and
string orchestra, respectively, in which Romanticism’s intriguing girl,
Mignon, is made a reflection-point for love. There are also glimpses of music
found in the piano concerto,La Mattina (2009), and two of the pieces are used in
Sørensen’s St. Matthew Passion (2019).

The 12 Nocturnes were gathered and revised into their current form in 2014, and
together form a sequence of nocturnal scenes, from one evening until the
following morning.

The first, ‘Mignon – und die Sonne geht unter’, is sunset
music built on a poem by Pia Juul, ‘And the sun goes down’. It is
condensed music. Briefly, when we step out of the usual time, struck by the
moon’s beams. A dark river at night drags us down into hidden dream
cities. A whirling, gentle dance condenses in ecstatic presence. The night as a
space for forgetting oneself, a fatal devastating space for reversal and a space
for feeling confident.

In the ninth piece, ‘Sigrids Wiegenlied’, which was composed for
Leif Ove Andsnes’ new-born daughter, we hear a faint voice in the
distance and witness the child being lifted into the world in the peace of the
night.

The delicately glittering ‘304 Sterne in einem kleinen Fenster’
which follows was inspired by a quotation from Peter Asmussen: ‘If you did
not know where you were, you might believe you were somewhere else’.
Finally, towards the end of the last piece, the choral study ‘Und die
Sonne geht auf’, the piano is transcended and is rediscovered in a new
form. Through a soft flickering tremolo we sense the first light of the day: the
sun comes up.

A short piano piece, ‘Walzer – Unter dem Meer’, follows as a
bonus track. It was composed with the work of the expressive German painter,
Markus Lüpertz in mind. He, like Bent Sørensen, has created a new
expressive art through an intense exchange with the past. With its origins in a
trembling world of echoes, a lyrical singing motive from Papillons is revealed,
we are being whirled tenderly in a sunken waltz which, despite the pull of the
seabed, is saturated with light. With a dying tone, where sounds, as though from
an alien planet, are sensed as whispering strokes from a string quartet, and
space expands again. An omen of a new time. A meeting.

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