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Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen - Five Poems (1994)
(b. 11. January 1964, Oslo)
First performance: Tòrshavn, 2. July 1995
Ricardo Odriozola, violin and Jane Goodwin, cello
Torstein Aagaard-Nilsen was born in Oslo but grew up in Lofoten, Northern Norway.
He took his education as a trumpeter in 1986-1990 at the Bergen Music Conservatoire - now Grieg Academy - where he also studied music pedagogy. In 1989-1990 he was in the composition class of Mogens Christensen. From 1990 to 1994 Aagaard-Nilsen taught contemporary music at the same institution. For two years he studied mathematics and computer science at the Bergen University.
He was the director of Bergen's Autunnale Festival also in the early 1990s. Since 2004 he has been artistic director of Bergen's Brasswind Festival, which focuses on new music for all kinds of wind ensembles. In 2006 he founded the concert series Avgarde together with Ketil Hvoslef. Jostein Stalheim and Knut Vaage. The series, which is still running today, is an arena for local musicians and composers. Aagaard-Nilsen works
as conductor of various school and amateur orchestras, and also as a teacher at the Manger Folk High School in Northern Hordaland. Manger Musikklag, the brass band from the same town, acts as the "house orchestra" in the Brasswind Festival.
Aagaard-Nilsen regards composing as a form of social activity. He writes:
'Composers (and artists in general) play an important role in modern society. We are competing for attention with increasingly powerful media. Art can do what commercial media cannot: it finds its way under the skin, as imprints of experiences. This aspect alone makes it imperative to keep going'.
Aagaard-Nilsen's music has been described as direct and impulsive. Nature and visual aspects are important sources of inspiration and the music often has a narrative quality. His language is free-tonal, with melodies and harmonies taking on the roles of objects that are open for development.
His wide-encompassing work with amateurs and youngsters has lent great versatility to his music. He is adept at writing music that is both intricate and accessible.
Although he is rightly recognized for his music for wind ensembles, he has also written for sinfonietta, symphony orchestra and a variety of chamber ensembles and solo instruments.
Five Poems for violin and cello had its origins in a song cycle composed in 1990 for the late American baritone singer John Magnusson. The songs were written for voice and trumpet and were based on poems by Rolf Jacobsen. Aagaard-Nilsen has written several other works based on texts by the same poet, who died in 1994. Magnusson and Lasse Rossing - at the time principal trumpet of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra - premiered the song cycle in Bergen in the early 1990s. The second, third and fourth of the Five Poems are based on songs from the vocal cycle, hence the heading in those three movements.
The first poem is lively, in the manner of a scherzo. The cello teasingly approaches the violin, ultimately being influenced by the smaller instrument's fidgetiness. The violin becomes lyrical as the cello turns increasingly motoric. They both run out of steam, leaving the cello to finish the movement with a ruminative monologue.
Poem 2 is an arrangement of the song "Du Fugl" (Oh, bird) from the aforementioned cycle. It is a brief episode of mercurial quality, with only a short moment of hesitation from the cello. Here it is the violin that finishes the movement with the weightless abandon of a small bird.
In the song from which Poem 3 originates, the moon appears when a pale flower blossoms, imitating the flower's luminosity and spreading it over the Earth: itself a flower from the tree of the stars. The third poem takes the form of a conversation between the two instruments, with a tension and slightly ill-at-ease quality that has been absent from the work so far. They mostly listen to one another but it is only in the last eight bars that they seem to reach a degree of harmony.
Stillness and serenity characterize the fourth poem, based on the song "Uten en Lyd" (without a sound). The long and hushed lines slowly ascend from a low to a high register, only to descend to a halfway point at the end in a state of suspension.
The brief fifth and last poem finds the two instruments working in consort, mostly in the pursuit of a common texture, leading to a resounding conclusion.
Ricardo Odriozola 26. January 2022
German preface not available ...
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