< back to overview Repertoire & Opera Explorer
Bernt Kasberg Evensen - Elegia for clarinet and string orchestra
(b. Tønsberg, 2. February 1944)
(1973-1976)
Date and players of first performance: unknown
Bernt Kasberg Evensen is, essentially, self-taught as a composer.
He has travelled widely and has lived and worked in several countries in the course of his life: Mexico, Scotland, Germany and, of course, Norway.
Evensen has, by and large, lived a life of service, always putting the welfare of others (family, friends and associates) before any concern for his own success. His years in Scotland established his competence and passion for working with the disabled and with psychiatric patients, as well as his close association to the Camphill and Anthroposophist philosophy and community, which continues to this day.
Evensen is also an excellent baritone singer and has performed extensively as such. He is almost certainly the only singer to have performed Schubert's Winterreise and Pettersson's Barfotasånger side by side. A very moving performance of the latter (from November
2014) can be enjoyed on YouTube.
All the same, he knew that composition was his true vocation from a very early age. The Norwegian Music Information data base lists over 100 works by Evensen in many genres: symphonic, chamber, vocal, stage music, music for children...
For many years Evensen worked closely with the School Concert Department of the Norwegian Concert Institute (Rikskonsertene). This prompted him to compose several musical fairytales, which he performed at schools throughout Norway between 1976 and 1988.
His concert music includes some of the most fascinating material written by any composer in Norway.
Evensen has a very personal and unique tonal language. He has a keen awareness of the intrinsic tension of intervals and, although his music is often harmonically and contrapuntally complex, rare is the composition where he does not include one or several unison passages
where intervals are allowed to stand starkly, creating a dramatic play of tension and release. Since the 1980s Evensen has experimented with scales derived from the writings of theosophist Anny von Lange. He has also used twelve-tone techniques in a free, personal way. Ravel has remained a favourite composer through Evensen's life, an influence the essence of which he has assimilated into his music without ever resorting to idle imitation.
We continue the celebration of Evensen's 80th birth year with the publication of his Elegiafor clarinet and strings. It exists in a version with string quartet. Here we present the one with string orchestra. Unusually, it only has one violin part in addition to the customary viola, cello and bass parts.
Elegia is typical of Evensen's lyrical vein. Echoes of French Impressionism can certainly be perceived through much of the piece although Evensen naturally brings his own very personal twist to the style. There are, for once, no unison passages in this work. The music thrives on the almost constant contrapuntal interplay between the voices. This interaction creates a living flow in which various degrees of tension and release are explored in an almost kaleidoscopic manner. It also finds place for brief moments in which one or another voice gains prominence in the polyphony.
The two alternating chords in the opening three bars function as a motto of sorts. They come back at several moments in the piece in different tonal centres. The very gentle entry of the clarinet in measure 8 is the first portent of growing tension. The clarinet line alternates between placid acquiescence with its surroundings (mm. 20-25) and deliberate, albeit understated, disagreement with the established tonality (mm. 13-17 and 93-98).
Measures 41-46 bring the first sense of unease and real tension, with a repeated chord built on stacked major sevenths. Although a brief return to lyricism seems to dispel this dark shadow (mm. 48-53), the harsh dissonant chord returns in measure 55 and begins to move upwards, then downwards, in parallel motion. A much shorter spell of now anxious placidity (mm. 59-61) tries, in vain, to prevent the inevitable. From measure 62, the implacable dissonance moves steadily upwards like a tectonic change, unleashing the work's most extended passage of loud and truly tense music (mm. 62-72). The clarinet, with its nervous figures and sketchy melodies, seems to be trying to hold back the storm. Then, as if coming out of a painful dream, the music suddenly returns to an oneiric atmosphere in measure 73. From here to the end, the music unwinds in a seemingly logical manner, with the almost ubiquitous eight-note wave motion (m. 74 and ff.) holding it together and earlier heard melodic fragments making a valedictory appearance. The work concludes with an ambiguous major/minor harmony, further enhanced by the final pizzicato harmonics in the bass, which play the seventh of the chord.
Elegia is, appropriately, a work of mournful character. Although it gives into despair for a few moments, its general mood is one of resignation.
Ricardo Odriozola April 6, 2024
German preface not available ...
< back to overview Repertoire & Opera Explorer