KLANG Festival: Athelas Sinfonietta
Premiere of a previously unperformed work by Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen.
Since 2009, the KLANG Festival has been a beacon in Danish cultural life and takes place every year at a number of the capital's most exciting venues – including The Black Diamond.
The festival embraces the music from after the Second World War, but primarily focuses on the latest music. Athelas Sinfonietta is, according to tradition, an ensemble at the opening concert.
The ensemble is joined by their regular collaborator, the highly experienced and renowned French conductor Pierre-André Valade, and is armed with a repertoire which – not surprisingly for an ensemble which has interpreted everything from Ligeti to Lou Reed over the years – is full of contrasts.
Programme
- Eivind Buene: Miniatures (2016)
- Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen: Variations for Aunt Rix (1968)
- Sara Glojnaric: Sugarcoating (2017)
- Nicolai Worsaae: Gekido (premiere)
We are, for example, presented with a never before performed work by the Danish composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen. The work, Variations for Aunt Rix (1968), is a loving tribute to the composer's maternal aunt, who meant an incredible amount to him. Anecdotes say that as a young man he often played records for her in her flat on the Esplanade – despite several attempts she never came to care about Louis Armstrong – and that she was so big that the car tipped to one side, when they drove around in his little Citroën 2CV.
Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen's heartfelt family greeting is immediately contrasted by Sugarcoating (2017), written by the Croatian composer Sara Glojnaric. With its brutally abrupt shifts and its wild, shrill and dissonant tonal language, the work appears as the perfect antithesis to everything one would normally associate with the word "sugarcoating". Nicolai Worsaae's brand new work, which was written specifically for the concert and bears the telling title Gekido (Japanese for anger), certainly cannot be called sugar-coated either. Thus we move between the extremes of love and anger on this June evening in The Black Diamond.
Participants
Andreas Borregaard, accordion, Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola.
Athelas Sinfonietta conducted by Pierre-André Valade.
The concert is supported by the Statens Kunstfond.
