Search - Jens Schou, Per Norgard, Ib Norholm :: Breath and Wings

Four works for clarinet performed by Jens Schou

Christopher Culver | 11/24/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

"One of the most admirable initiatives in contemporary music is the Da Capo label's "Open Spaces" line, which bring performances of modern Danish music at budget price. On this 2004 disc, clarinettist Jens Schou with pianist Erik Kaltoft perform three works united in their interest in the clarinet, but with vastly different styles and approaches.



The disc begins with a 30-minute bass clarinet improvisation, "Prelude to Mythic Morning". This is based on the special tone row behind the bass clarinet's harmonics which Per Norgard and Schou worked out in 1999 and which led to Norgard's work for voices and clarinet "Mythic Morning". A half-hour seems a long time for a mere clarinet improvisation, but with Per Norgard's always fascinating theories behind it, it never outstays its welcome.



Per Norgard's "Letters of Grass" for clarinet and piano (1992-93) is a spin-off with LIN for clarinet, cello and piano from 1986, a work originally done in collaboration with Jens Schou's trio. I haven't heard that trio, so I cannot comment on the connect between the new piece and the old (though I know it's on a Kontrapunkt disc). It's a very smooth piece, though somewhat formless and episodic in a way that Norgard's best work isn't. Highly lyrical writing and mechanical step-wise motion weave around each other, and it seems that the two instruments, while never clashing, nonetheless never met.



I bought this disc as a Per Norgard completist, but the remaining material is fairly entertaining. Ib Norholm's "A Song of Breath and Wings" for solo clarinet (2003) takes its inspiration from a hymn extolling a child to sleep sweetly and stays mainly soft and gentle. From Niels Viggo Bentzon we get the oldest piece on the disc, a Sonata for Clarinet and Piano from 1956, which in the Nordic style of the time and place of writing but has some colourful jazz inspiration."