Release Date: 16 July 2021
Label: Lawo
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 7090020182438
Genres: Classical Contemporary Classical
Description
In our time, the poet Keats' famous adage "beauty is truth, truth beauty" might sound like a lost dream, but Nils Henrik Asheim's collection "Hornflowers", reimagines this relationship and brings hope to contemporary ears. Asheim is not a beauty-worshipping esthetician in the same way as Keats, but he examines the idea of beauty through poetic compositions.
Today, beauty and truth appear almost as opposites — truths are disputed and dismantled, while reality can come across as anything but beautiful. The works on this release, performed by the NyNorsk Brass Quintet, are also full of contradictions.
Collected fragments, sounds, patterns, words, and dichotomies are utilized as building blocks, freed from their original context and strung together in surprising and powerful constellations.
Asheim has also given several of the pieces oxymoronic titles, like "Burning Ice", "Singing Stones", and "Scream Soft", and by this invites the listener to reflect upon differences of opinion and improbable compilations.
The brass instruments occupy and explore spaces we do not normally hear them occupy — undressed and playful — and their obvious natural place and inclusion in these constructions is both astonishing and liberating. It is precisely in the surprises, in the contrasts, in the distance between the building blocks and the grout that holds them together, that the uniqueness and tactility of this music is revealed.
In this way, Asheim creates his own musical lyricism where beauty and truth are exposed through contradictions and improbabilities.
Tracklisting
NyNorsk Messingkvintett, Thorolf Thuestad
Engegard Quartet
Engegard Quartet, NyNorsk Messingkvintett
Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, Peter Szilvay, Aage Richard Meyer, Cam Kjoll, Ruth Potter
Ssens Trio
Torleif Thedee & Marianna Shirinyan
Oslo Kammerkor, Hakon Daniel Nystedt
Berit Norbakken & Solmund Nystabakk
Tomasz Skweres, Ensemble Reconsil, Osterreichisches Ensemble fur Neue Musik, Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej
Evgeny Grinko
Jean-Marie Machado & Danzas Orchestra
Eric Lamb, Stefanie Alexandra Prenn, Angela Calvo Rios, Kaoko Amano, Veronica Klavzar
Kari Beate Tandberg
SWR Vokalensemble, IRCAM, Yuval Weinberg
Marco Fusi
Klangforum Wien, Johannes Kalitzke, Bas Wiegers, Alessandro Baticci, Rafal Zalech
