1B1, Jan Bjøranger, Christian Ihle Hadland & Erlend Skomsvoll
Description
The highly-regarded Ensemble 1B1 have teamed up with jazz musician and composer Erlend Skomsvoll and Norway's exciting young pianist Christian Ihle Hadland to pay tribute to Edvard Grieg. The disc features three different arrangements of the composer's much-loved Holberg Suite, the original version for solo piano, Grieg's own adaptation for strings, and a performance of an improvisatory work by Skomsvoll based around the piece.
Edvard Grieg's Holberg Suite subtitled "Suite in olden style" consists of five movements based on eighteenth century dance forms. It was written in 1884 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish-Norwegian humanist playwright Ludvig Holberg. The suite was originally composed for the piano, but a year later arranged by the composer for string orchestra. The disc opens with the well-known string version and continues with a performance of the original piano piece by Christian Ihle Hadland. Hadland's interpretation conjures up a multitude of rhythmic and timbral nuances, lifting the original Holberg Suite into the great European piano tradition. The album concludes with jazz musician and composer Erlend Skomsvoll's Holberg Variations. Skomsoll takes the iconic themes and musical phrases of the suite and leads the string orchestra in an improvisational game, where the motifs get transformed into pulsating passages with lingering textures.
Personnel: 1B1, Jan Bjøranger (conductor), Christian Ihle Hadland (piano), Erlend Skomsvoll (piano)
Tracklisting
Leif Ove Andsnes
Lars Anders Tomter / 1B1
Ensemble 96, Nina T. Karlsen & Vox Clamantis
Jonas Batstrand, Jorn Fossheim
Tone Kummervold
Per Kristian Skalstad, Telemark Chamber Orchestra
Ketil Bjornstad
Marius Neset, Leif Ove Andsnes
Les Gouts-Authentiques; Jan de Vlieger
Vladimir Spivakov; Sergej Bezrodny; Alexander Malter; Dietmar Schwalke
University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble; Doug Perkins
PETER DONOHOE
Yo-Yo Ma
Yarno Missiaen; Bart Naessens
Vladimir Feltsman
True Concord Voices and Orchestra; Susanna Phillips; Tucson Girls Chorus; Eric Holtan; Marcella Mol
