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- Bent Sørensen
De fire årstider (2016)
(The Four Seasons)- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
Commissioned by and written for POING with support from Norsk Kulturråd / Arts Council Norway.
- asx.acn.db
- narrator
- 55 min
- Tomas Espedal
- Danish, English, German, Norwegian
Programme Note
'The Four Seasons' is a collaboration between the Danish composer Bent Sørensen, the Norwegian author Tomas Espedal and the ensemble POING.
Sørensen has written a one-hour work to texts from Espedal's latest book 'Året' (The Year). The result is a sensitive work that deals with great and dramatic experiences - love, loss, war, death - aging and despair, stagnation and the eternal repetition of the same thing.
The two long-standing friends Espedal and Sørensen are connected for the first time on an artistic level through this work.
The Trio POING is one of the most important Scandinavian formations for contemporary music and since 1999 consists of Frode Haltli (accordion), Håkon Thelin (double bass) and Rolf-Erik Nystrøm (saxophone).
Media
Danish Premiere performance at SPOR festival, June 2017
Scores
Excerpt Danish version
Excerpt English version
Reviews
♥♥♥♥♥
"The collaboration between the unpredictable writer Espedal, with his fragmented universe, and the dreaming composer Bent Sørensen, results in a work of love, yielding incredibly poetic and surprising results." ...
"If there is anyone out there, with curious ears and a desire for musical contemplation, who is not familiar with the music of Bent Sørensen, I encourage you to choose him, before any other, next time you have the opportunity. An extraordinary experience awaits you."
1st November 2018
However, the piece "De dire årstider" (The four seasons) by bent Sørensen is the closest to life as such and empathetic contemporaneity. The Danish composer wrote it together with the Norwegian writer Tomas Espedal. Espedal was deeply moved in 2014 by the radio broadcast of the accordion concert "It is Pain Flowing Slowly on a White Wall", which Sorensen had written for Frode Haltli. He responded with a poem about loneliness and darkness of soul, which led to the plan to send Sørensen texts of the new novel "Året" - The Year - so that he could write music for narrator, saxophone, accordion and double bass.
Espedal's diary-like notes revolve around the loss of loved ones, sexuality and nutrition, the weather and moods. And Sørensen's music, played intimately and unanimously by Frode Haltli (accordion), Håkon Thelin (double bass) and Rolf-Erik Bystrom (saxophone) to the recitations by Tron Høvik, deepens these texts as only music can. A stream of consciousness of shadowy memories and expectations flows through us. The forms - between jazz, atonal fields and romantic flashbacks - are as blurred as when a short-sighted man tries to recognize people in the distance. With great artistry, Sørenen has succeeded here in creating a sonorous reflection on the tactile end of our existence: We cannot concentrate on the present, we know little about our future, we do not remain master of the past - and yet we want to cope with all this, because life, often in sudden gentleness, is at the same time so enchanting.
16th September 2016