Slagtøjscd-Booklet

Gert Mortensen The Percussion Universe of Axel Borup-Jørgensen 1 Solo Opus 88 (Gert Mortensen) * . 13.38 2 Music for percussion + viola Opus 18 (Tim Frederiksen, Percurama, conductor Gert Mortensen) . 12.29 3 La Primavera Opus 97 (Duo Crossfire) * . 20.40 4 Periphrasis Opus 156 (Gert Mortensen, Michala Petri) . 11.17 5 Winter Music Opus 113.1 (Gert Mortensen, Danish National Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet) * . 14.09 Total 72.44 * World Premiere Recording Made in Germany and distributed by Produced by NGL Naxos Global Logistics GmbH OUR Recordings Gruberstr. 70, D-85586 Poing, Germany www.ourrecordings.com www.naxos.com Axel Borup-Jørgensen Axel Borup-Jørgensen was born in Denmark, Hjørring on 22 November 1924, but grew up in Sweden, which his family moved to when he was 1 2 ⁄2 years old. After a few years of nomadic exis- tence, the family settled in Mjölby, where Axel went to school. His father was an inventor by nature and his creativity was inherited by his son. From his early boyhood, he was able to play several instruments by ear: mouth organ, small accordion, mandoline and piano. In junior school he played together with a couple of class-mates, and they often performed at class parties. As a schoolboy, Axel developed into an impressive drawer, he was interested in astronomy and dreamt of becoming an engineer or an architect. The shift towards classical music came in 1942, when the boy’s piano teacher – after having tried in vain to arouse his interest in operetta and popular music – presented him with the slow movement from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. “It was as if a spiritual world opened up, almost with the effect of a religious conversion.” After this, piano playing became Axel Borup- Jørgensen’s overriding interest. He spent many hours every day at the piano, and as an upper secondary student in nearby Linköping he used the school’s sports days to travel to Stockholm and get piano lessons. His repertoire included Grieg’s Lyrical Pieces as well as some of the classical-romantic works that were at the centre of the young man’s musical universe. 2 Photo: Leif Hesselberg 3 Alongside music, Swedish nature was a source of experiences and inspiration for Borup-Jørgensen returned to Darmstadt in 1962, but he did not return as a serial- Axel Borup-Jørgensen. In 1942, the family acquired the small island Björkö in lake ist or electro-acoustic composer. He was already in pursuit of his own correspond- Sommen on the border between Östergötland and Småland. Here Borup-Jørgensen ing form of expression, and Darmstadt did not mean a new departure for him but used to walk, cycle and row on long trips during the summer holidays and lose a confirmation, where the early orchestral works of Ligeti in particular, with their himself in the special stillness that characterises the open expanses of deserted strictly divided string voices, were an inspiration for the orchestral works from the countryside – a stillness that often seems to be recognisable in Axel Borup- 1960s. Jørgensen’s music. Borup-Jørgensen became especially known among the general public when his In 1946, Axel Borup-Jørgensen returned to Denmark as a student at The Royal Nordic Summer Pastorale won first prize in the competition for a short orchestral Danish Academy of Music, with the piano as his main subject and supplementary work held by Danmarks Radio in 1964, with extensive media coverage. The first lessons in instrumentation. Those studies – together with Niels Viggo Bentzon’s prize also included a commission for a large orchestral work for the occasion of introduction into the various forms of music – was of decisive importance in the 40th anniversary of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. This work, causing composition to take over the role of piano playing after 1948 as his key Marin, Borup-Jørgensen worked on until 1970, when it was given its first perform- musical activity. ance by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Herbert He retained his connection with Sweden and spent many summers on Björkö. He Blomstedt. It was awarded a prize by the international Rostrum of Composers in was also a diligent reader of Swedish literature. Up to the mid 1950s, this reading Paris and played by Francis Travis and The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic focused on such writers as Verner von Heidenstam, E.A. Karlfeldt and Gustav Orchestra as the concluding work at Nordic Music Days in 1978. Fröding. Later on, more modernist lyricists such as Karl Vennberg and the Finland- Marin was a milestone for Axel Borup-Jørgensen as a composer. The composition Swedish avant-garde poet Gunnar Björling played an important part in his develop- and the fair copy of the score and voices required an enormous amount of work – ment from an early romantic-impressionist position to a more aphoristic style. about 6,500 hours, or more than three normal years of work – the main part of According to Bo Wallner, the influence of modern poetry was more important to which comprised a daily work-load of 16 hours in 1969 and 1970. After Marin, him than contemporary modern music. Borup-Jørgensen avoided works for large orchestras with strictly divided string voices, concentrating to an increasing extent on chamber music ensembles. After Passing his music teaching excamination at The Royal Danish Academy of music, Axel Borup-Jørgensen established himself as a piano teacher. He taught Nevertheless, the tendency towards a simpler mode of expression – be it modern- at institutions and had private pupils and this, combined with family obligations, ism’s ‘neo-simplicity’ or a neo-classicism – which was typical of Danish music tended to isolate him from the environment for new music in Copenhagen. A di- after the 1970s, is not apparent in Borup-Jørgensen’s works. If simplicity is there, vorce in 1958 brought about a change in his family situation and meant that he was it is due to pedagogical considerations being taken of amateur musicians or stu- now able to devote more time to new music. In 1959, he travelled to the European dents, either in the form of music designed specifically for teaching purposes or mecca of modern music, Darmstadt, where he found confirmation for the develop- as the preparation of musical material in versions of varying levels of difficulty. ment he was undergoing in, for example, his Preludes for Piano op. 31:1 (1958-59). Axel Borup-Jørgensen lived a quiet life as a composer, piano teacher and avid He played some of them at one of Wolfgang Fortner’s courses, and Fortner felt that concert-goer. He continued to develop his personal style until his death on 15 Axel Borup-Jørgensen’s development ‘seemed to be the right one’. 4 5 October 2012, and he liked to collaborate with instrumentalists who The Percussion Universe could help him realise his ideas about new ways of playing and new sound possibilities that could be obtained from traditional instru- of Axel Borup-Jørgensen ments such as the recorder and guitar. With a consistency and per- severance that characterised his music for over 60 years, he worked Axel Borup-Jørgensen was a modern composer. One with a highly distinctive poetic towards an ever-increasing clarity, concentration and fine graduation vein. Modern, because he broke with musical traditions and right from his early of expression. works in the 1950s allowed his music to sound exactly as he had conceived it. He was born in Hjørring in the northern part of Denmark in 1924 and composed about The biography is an abbreviated, edited version of 200 small and large works before his death in 2012. Without following particular Axel Borup-Jørgensen’s autobiography, as told to trends or public whims. Although his music sometimes sounds fragmented or alien, Jens Brincker in 2012 it is always poetic. For Borup-Jørgensen refused to follow modernist norms (see the complete text at as well. At a point in the 1960s for example, when romantic descriptions of nature www.komponistforeningen.dk/komponistbasen). were distinctly unmodern, that was precisely what he composed. But in a complete- ly original way, with dramatic pauses and innovative sounds. During the second half of his life, Borup-Jørgensen wrote small-scale works in cham- Awards: ber music contexts, where he cultivated tiny details for untraditional classical instru- Aksel Agerbys legat 1960 ments such as viola, percussion and recorder. Five compositions that last 10-20 min- Lange-Müller-stipendiet 1963 utes, where a sound-world is minutely and sensitively examined from all sides – almost Tips-stipendiet 1964 as if the musicians are forming a sound-sculpture. One can notice that the music took Dansk Komponistforenings Jubilæumslegat 1968 long time on the draft plan before, after many revisions, he released the work. Herman Sandbys legat 1980 Hakon Børresens legat 1988 The composer’s precise idea about the music can be seen from the score, if one Det Anckerske legat 1988 should be in any doubt. Borup-Jørgensen was the type of composer whose music Præmieringer fra Statens Kunstfond 1965, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1986 is characterised by a great many small details and explanatory remarks about per- Carl Nielsens og Anne Marie Carl-Nielsens Hæderspris 1989 formance. So the interpreter is in no doubt as to how the untraditional notes and Schierbecks legat 1994 signs are to be understood – very frequently with recurring figures featuring a slight Komponistprisen 1994 sound variation on the previous one. Statens Kunstfonds livsvarige ydelse 1965 A good example of that mode of thought on the CD is “Periphrasis” for recorder and percussion. The title is a Greek word that among linguists refers to derivations of words as a kind of variation.

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