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Eichberg

Gudmundsen-Holmgreen

Ruders

TRIOS FOR VIOLIN, HORN AND PIANO


Danish Horn Trio


Da Capo CD 8.226549

Unusual chamber music combinations are all the rage (c.f. the Vedehrs' 200 trios for violin, clarinet & piano) and here are three commissions by a Danish violin, horn and piano trio, their disc launched in Canterbury earlier this month.

Far the most interesting is the dramatic, extrovert piece by the least known of the Danish composers, Berlin-based Søren Nils Eichberg (b.1973). In four interlinked movements, dramatic, wayward, unpredictable, his should enter the repertoire as an alternative to the Ligeti in recitals featuring the Brahms trio.

Searching Google brought up a marvellous 12 mins YouTube video of Eichberg's Violin Concerto "Qilaatersorneq" ( Baiba Skride, winner of the Qu E Competition in Brussels, 2001, where it was the compulsory set piece). It had me riveted from beginning to end.

I have to say that the other commissions here, from far better known composers, are less engaging, and require rehearing. Gudmundsen-Holmgreen's is introverted to the extreme - "quiet, searching music" in which the notes writer Henrik Friis finds "an ambivalent world, with the composer's pecuiar humour lurking in the background"; the violinist has to vocalise too...

Peter Grahame Woolf