Per Norgard: Seadrift (Da Capo Audio CD)

Works for soprano and instruments

Bente Vist (soprano), Tine Rehling (harp), Bodil Rørbech (violin), Toke Møldrup (cello), Fredrik Bock (lute/baroque guitar), Marit Ernst (recorders), Nikolaj Ronimus (recorders and crumhorn), Allan Rasmussen (harpsichord), Frans Hansen (percussion), Gert Sørensen (crotales),
Casper Schreiber, Thomas Søndergård (conductors)


Per Nørgård’s vocal music from the 1970s explores the ordered harmony of the universe. Nova Genitura (“New Birth”) and Fons Laetitiae (“Fountain of Joy”) grew out of Nørgård’s epoch-making Third Symphony and continued its homage to the Virgin Mary.

Seadrift has a text by Walt Whitman and heralds the changes that appeared in Nørgård’s music a few years later.

All three works were inspired by early music and make original use of instruments like lute, harpsichord and recorder. At the centre stands Bente Vist’s scintillatingly clear soprano voice.

Classics Today praised the music of Nørgård as “splendid…. challenging but very beautiful music by a composer with a recognizably personal idiom.”