NIELS VIGGO BENTZON
Works for cello and piano
Rosalind Bevan, piano
Niels Ullner, cello

Niels Viggo Bentzon, composer

About
The Volga Boatmen who have given their name to the introductory work on Dacapo’s
new CD, and who appear in ‘atomized’ form on the CD cover, had a hard time of it. You could say the same about the soloist in ´Niels Viggo Bentzon’s extremely virtuosic variation work for solo cello, which explores every nook and cranny of the old Russian worksong.

Niels Viggo Bentzon works with the ancient melodic material in twenty fundamentally different variations, each of which is about the reality associated with the material. The old worksong is treated reverently, challengingly and parodically. And the cello soloist works for twenty-two minutes to get all the nuances in.

Although there is a difference between Niels Viggo Bentzon’s early and late works, the music is always personally rooted in an alternation between strong-willed independence and inspiration from outside. This can be heard clearly in the two sonatas that follow the dramatic opening work on the new CD.

In Bentzon’s early sonata from 1941, the young composer ranges over the musical idioms of the period. The music is at once atmospheric and clearly stated. The form is traditional, but not reactionary. The later sonata from 1971 is full of energetic motifs and is coloured by mechanical repetition, intense accumulations of energy and powerful drive. There is something of the perpetual motion machine about the work that makes the musical material crystallize in a typically Bentzonesque way.

Credits
Recorded at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music on 10th-12th February and 14th-15th August 2002
Recording producer: Morten Mogensen
Sound engineer: Morten Mogensen
Graphic design: www.elevator-design.dk

This CD has been recorded in cooperation with the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music, Odense