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Nordic Atmospheres
Edvard Grieg - Jean Sibelius - Carl Nielsen - Lars-Erik Larsson - Romualds Kalsons - Pēteris Vasks

Nordic Atmospheres

Sinfonietta Riga / Claus Efland / Egīl Šēfers

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917263022
barcode
Catalog number: CC 72630
Releasedate: 13-03-14
“Nordic Atmospheres” presents an outstanding programm including works by Nielsen, Vasks, Grieg and Sibelius.
Scandinavian and Baltic emotional music with great expressions, played by the young and successful String-Orchestra Sinfonietta Riga.

Claus Efland is one of the most important conductors to present this repertoire outside Denmark and Scandinavia.
The musical idioms in this recording are different, but the cultural traditions of their countries find a close bond to all of them.
 
  • Only available recording of Romuald Kalsons Clarinet Concerto
  • Carl Nielsen’s “Suite for String Orchestra” op. 1 exists rarely on today’s concert platforms and even as a recording.
  • Second album from Claus Efland, an exclusive artist with Challenge Classics, following In Autumn 2013 his first CD “Concertante” with Sinfonietta Riga
  • This album, besides the Clarinet Concerto mainly contains Music for String Orchestra
  • Pēteris Vasks: Musica dolorosa”, Jean Sibelius: Romance in C Major, Lars-Erik Larsson: “Pastoral Suite” op. 19 and  "Romance", a programmatic framework with two very different expressions: one is very dark, the other liberating.


 
After the first record “Concertante” Sinfonietta Riga wanted to do something completely different, something everyone taking part can relate to personally. The new album shares very close ties between Scandinavia and the Baltic. It’s like a musical seismographic scan, a topography of Scandinavian and Baltic emotional landscapes. Music by composers from Finland, Norway, Denmark, Latvia and Sweden. All of them are based on their close bond with the musical and cultural traditions of their countries, which is reflected in their works like a gene code.

The repertoire on this CD is mainly of music for string instruments, but contains one recording that might call the odd one out: the clarinet concerto by Romualds Kalsons. Claus Efland and Sinfonietta Riga wanted to play two Latvian composers who use a different musical idiom: Kalsons’s clarinet concerto and “Musica dolorosa” by Pēteris Vasks.

The programm is opened with Jean Sibelius’s Romance in C Major and ends with the second movement of the “Pastoral Suite” op. 19, also a Romance, by the Swedish composer Lars-Erik Larsson. A programmatic framework with two very different expressions: one is very dark, the other liberating.