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Thursday, July 18, 2019

Jón Leifs - Baldr (Kari Kropsu)


Information

Composer: Jón Leifs

CD1:
  • (01-07) Baldr, choreographic drama in two acts, Op. 34: Act I
CD2:
  • (01-06) Baldr, choreographic drama in two acts, Op. 34: Act II

Gunnar Gudbjörnsson, tenor
Schola Cantorum; chorus master: Hörður Áskelsson
Iceland Symphony Orchestra
Kari Kropsu, conductor

Date: 2002
Label: BIS
http://bis.se/composer/leifs-jon/leifs-baldr

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 10 / SOUND QUALITY: 10

Baldr is Jon Leifs' richest and longest single work, and like most of his larger pieces he never heard it performed. Its two acts last about 90 minutes, and fans of this expert at composing musical natural disasters will be delighted to learn that it contains both a hurricane and a volcanic eruption. Subtitled a "choreographic drama", it would make quite an impression on stage, assuming it ever could be staged as the composer intended; but until then we have this superb second recording (the first, by Paul Zukofsky and a talented band of Icelandic students and "ringers", was very good but no match for this fully professional effort).

The story, such as it is, begins with the creation of life itself, and of man. Baldr, one of those typical Norse hero types, is a favorite of Odin, and thus hated by Loki. In part one, Baldr meets and marries his beloved Nanna despite Loki's attempts to thwart their union (he has the hots for Nanna too) by summoning up a hurricane. In part two, Odin demands that all things on earth, both living and dead, swear not to harm Baldr, and they all do except (there's always a catch) for the lowly mistletoe. In "The Throwing Game", the Gods check out the efficacy of Baldr's protection by throwing all manner of deadly objects at him, and Loki naturally gets someone to hurl the mistletoe at Baldr, who promptly falls to the ground and dies. After his cremation, there's a huge volcanic eruption after which Odin and the chorus pronounce a final benediction.

Leifs conceived the work in the mid-1940s in part as a protest against the Nazi appropriation of Norse mythology for political and racial ends (he was living in Germany with his Jewish first wife for much of World War II), and very consciously wished to reclaim these stories in what he saw as their original form. Aside from using the old Icelandic texts for the brief sung passages, in Baldr Leifs perfected his mature musical style based on the irregular rhythms and primitive parallel harmonies of Icelandic folk music. The addition of hammers, rocks, chains, gunshots, and other such noise-making instruments to the percussion section gives his output a hard, brutal, primal quality unmatched in 20th century music, and conductor Kari Kropsu and the Iceland Symphony have a field day (as do BIS' engineers) bringing this richly evocative score to deafening life. Turn it way up: if you don't risk your speakers, it isn't an authentic Leifs experience.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: ***** / SOUND: *****
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH
https://www.amazon.com/Jon-Leifs-Baldr-Op-34/dp/B00006IZO2

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Jón Leifs (1 May 1899 – 30 July 1968), was an Icelandic composer, pianist, and conductor. Born in Iceland, he left for Germany in 1916 to study at the Leipzig Conservatory and graduated in 1921. During this period he also studied composition with Ferruccio Busoni. Beginning with piano arrangements of Icelandic folk songs, Leifs started an active career as a composer in the 1920s. In 1945 he moved back to Iceland, and became a fierce proponent of music education and of artists' rights. Most of his works is inspired by Icelandic natural phenomena and classic Icelandic sagas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3n_Leifs

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Kari Kropsu (born 1966) is a Finnish conductor. He studied violin at the conservatory in Jyväskylä, Finland, and went on to study conducting at the Vilnius Musical Academy in Lithuania under Gintaras Rinkevicius (1994-95) and at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki (starting in 1995) under Jorma Panula, Eri Klas, Atso Almila and Leif Segerstam. He obtained his conducting diploma with distinction in 1998. Kropsu has worked with various Finnish symphony orchestras and at the Finnish National Opera. He has also conducted in Norway and Latvia. Kropsu also worked an educator and violin teacher.

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6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Reponga este álbum por favor! Los cds de Leifs son muy importantes para mí, muchas gracias

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  4. Ronald Do could you please reupload this one?

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  5. Choose one link, copy and paste it to your browser's address bar, wait a few seconds (you may need to click 'Continue' first), then click 'Free Access with Ads' / 'Get link'. Complete the steps / captchas if require.
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    https://link-target.net/610926/leifs-baldr
    or
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