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Lament (2020)

Det Norske Solistkor and Grete Pedersen have made renowned recordings of music spanning a millennium - from the singing of Hildegard of Bingen (1098 - 1179) to the latest compositions - and in styles ranging from folk songs to Bach motets and Berio's Coro. On their new record, the focus is on Norwegian contemporary music, with three works that all originate in words and challenge the relationship between language and music. For his Klagesang from 2015, Lars Petter Hagen has chosen to set a short text by E. E. Cummings, written when the poet was 6 years old. The poem's words are split up and stretched out in pulsating waves of grief, at once mysterious, beautiful and painful. Lament is scored for choir, percussion and electronics - elements that are in dialogue, yet resigned to stay at a distance.

Muohta (Snø) was awarded the Nordic Council's music prize in 2018 and consists of 18 sections that each set one word in Sami, the language of the indigenous people of northern Norway. The words are all connected to snow, and composer Nils Henrik Asheim has found inspiration in how indigenous people live with nature, as opposed to trying to control it. Aurora, finally, is a composition from 1984 by Arne Nordheim, who for several decades was the face of Norwegian contemporary music. In Aurora, God's look down on humanity in Psalm 139 is juxtaposed with Dante's look up, towards God and the heavenly light, in the final verses of the Divine Comedy. The words of the hymn are sung in both Latin and Hebrew, while Dante's canto is heard in Italian, and Nordheim makes full use of the different sounds of the three languages.