Christian Sinding: Der heilige Berg – Norwegian Opera Orchestra

Christian Sinding and his only opera

“I do as the fancy takes me” is the title of one of Sinding´s songs, and was also used as a motto for his art. After studying for three years at the Academy of Music in Leipzig, he returned to Oslo, where local music circles were taken aback by his bizarre, grandly conceived compositions of various kinds. His breakthrough in Oslo in 1885 and in Leipzig in 1889, achieved with his Piano Quintet, op. 5, put Sinding in the first rank of composers, making him the third member of the triumvirate of Norway´s golden age of music, together with Johan Svendsen and Edvard Grieg. Both Wagner and Liszt have their place among his models, but the cosmopolitan symphonic style he evolved bears the stamp of originality and of his own sparkling wit.

Sinding´s output embraces most musical genres, and on this album soloists, chorus and orchestra from The Norwegian Opera, under conductor Heinz Fricke, the opera “Der Heilige Berg” (“The Holy Mountain”). Sinding was interested in music drama from the time of his youth, but it wasn´t after several attempts he was able to complete his only opera in 1912, with a successful first performance. The librettist, Dora Duncker, had achieved renown at the turn of the century as an historical novelist. The omnipotence of love is the central theme in the libretto. The story takes place in the nineteenth century in a monastery on Athos Mountain in Greece, where the monks, in addition to practicing their penitential exercises, are also engaged in piratry. There is a long series of bizarre and unlikely episodes and schemes, all of which are swathed in ethical thinking and pseudo-philosophy, with a strong influence from Wagner´s musical ideas. A unique piece of work in the rather sparse repertoire that is Norwegian opera.