Fartein Valen Orchestral Songs & Symphonic Poems – Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra

Beauty of a different kind

Fartein Valen´s works are epoch-making and refreshing to Norwegian music. Extending and expanding the spiritual perspective raised by the dodecaphony pioneered by Arnold Schönberg and Joseph Mattias Hauer and taking the crucial step away from the outer illustrative, depictive or descriptive, Valen lays the foundation for a new music ethic and thus revives the real poetically spiritual dimension in Norwegian music.

Starting with the pastorale, he realizes anew the unity of poetry and music, of the power of visual conception and emotionality that originated in Beethoven´s 6th symphony. His orchestral works captures what European music has had to forfeit in developing functional harmony – the free, asymmetrical linear play and the rhythmic expression he unites with the baroque development concept, the smoothest classical formal balance, the romantic tonal suggestiveness and the liberated dissonance. Valen´s orchestral poems recreate the balance between time and space, the subjective and the objective, between true, human emotional expression and eternal laws encoded in musical structure. Through the spiritual landscapes that Valen displays, we follow his journey from the valley of longing (In Erwartung des Freudes), through the naked landscape of solitude (Der Abschied des Freundes), arraiving at last in unknown realms without frontiers, presented through superb, musically flowing architecture and cosmological symbolism (Dearest thou now, O Soul). Valen´s importance as a composer of songs seems to have been even more underrated than is the case with his instrumental output. He has yet to be recognized as one of this century´s finest masters of the art song. On this album, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and Dorothy Dorow reveals the true treasures of Valen´s orchestral songs and symphonic poems.