Ludvig Irgens-Jensen: Japanisher Frühling – Ragnhild Heiland Sørensen

Heiland Sørensen and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra with outstanding readings of Irgens-Jensen

The song cycle Japanischer Frühling captures both the young and the mature Irgens-Jensen. His op.2 in 1920, the piano version went through many stages before it reached the present final orchestral version from 1957, in may ways representing the music of afterthought. Ragnhild Heiland Sørensen’s soprano is wonderfully suited to this rich yet transparent music.

If there is one Nowegian orchestral piece that might be said to have a wide international audience and recognition, it has to be Irgens-Jensen’s Passacaglia from 1927. As a result of an enthusiastic Carl Nielsen the work became infamous before anyone had heard anything of it; even winning a prize in the big Schubert competition in 1928. After the première in 1929 the piece travelled fast in Europe and USA through two of the Oslo Philharmonic’s conductors: Grüner-Hegge and Dobrowen. The latter even perfomed the Passacaglia with Toscanini’s New York Philharmonic in a nation wide broadcast in 1932. The formal basis of the work is Introduction — Passacaglia I — Fuge — Passacaglia II — Coda. The mastery of the technical craftmanship makes the Passacaglia reach both the heart and the mind of the music lover.