Lament [muohta]

Works by Hagen - Asheim - Nordheim

2020

Ensemble Allegria, String orchestra
Det Norske Solistkor, Choir
Nils Henrik Asheim, composer

...by turns delightful and disconcerting exploration of both the quiet and the uproarious majesty of nature, its 18 short studies acting like windows into a series of adjacent worlds, each one akin to a miniature snowglobe that Asheim shakes up and briefly watches before moving on to the next.

— Simon Cummings, 5against4, 2020-11-17 ↗

"Asheim manages to make his responses obvious, lucid and evocative [...] it’s a remarkable achievement on many levels, not least that of the bigger picture formed from these small mosaics."

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/lament-works-by-hagen-asheim-and-nordheim

"...dette verket er så vesentlig at det burde stå i platehyllen til enhver musikkelsker."
"...this is such an important piece of music that it should be found in every music lover's shelf"

https://www.musikkritikk.no/solistkoret-lament/

"...det skal godt gjøres å sette sammen en mer levende representativ trio for å vise frem det beste i norsk kor-komposisjon."
"...it's hard to put together a more representative trio of composers to display the best in Norwegian choral music"

https://www.klassiskmusikk.com/cd-anmeldelser/lament/

"Muohta er eit vellukka verk, underfundig og skifterikt".
"Muohta succeeds completely as a musical work, subtle and rich on transformations"

https://www.dagogtid.no/musikk/-truger-i-skare-6.3.16968.3ad199685e

"Noen ganger sitter man igjen med en følelse av å ha tilbrakt en time som et senter for en uimotståelig formidling av den absolutte velklang"
"There are times when you are left with the impression of having spent an hour in a hotspot for irresistible sonic beauty"

https://klassiskcd.blogspot.com/2020/08/den-magiske-stemmen.html

The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir and Grete Pedersen have made acclaimed recordings of music spanning a millennium – from chants by Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) to the most recent compositions – and in styles ranging from folk songs to Bach motets and Berio’s Coro. On their new album, the focus is on contemporary Norwegian music, with three works which all originate in words and challenge the relation between language and music. For his Lament 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 words of the poem are split up and stretched out into pulsating waves of grief, at once mysterious, beautiful and painful.

Awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize in 2018, Muohta (Snow) consists of 18 sections, each setting a single word in Sámi, the language of the indigenous people in the north of Norway. The words are all related to snow, and composer Nils Henrik Asheim has found inspiration in how indigenous peoples live with nature, as opposed to seeking to control it.

BIS Records (BIS2431)

buy / stream here

Muohta – Language of snow