Hans Abrahamsen

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Hans Abrahamsen (center) with Simon Rattle (left) and Barbara Hannigan (right) on January 10, 2019 in London

Hans Abrahamsen (born December 23, 1952 in Lyngby , Denmark ) is a Danish composer and music teacher . He is one of the leading figures on the contemporary music scene in Denmark and one of Scandinavia's most internationally recognized composers. At the beginning of his work he was assigned to the New Simplicity . Over time he developed his own style of composition.

Life

Hans Abrahamsen had horn lessons during his school days. His enthusiasm for new music was already aroused at this time. He got to know the works of Per Nørgård , Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreens and Henning Christiansen through lectures at the local library and through older classmates . From 1969 he studied horn with Ingbert Michelsen at the Det Kongelige Danske Music Conservatory in Copenhagen . His oldest printed composition, October , dates back to 1969. It was the piano arrangement of a composition for horn and piano that he had written for an event at the Conservatory. He was a member of the Lyngby Ung Tonekunst LUT [Junge Tonkunst Lyngby], which he founded in 1969 together with his colleague and school friend Svend Aaquist Johansen . From 1970 he took composition lessons with Niels Viggo Bentzon . In 1971 he moved to Det Jyske Music Conservatory in Aarhus . He now had horn lessons from Bjørn Fosdal, and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen was his composition teacher. From 1975 to 1981 he continued his studies at Det Kongelige Danske Conservatory of Music , where he studied music theory and history with Yngve Jan Trede and Bjørn Hjelmborg. He took private composition lessons with Per Nørgård and György Ligeti .

Abrahamsen held several teaching positions. From 1979 to 1981 he taught music theory at Det Kongelige Danske Conservatory of Music . From 1982 to 1985 and from 1990 to 1995 he was a composition teacher there. From 1982 to 1987 he taught instrumentation. In addition to other teaching assignments, he was artistic director of several ensembles, from 1988 to 1992 artistic director of the Esbjerg Ensemble. Since 1995 he has been teaching composition at Det Kongelige Danske Music Conservatory . Since January 1, 2018 he has been an honorary professor at Det Kongelige Danske Conservatory of Music and has been given a five-year contract.

Works (selection)

October

It is the first piece composed by Abrahamsen himself that he himself performed in public - initially as a version for horn and piano, left hand. The world premiere took place in 1969. He later published it as a piano version.

Symphony

Abrahamsen wrote the symphony in 1974. It consists of two movements: I Allegro II Sostenuto calmo. The work was recorded by the orchestra of Det Jyske Music Conservatory in Aarhus under Ole Schmidt (1928–2010) and published on January 1, 2010 on the CD Danish Orchestral Works on the label Kontrapunkt.

Stratifications

Abrahamsen composed the work between 1973 and 1975. It was premiered at the Young Nordic Music Festival 1977 in Reykjavík by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra . It was recorded by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Thomas Dausgaard and released on the CD Hans Abrahamsen: Orchestral Works on January 31, 2005 on the DACAPO label.

Winter night

Hans Abrahamsen composed Winter Night between 1976 and 1978. The title comes from a poem by Georg Trakl . The work consists of four movements. The first and fourth movements are dedicated to Georg Trakl, the second to MC Escher , and the third to Igor Stravinsky . It is composed for seven instruments: flute, A clarinet , cornet a pistons , horn in F, piano, violin and violoncello. In 1987 he edited the work and a second version for flute, clarinet, drums, banjo, guitar, piano, violin and violoncello was created. The work was recorded by the American soprano Lucy Shelton and the Speculum Musicae ensemble under the direction of the American conductor William Purvis (* 1948) on the CD Speculum Musicae Plays the New Danes [Speculum Musicae plays the new Danes] on the label Bridge.

Night and trumpets

Abrahamsen's orchestral work was dedicated to Hans Werner Henze , at whose suggestion the piece was commissioned for the Berlin Philharmonic . He composed it in Rome in the summer and autumn of 1981 . The work consists of three movements. The first performance by the orchestra under Henze took place on March 25, 1982 in Berlin . It was recorded by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Thomas Dausgaard and released on the CD Hans Abrahamsen: Orchestral Works on January 31, 2005 on the DACAPO label.

Festival Prelude

As a commissioned work for the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra on the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the orchestra, Abrahamsen edited a celebratory prelude for piano by Carl Nielsen from 1900 and dedicated it to the orchestra. It was premiered by him on January 11, 2001.

Fire Stykker for Orkester

I In a very slow time, always expressive II Stormy, agitated III Flowing and restless ( like a joke fragment ) IV Very slowly.

The Four Pieces for Orchestra are orchestral arrangements of four studies for piano for a large symphony orchestra that were written in the 1980s. The pieces are not arrangements in the strict sense, but actually new compositions. In the orchestra he uses Wagner tuba , bass trumpet , guitar , mandolin , and in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 7 and the three orchestral pieces by Alban Berg a hammer. The work premiered on September 2, 2004 at the Radiohusets Concert Hall in Copenhagen. The work was recorded by the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne under Jonathan Stockhammer on the CD Hans Abrahamsen: Counting and Telling , released on February 1, 2015 .

snow

The composition consists of 10 canons for nine instruments. The instruments are divided into two groups. The first group consists of piano I, violin, viola and cello, the second of piano II (pianino), flute, oboe and clarinet. There are also guidelines for the spatial arrangement during the performance. On the left is the first group, on the right the second, with the drums in between. The world premiere took place on May 7, 2008 at the Witten Days for New Chamber Music . It was performed by the Ensemble recherche .

Ten symphonias

Abrahamsen reworked his 1st string quartet 10 Preludes from the spring 1973 as an orchestral version . He named the work after the baroque symphonia . The Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and Danmarks Underholdningsorkester commissioned him with the composition. The work was premiered in Reykjavík by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov on January 26, 2012.

Double concerto for piano, violin and strings

Abrahamsen composed the work in 2010 and 2011 as a commission from Det Kongelige Kapel and Svenska Kammarorkestern . It has the following movements: I Very slow and expressive II Fast and restless III Slow and melancholy IV Lively and trembling . It premiered on October 9, 2011 at the Royal Opera in Copenhagen. The performers were the Latvian violinist Baiba Skride , her younger sister, the pianist Lauma Skride with Det Kongelige Kapel under the direction of André de Ridder . Abrahamsen dedicated the work to Baiba and Lauma Skride, Wiebke Busch and André de Ridder.

Children's Corner

Children's Corner is an orchestral version of the piano work by Claude Debussy . The Dutch Radio Kamer Filharmonie RKF commissioned Abrahamsen with the orchestration for Debussy's 150th birthday. After completion in 2011, the work was premiered on February 17, 2012 in the music center Vredenburg in Utrecht by the RKF under the direction of its chief conductor Michael Schønwandt . Another performance followed on February 19, 2012 in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam . Abrahamsen dedicated the work to the Lübeck-born Danish pianist Amalie Malling (* 1948).

Let me tell you

Let me tell you is a monodrama for soprano and orchestra. It was created in 2013. This work was named by The Guardian on September 12, 2019 as the best classical music work of the 21st century to date (best classical music work of the 21st century) .

Commotio

The work is an orchestral arrangement of Carl Nielsen 's organ work of the same name with the opus number 68. It was written in 2012 and was performed by Copenhagen Phil under Michael Schønwandt on the occasion of Nielsen's 150th year of birth on February 26, 2015 . ISBN 978-87-598-2643-0 .

Bamberg dance

This composition for symphony orchestra was commissioned by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra as part of The Bamberg Symphony encore! Project. The work was premiered on February 7, 2015 by the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under their chief conductor Jonathan Nott in the Joseph Keilbert Hall in Bamberg . In his review in the Frankfurter Rundschau, Bernhard Ruske described the piece given as an encore in a guest concert by the Bamberg Symphony under Jonathan Nott on February 8th at the Alte Oper Frankfurt as a minimalist waltz slide that is definitely good for the unconventional orchestra image.

Left alone

Hans Abrahamsen wrote the work in the tradition of the piano concertos for left hand by Maurice Ravel and other composers. It consists of parts with three sentences each. The work is a commission for the WDR Symphony Orchestra. Co-clients were the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra , the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra . The work was written for the pianist Alexandre Tharaud . The work was premiered by Tharaud and the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov on January 29, 2016 in the Cologne Philharmonic . Tharaud recorded the work with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin . The recording was released on a CD with two other piano concertos of the 21st century on January 17, 2020 on the Erato label .

Three pieces for orchestra

These three pieces (I Boogie-Woogie II For the Children III Blues) are further arrangements of the ten piano studies from the 1980s, the first three of which he orchestrated in 2004. Developed in 2017, they were premiered on May 26, 2018 by the Berliner Philharmoniker under Sir Simon Rattle in the Berliner Philharmonie .

Snedronningen - The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen is an opera based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen . The world premiere of the orchestral excerpt Three Fairy Tale Pictures from the Snow Queen took place on September 21, 2018 in Munich with the Bavarian State Orchestra under the direction of Constantinos Carydis . The entire opera was premiered in a Danish version on October 13, 2019 in Copenhagen, and on December 21, 2019 it was performed for thefirst time in the English versionat the Bavarian State Opera .

Concerto for horn and orchestra

The concert was commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation and was co-commissioned by the NHK Symphony Orchestra , the NTR Zaterdag Matinee, the Seattle Symphony and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra . It was premiered on January 29, 2020 in Berlin by the Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of Paavo Järvi with Stefan Dohr as principal horn.

Other works

  • Skum [foam] for large orchestra, 1970
  • EEC sats for large orchestra, symphony in C, originally a movement against the European Economic Community EEC , 1972
  • Winter night
  • snow
  • 4 string quartets
  • 10 piano studies
  • Autumn song, text: Rainer Maria Rilke
  • Piano concerto, 2000
  • String Quartet, No. 3, 2008
  • Wald for 15 instrumentalists, 2009
  • String Quartet No. 4, 2012

Prizes and awards

Known students

  • Simon Steen-Andersen , composition student in Copenhagen
  • Knut Vaage was a private student from 1995 to 1997
  • Paul Mealor (born November 25, 1975), composition student, 1998 to 1999 in Copenhagen

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Abrahamsen - Store norske leksikon . In: Store norske leksikon . ( snl.no [accessed September 4, 2017]).
  2. ↑ a b c Winter & Winter GmbH. Retrieved September 4, 2017 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Hans Abrahamsen | Dansk composer Forening. Retrieved September 4, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b Hans Abrahamsen - Store norske leksikon . In: Store norske leksikon . ( snl.no [accessed September 4, 2017]).
  5. ↑ a b Hans Abrahamsen. IRCAM, 2011, accessed September 4, 2017 (French).
  6. ^ Bertel Krarup: Hans Abrahamsen appointed Honorary Professor. In: https://english.dkdm.dk/ . Det Kongelige Danske Conservatory of Music, January 11, 2018, accessed August 23, 2018 .
  7. ^ Andrew Clements, Fiona Maddocks, John Lewis, Kate Molleson, Tom Service: The best classical music works of the 21st century . In: The Guardian . September 12, 2019, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 18, 2019]).
  8. ^ Erato: Alexandre Tharaud - Piano concertos by Hans Abrahamsen, Gérard Pesson and Oscar Strasnoy. hr - Symphony Orchestra, accessed on February 4, 2020 .
  9. ^ The Snow Queen. Bavarian State Opera, accessed on February 4, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Alexander Pschera: "The Snow Queen": Life is a cold dream. The daily mail , January 8, 2020, accessed on February 4, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Berliner Philharmoniker: Paavo Järvi conducts the »Symphonie fantastique«. Accessed January 31, 2020 .
  12. ^ Clemens Haustein: Horn Concerto by Hans Abrahamsen: The romantic as a lone warrior. In: Berliner Zeitung. January 30, 2020, accessed February 4, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Hans Abrahamsen | Dansk composer Forening. Retrieved September 4, 2017 .
  14. ↑ a b c d Composers: Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen's legacy. Archived from the original on August 6, 2017 ; accessed on September 3, 2017 .
  15. ↑ a b Hans Abrahamsen. IRCAM, 2011, accessed September 4, 2017 (French).
  16. ↑ RPS Music Awards | Royal Philharmonic Society. Retrieved September 3, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Hans Abrahamsen | Gyldendal - The Danske store. Retrieved September 3, 2017 (Danish).
  18. ↑ Hans Abrahamsen. Nordic Council Music Price, accessed September 4, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Blokfluit en Muziek - Muziekgeschiedenisr. Retrieved September 7, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Jesper Koch. In: https://jesper-koch-composer.dk/ . Jesper Koch, accessed on February 4, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Abrahamsen, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish composer and music teacher
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyngby , Denmark