Orkesterdialogar
For orchestra
Orchestration
2(1)-2(1)-2-2 4-3-3-1 time perc:2 hp str
Duration
15 minutes
First performance /Commissioned by
First performance in Stavanger, 2018
Commissioned by Norsk Musikforlag and Stavanger Symphony Orchestra
Press
"Knut Vaage's large-scale "Orkesterdialogar" - a work of 20 minutes - was premiered last year with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra with Eivind Gullberg Jensen as conductor. The music is sound-based, has some fixed points that recur, is quite free in tonality, and can easily be experienced as a form of nature poetry, not least because wind instruments are blown without sound, there are fog clocks or, for that matter, alarms, here are multiple interpretation possibilities in a rich and, in my opinion, quite well-structured score."
"Before all this, in Knut Vaage's completely new piece "Orkesterdialogar", we get a look right inside. He holds up the orchestra like a three-dimensional canvas for us. You can see what is going on in different places. Small conversations emerge, between a dark cello and a clarinet, between flute and violin, between piccolo and viola. It may grow larger, or it may die out. He gives us memories and frameworks we can recognize from earlier times. A quiet hiss opens the piece, comes back, goes again. It's done so respectfully to the orchestra. It's so nicely used. It ends quietly. It had to."
Translated from German: "As in so many of his works, Knut Vaage also surprises in "Orkesterdialogar" with something unexpected: Just before the end, the music brightens up for a few seconds and reveals homophonic, almost cheerful features. Then the circle closes, and the material from the beginning will return. It is an impressive and mature work Knut Vaage presents."
