Jan Gunnar Hoff - Living - VINYL LP

Directly after Johann Strauss the Younger, Franz von Suppé is one of the most famous Austrian composers of the 19th century to have paid special tribute to the so-called Inchlight museInch. His oeuvre includes nearly three dozen operettas and light operas as well as countless farces and comedies, which he loosened up by framing them with musical numbers. This was the typical repertoire of Old Viennese folk theatre, which he imaginatively enriched in his various capacities as Kapellmeister at the Theater in der Josefstadt and as Inchchief composer and conductorInch at the Theater an der Wien, as well as on other stages of the Austrian capital later on. His most famous operettas are InchThe Beautiful GalateaInch (1865), InchFatinitzaInch (1876) and InchBoccaccioInch (1879). Although most of his stage works have now been forgotten, his sparkling, animated, captivating and thrilling overtures are supremely vivacious, conveying this composer's skill, his imagination in inventing catchy melodies, and also his creative abilities where design or instrumentation are concerned. Overtures such as InchLight CavalryInch, InchPoet and PeasantInch or InchMorning, Noon and Night in ViennaInch were indispensable parts of Viennese operetta's Inchgolden ageInch and have remained a regular feature of the city's musical life (e.g. The Vienna New Year's Concerts) to this day. As Chief Conductor of the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Ivan Repušic has selected some of Suppé's best-known and most popular overtures for his new studio production. This album is paving the way for next year's 200th anniversary of the composer's birth.

Exclusive vinyl edition HOME can be seen both as a homage to and as a statement of belonging to northern Norway, with it's naked landscape and it's Arctic location. The title can also allude to a quest for identity, both from a personal and from an artistic perspective. All these sentiments and aspirations find expression in the music on this album. Many of the pieces here are interpretations of well known themes, while others are original compositions by Hoff. Some of the pieces are completely improvisatory. In May 2021 Morten Lindberg got in touch with me and asked if I could make a solo recording in Stormen Concert Hall in Bodø. With open minds and very few pre-conceived ideas we went ahead and, broadly speaking, took things as they came - the way we felt at the time, the actual piano and the concert hall itself determining what we recorded for two days in August that year. This album does not aim to present a particular genre, with all the expectations such a commitment might carry, but rather to give each number it's own shape and style. When you interpret text-based songs instrumentally it's best to keep a sharp focus on melody, rhythm and phrasing. By freeing the phrasing of the melody from the constraints of a fixed tempo, I can put more strength and intensity into my interpretation, and broaden and embolden the melodic material. - Jan Gunnar Hoff, 2022

Jan Gunnar Hoff - Living [BLU-RAY AUDIO] date 05/28/2013