Lohse / Magnussen / Moldrup - Collage de Temps - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The Danish composer Martin Lohse (b. 1971) writes contemporary music drawing on musical history. The sensitive elegance of Baroque and Romanticism meet the rigorous certainty of Minimalism - a simplicity of expression approaching the insisting and touching which is evident in all three works on this album. They are thus written with the featured artists in mind, fronted by the pianist David Lau Magnussen with the Danish Chamber Players (Ensemble Storstrøm) and an exclusive team of instrumentalists. Martin Lohse is not only a composer; he is also a visual artist and poet. These forms of artistic expression as such need not have anything to do with one another, although the man behind them is the same; but Lohse engages in what appears to be a consistent, fruitful dialogue between expressiveness and a structural, theoretical approach to this urge to express himself. The music by Lohse hangs in front of the listener as independent figures- mobiles- and although they constantly show new sides of themselves one recognizes them easily. The music provides references to the dance suites of the Baroque through the elegance of the Rococo and the emotional outbursts of Romanticism to the rhythmic swing and motif repetitions of Minimalism.