And now for something completely different. I was listening to CD Review on Radio 3 yesterday morning and in the course of a fascinating section about new modern classical works, I heard some wonderful music by a Danish composer called Per Nørgård, whose name (pronounced in Danish something like nur-gaw) was quite new to me until then. I’ve spent most of this morning downloading various collections of his music and am now in danger of becoming a Nørgård bore.
Much of Nørgård’s music is based on ideas inspired by fractal geometry and exploits the so-called infinity series, representing a kind of extension of the serial techniques pioneered by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg. One of the great things about Nørgård, however, is that you really don’t need to know about that, or indeed that the following piece was inspired by the Aurora Borealis, in order to enjoy it. This is Nørgård’s Violin Concerto No. 1 Helle Nacht.
In the Dark 