Top prize winner in international competitions, twice winner of the Danish Grammy, most recently in 2013 for his concerto CD ’Momentum’ which was also nominated for the coveted Gramophone Award in London, Jakob Kullberg lives in Copenhagen and is coming to Shortwave to present a superb evening in which he’ll be marrying works by two different composers written nearly 400 years apart: Tobias Hume, a Scottish soldier who served with the Swedish army, and Per Nørgård, a prolific contemporary Danish award-winner. Philippa Mo will join him on violin.
Tobias Hume, an English violist and composer, was born around 1569 and died in London on April 16th 1645. He made his living as a professional soldier, serving as an officer with the Swedish and Russian armies. In 1605 the First Part of Ayres or Musicall Humors was printed with a dedication to the Earl of Pembrooke, in which Hume writes about himself: My life hath beene a souldier, and my idleness addicted to musicke.
The Danish composer Per Nørgård is widely regarded as one of the most important Nordic composers of the 20th century, and has received an abundance of prizes from the Sibelius Prize, the Nordic Council Music Prize, New York Philharmonic’s Kravitz Prize to the Siemens Prize.
Per Nørgård - 3rd Sonata for solo cello (1999) - What is the word – Sonata Breve
"In my early television remembrance I recall a broadcast with Samuel Beckett, one of the fathers of the absurd play and drama. At one time Beckett looked the viewer (the camera) in the eye and said: "What – is the word". I have not since been able to forget it, obviously, having borrowed this ambiguous sentence as title for this short cello sonata." Per Nørgård 2010
Writes Jakob Kullberg, November 2017, "The idea to combine a selection of Tobias Hume’s Ayres with Per Nørgård’s What is the word, comes from an interest in establishing a more surprising listening experience, a sort of expansion of the auditory experience through the unexpected. That there are other connections in this selection through some of the titles of the movements, further affords the listener the possibility to wonder or even question.
Hume has a question as well as an answer, Nørgård poses a specific monumental question with the title of his work. There is yet another such connection between Hume and Nørgård: Hume’s Love’s Farewell ends on an open G chord, which is neither major nor minor, but while this G still resonates Nørgård’s Prayer I commences with the first three notes of a G minor scale. The connection strikes me as seamless and in addition it is as if Hume puts Nørgård in a harmonic context, which I have not considered until I heard this combination."
The cafe is a recently-created, spacious arts hub just a 5 minute walk south of Bermondsey tube station, part of the Peek Freans Biscuit Factory complex. Drinks and pizzas are available at the bar. Candles are lit at tables: we are bringing classical music out of the concert hall - come and join us!