Allan Gravgaard Madsen
26
Every Ending Is Also a New Beginning
Aarhus Symfoniorkester, Allan Gravgaard Madsen and Morten Riis: »Away«
© Alexis Rodríguez Cancino
Allan Gravgaard Madsen’s and Morten Riis’s Away is a »mixed media« orchestral work. The physical orchestra is supplemented by sound and video recordings from the basement of Aarhus Theatre (woodwind quintet), Aarhus Cathedral (brass quintet), and Marselisborghallen (string orchestra). All of these locations have, at various points over the past 90 years, housed the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra.
Away opens with the final two chords of the overture to Rossini’s William Tell (1829), which are explored throughout the orchestra. Gradually, musicians leave the ensemble, only to reappear later in smaller constellations in recordings from the aforementioned locations. Through technology, the orchestra plays across time and space in a highly successful manner.
The work explores stasis and movement, with air as a central device: the wind players often blow into their instruments without producing tones, while the string players imitate the sound of wind using plastic bags. For me, Away has three highlights. Trumpets and percussion play phrases that turn out to anticipate a video of a flutist walking through the city. The trumpets mimic the sound of a truck – »beep-bop-beep-bop« – and the percussion becomes the flutist’s stilettos. Musique concrète turned on its head! At one point, half of the string players are seen sitting in a circle, playing intensely dissonant chords, only to kill them again – the physical shock activated my ears. The third highlight comes when the entire orchestra plays together again while all three projections are running simultaneously. Here, the work can truly begin, and one clearly senses the energy rising in the room. But – unfortunately – as soon as this climax is reached, the intensity drops again.
At just under 45 minutes, Away is, unfortunately, slightly too long and static for my taste. The effect of the aforementioned ruptures might not have been as strong in a shorter format, but I would have wished for just a bit more of the intensity the work so clearly was capable of delivering. I was left with a somewhat flat feeling. The piece also ended so quietly that several people were unsure whether it had actually finished and whether we could applaud.
Labour of Birth
Katinka Fogh Vindelev, Sankt Annæ Pigekor, Kind of Opera et al.: »Elegier over jorden«
»This pain is not only yours,« chants a choir standing in a circle around the woman in labour. »This pain is not only yours,« comes the enveloping echo from the rest of the choir, positioned along the walls of the ceremonial hall, forming a circle around the audience and inscribing us into the labour of female fertility.
Elegier over Jorden (Elegies over the Earth) is based on Sofie Isager Ahl’s reworking of the myth of Persephone, daughter of the goddess of agriculture and queen of the underworld. The Greek myth is one of those that explains the barrenness of winter by Persephone’s descent into the underworld, but in this reinterpretation she returns to earth to give birth. We follow her labour over nine months while members of the choir work in the fields, struggling for crops under pressure from the current climate collapse. Here, the regeneration of nature is not a matter for higher powers but a struggle that begins in the body and in the soil – much like that of the woman giving birth.
The ecofeminist interconnectedness of the female body and nature has been a hot topic for several years now, and I am unsure what Elegies over the Earth adds to it. My hesitation stems mainly from the harsh acoustics of the ceremonial hall at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek which, combined with Marie Topp’s choreography – often positioning singers with their backs turned to parts of the audience – makes it difficult to hear Ahl’s words.
When Elegies over the Earth works best, it is in the dialogue and timing between the choir, the soprano and composer Katinka Fogh Vindelev in the role of the labouring Persephone, and the minimal ensemble of two violins and a cello. When the voices of Sankt Annæ Girls’ Choir curl around the cello’s dark timbre, and when the primordial woman Persephone’s lament is allowed to hang in the room for a moment before the choir resumes, the performance touches on something real. Yet the experience never quite settles in the body, and the painful struggle of birth – despite the choir’s insistent chanting – never truly becomes mine.
Performances on 5, 7 and 8 March
English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek
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»For me, music is... I was about to say everything, but that's still an exaggeration. I'm a sensitive person, and therefore all art - but especially music - affects me in different ways. Music has both a therapeutic and an artistic meaning for me. Music affects my mood and gives me energy. It can also put me in a certain state where I see things differently and reflect in a different way than I would otherwise. I always have headphones in when I'm alone, I sleep to music, I work to music. The first thing I did as a new councilor was to set up my father-in-law's old B&O system in the councilor's office. It plays every day, and I very rarely close the door.«
Jesper Kjeldsen is councilor for Culture and Citizen Service in Aarhus and a member of the city council for the Social Democrats. He graduated from Kaospiloterne and has a background as an entrepreneur, including with the company Postevand. Before his political career, he worked creatively with culture and music – he has released music, been a DJ and taught as a dance teacher. Jesper Kjeldsen has lived and worked in Greenland for a long period of time, which has influenced his view of community, culture, climate and society.
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© Tom Ingvardsen
»I listen to music at all hours of the day when I’m at home – surrounded by family – or when I’m working and travelling. My playlist changes every day. It reflects my state of mind here and now, and the ideas, memories, joys and sorrows that currently occupy me. The last piece, Salve Regina, was only added late this evening, after I experienced Poulenc’s magnificent opera Dialogues des Carmélites at the Royal Danish Opera.«
Louise Beck is a scenographer, stage director and artistic director of OPE-N – and from the 2027 season, artistic director of Copenhagen Opera Festival. For nearly three decades, she has developed opera as a living and contemporary art form at the intersection of the established opera field and the independent music-theatre scene. She has created a number of critically acclaimed and award-nominated works, including Den Sidste Olie and LOL – Laughing Out Lonely, and, together with Niels Rønsholdt, stands behind the opera trilogy Den Stærkes Ret – Den Svages Pligt, whose second part will be presented at the University Library of Copenhagen during the 2026 festival.