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- Bent Sørensen
Evening Land (2017)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
- 2(2pic).2(ca).2.2+cbn/4230/timp.perc(1)/str
- 13 min
- 9th January 2025, DR Koncerthuset, Copenhagen, Denmark
- 10th January 2025, DR Koncerthuset, Copenhagen, Denmark
Programme Note
A picture, a vision: I am 6-7 years old, I’m standing in my childhood home in a small town on Zealand (Denmark). I am looking out of the window, and there is a very special evening light over the fields – far away there are trees and a cow. It is as if the world is infinite.
I have forgotten so much from my childhood, but for some reason this vision has kept coming back to me. The vision returned many years later, as I was looking out over New York from a high balcony. The vision from more than 50 years ago – the vision of quiet – mixed with the new vision of flashes of light and bustling activity. I had found the title – “Evening Land” and the music came out of the title – of the two visions.
The work begins so softly, as quiet as possible, and the softness remains behind the bustling and flashing music that turns up later in the piece. Towards the end a little solo for oboe emerges. It is a greeting to my dear father-in-law, the oboist Frederik Gislinge, who – while I was composing Evening Land – fell seriously ill. I guess I hoped the solo would help him heal. Unfortunately that did not happen and to our great sorrow he died before he could hear the solo and the whole work – Evening Land.
Thus Evening Land encountered another evening – the evening of life – a finality.
I have forgotten so much from my childhood, but for some reason this vision has kept coming back to me. The vision returned many years later, as I was looking out over New York from a high balcony. The vision from more than 50 years ago – the vision of quiet – mixed with the new vision of flashes of light and bustling activity. I had found the title – “Evening Land” and the music came out of the title – of the two visions.
The work begins so softly, as quiet as possible, and the softness remains behind the bustling and flashing music that turns up later in the piece. Towards the end a little solo for oboe emerges. It is a greeting to my dear father-in-law, the oboist Frederik Gislinge, who – while I was composing Evening Land – fell seriously ill. I guess I hoped the solo would help him heal. Unfortunately that did not happen and to our great sorrow he died before he could hear the solo and the whole work – Evening Land.
Thus Evening Land encountered another evening – the evening of life – a finality.
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