Danish National Vocal Ensemble & Fredrik Malmberg
Biographie Danish National Vocal Ensemble & Fredrik Malmberg
Danish National Vocal Ensemble
Since their debut in 2007 the Danish National Vocal Ensemble’s 18 full-time professional singers have grappled with everything from early music and the Baroque to Romantic works and demanding contemporary music. Works that require strong individual performances stand high in the repertoire of the DNVE. The 18 singers are all experienced soloists who bring expression and life to the music. Their work is all about personal commitment and razor-sharp precision, whether they are singing works like Messiaen’s Cinq Rechants for 12 solo voices or Orlando di Lasso’s polyphonic masterpieces from the 16th century.
The DNVE has close ties to Danish and other Nordic music – for example the Danish Per Nørgård and the Swedish Sven-David Sandström have written music specifically for the DNVE. The DNVE is a flexible choir which performs fully manned or in smaller groupings. The choir can be expanded with the 56 singers of the Danish National Choir, and the DNVE also cooperates often with other choirs.
The ensemble has sung with among others Concerto Copenhagen, the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic and NDR in Hamburg, as well as concerts with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and The Danish National Chamber Orchestra. In 2011 the Swede Olof Boman joined the Danish National Vocal Ensemble as chief conductor; the ensemble also collaborates with several guest conductors such as Fredrik Malmberg, Peter Dijkstra, Paul Van Nevel and Marcus Creed.
Fredrik Malmberg - Conductor
The Swedish conductor Fredrik Malmberg is one of the most prominent choral conductors of his generation. He is a regular conductor of the Swedish Radio Choir and the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, and since July 2012 chief conductor of the famous Eric Ericson Chamber Choir. Fredrik Malmberg navigates with ease among many periods and styles, but has a special fondness for the contemporary music that he has cultivated with great success in among other ensembles his own Harmony of Voices.
Fredrik Malmberg has conducted in several countries in Europe, in the Middle East and in Japan, and as an orchestral conductor he has worked with Concerto Copenhagen, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, the Tallin Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre. Furthermore, In the autumn of 2011 Fredrik Malmberg was appointed Professor of Choral Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm.
Stefan Östersjö - Guitarist
Guitarist Stefan Östersjö, born in 1967, is one of the most prominent figures within new music in Sweden. He is continuously working with composers both in Sweden and abroad on the task of extending the repertory of solo works and chamber music with guitar. Stefan Östersjö has toured Europe, USA and Asia and as a soloist he has cooperated with conductors such as Lothar Zagrosek, Peter Eötvös, Pierre André Valade, Mario Venzago, Andrew Manze, Franck Ollu and Tuomas Ollila.
Since his debut CD, which won a Swedish Grammy in 1997, Stefan Östersjö has recorded extensively among others the complete guitar works by Per Nørgård, released on Caprice Records in 2008. Stefan Östersjö also holds a PhD on the performance of new music and is frequently giving lectures and master classes at universities, festivals and academic conferences around the world.
Adam Riis - Tenor
Adam Riis (tenor) took his diploma from the Royal Danish Academy of Music in 2005 and is a Crear Scholar 2012 with Malcolm Martineau. With soloist activities in Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and Belgium, Adam Riis has made his mark in Renaissance, Baroque and contemporary music with ensembles such as Arte dei Suonatori, Concerto Copenhagen, the Baroque Soloists, the São Paolo Symphony Orchestra, Kaleidoskop Berlin, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Flensburger Bach-Orchester, the Copenhagen Phil, the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra and Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen.
Adam Riis has worked with conductors like Paul Hillier, Stefan Solyom, Vassily Sinaisky, Andrew Lawrence-King, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Olof Boman, Fredrik Malmberg and Thomas Dausgaard.
Adam Riis is also a dedicated Lied singer, and with the pianist Christian Westergaard was selected in 2009 for the prestigious competition at the Wigmore Hall and Thomas Quasthof's Das Lied in Berlin, where they reached the semifinals.
Among other recordings, Adam Riis has participated in Dacapo's critically acclaimed recordings of Heinrich Schütz's passions and narrative works.
Per Nørgård - Composer
Per Nørgård is the most significant Danish composer after Carl Nielsen and Vagn Holmboe. With his original works, his teaching and his theoretical innovations, Per Nørgård has been the most striking Nordic musical personality for over thirty years. At a young age he became a private pupil of Vagn Holmboe, and his earliest works were in the master’s 'Nordic” idiom with Sibelius as a shared guiding star. The First Symphony and the string works Constellations are the high points of this period.
Per Nørgård’s incredibly sensitive curiosity drove him to explore the potential of Central European Modernism. But after a few years he arrived at his own serial technique, the 'infinity series”, the mechanisms of which can be compared to the growth and symmetry of nature. Using this technique, Per Nørgård wrote some of his most important works, for example the Third Symphony.
In the 1980s Per Nørgård concentrated on the opposite of the harmony of the infinity series: chaos and fragmentation typify his works, inspired by the schizophrenic Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli. Most recently, in the 1990s, he has worked with sophisticated layerings of rhythms and lines, and has focused on the effects of 'interference” in his quest to capture the music that otherwise escapes our ears.
Per Nørgård has written works of all sizes, from operas to simple choral songs (he once heard one hummed in the local supermarket, to his great satisfaction). Even for the general public without any great interest in music, Per Nørgård is the 'modern Danish composer” par excellence.
