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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2015
Arne Nordheim was sixty years old last year. Although he is one of Europe's foremost composers, the event went largely unnoticed outside of Norway, his home country, in the bicentenary of Mozart's death and (to a considerably lesser extent) the centenary of Prokofiev's birth. To be sure, Nordheim was a featured composer in various festivals – Zürich (ISCM) and Huddersfield not least – but in London, allegedly the music capital of Europe, barely a note was sounded. The Proms passed him by (though here Nordheim was in very good company; the 70th birthdays of Robert Simpson and Malcolm Arnold, as well as Einar Englund's 75th, were similarly unmarked). Even Radio 3 failed to allocate him a This Week's Composers slot (unlike Arnold and Sir Arthur Bliss).
1 Part of a 2-LP set entitled Aurora Borealis, RHS 357/8; Spur was reissued in 1991 on Victoria/Gamut VCD 19050, with Rendez-vous – Nordheim's 1986 reworking for string orchestra of the celebrated 1956 String Quartet – and Boomerang, written in 1983 and scored for oboe, 2 horns and strings. Many of the compositional techniques from Clamavi, Tenebrae and Wirklicher Wald reappear in Boomerang, but with a quite different expressive purpose.
2 Aurora ACD 4966, coupled with the explosive Magma, written in 1988 for the Royal Concertgebuow Orchestra of Amsterdam. In a note to the present writer dated 16 September 1991, the composer stated: ‘In MAGMA, as well, you will find the importance of the cello.’
3 In the booklet to Aurora ACD 4966, Kjell Skyllstad presents a different, more abstract view of Tenebrae as ‘a reexamination of the relationship between man and nature’ and goes on to point up parallels with Mahler, Berg and Adrian Leverkühn (the protagonist of Thomas Mann's Doklor Faustus).
4 In a letter to the present writer dated 11 January 1992. I am indebted to Ms. Lowbury for several insights into the technical aspects of the cello writing in these scores. One intriguing general point arose from her perusal of Clamavi (which she described as a ‘v. good piece!’): ‘Some harmonics notationally imprecise (though we all know what he means in the musical context. There is so much variety in the notation of harmonics that we get confused – I prefer to see the actual note required as well as the suggested fingering – though other cellists feel differently. Sore point)’.