Tovey once remarked that the only excuse for calling a composer “historically interesting” is to apologize for the fact that they have no relevance to us now. This is exactly the case with Fartein Valen. Should we care that he was Norway’s first atonal composer? I don’t think so. The only issue that matters is how good the music is, whatever its style. Valen’s consists entirely of atonal contrapuntal lines, monochromatically scored. He was, apparently, indifferent to such niceties as making clean copies of his orchestral works, a fact that caused conductor Christian Eggen to spend much time trying to ferret out Valen’s true intentions. A true labor of love (as it were), he needn’t have bothered.
All of this music, whatever its title, sounds exactly the same: grey, sterile, a fistful of inhibitions and negative impulses masquerading as an advanced style. No amount of care in performance can redeem its relentless expressive emptiness. As readers of Classicstoday.com will know, I am the first person to applaud enterprising labels such as BIS for taking risks on unfamiliar repertoire (even though all of this music has been recorded previously), but everything has its limits. A series of the complete Valen orchestral music, on evidence of this Volume 1, will definitely fall beyond the pale for most listeners. How about some more Tveitt? Or a much-needed new recording of Finn Mortensen’s First Symphony? Or something by Söderlind, or Thommessen, or…
