According to the booklet notes, the music on this recording represents the best from Danish composer Matthias Ronnefeld, whose relatively short career (he died in 1987 at age 28) left compositions heavily influenced by the serialism of Alban Berg (particularly his vocal works) and the pointillism of György Ligeti (chamber compositions). Grodek (1980) is for chamber orchestra, mezzo-soprano, and soprano. Both Berg and Ligeti are the main influences, with the female voices trading off the lines of a Georg Trakl poem. Capriccio (1982) is an eerie, Bergian exchange between a violin and harpsichord. Though played expertly (Christian Tetzlaff on the violin and Lars Ulrik Mortensen on the harpsichord), the overly prominent violin upsets the balance that the work requires. Vier Lieder für Dulcinea (1981) also is influenced by Berg. Although she has a sublime and eminently listenable voice, soprano Daniela Bechley gets fairly clobbered by the excessively dominant piano.
Konzertstuck für Orgel (1980) is perhaps the most interesting work here. It’s a 12-minute piece for solo organ that’s best described as an adroit mixture of Bach and Ligeti, if you can imagine such a thing. The other works offer more of the same, and if there’s a major flaw in the program it’s that the music requires far better balances to ensure that its pointillistic details register properly, particularly in the vocal works. While not exactly a bad recording, better production values would have helped project this difficult music more positively.
