Recollection and Joy Works for Piano Trio
Gavin Plumley
There is a ghostly quality to the work of Bent Sørensen. And his interest in themes of fragmentation manifests itself in both the music he writes and the titles he chooses. In response, the Danish composer’s compatriot Karl Aage Rasmussen has described Sørensen’s output as “evoking lived lives and ancient dreams,” while the Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim says that “it reminds me of something I’ve never heard.” Ever since Sørensen emerged as an independent voice during the 1980s, chamber music has remained key to his output, though larger works have also appeared, written for ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, and Danish Radio, as well as for Trio con Brio Copenhagen. A few years ago, the trio gave the premiere of L’isola della città, Sørensen’s triple concerto, in which an “island”—his description for the work’s three soloists—“tries to escape from the city’s shadows.” And these are the qualities that are equally present in an earlier, five-movement piece written for Trio con Brio, Sørensen’s Phantasmagoria of 2007, commissioned by the Franz Schubert Society of Denmark and dedicated to the players. “It all began with the fifth movement, which originally was a tiny piece for cello and piano,” the composer writes. “After re-composing this little piece for piano trio, I worked, composed backwards—the fourth movement— third movement—and I finally got to the beginning of the piece. It all begins with the violin—solo—heavily muted but aggressive, and gradually the cello and the piano enter as shadows of the violin. The first movement ends in a dark shadow of an aria from my opera, Under the Sky. All five
