Bertil Palmer Johansen: To Gode Venner (Two Good Friends)
Øra Fonogram

“Composing music to be performed by children and young people is such a pleasure for me, and a labour of love,” states Bertil Palmar Johansen in the booklet included with To Gode Venner (Two Good Friends). The sincerity and affection intimated by the Norwegian composer and pedagogue's words emerge palpably in the forty short solo pieces and duets performed on the recording by violinist Marianne Thorsen, cellist Øyvind Gimse, guitarist Jarl Strømdal, and pianist Mona Spigseth, all four educators as well as musicians. The settings didn't emerge in a concentrated deluge but instead were composed across several decades.

While Johansen is recognized as a ‘serious' composer who's created more than 150 works, including among them ballet, opera, and chamber and orchestral pieces, he takes the challenge of composing for young musicians as seriously. That's especially needed when the target group is so uncompromising, Johansen noting that for them, “It's ‘take it or leave it.' The music has to trigger something in them, almost immediately. If not, it's ‘game over.'”

The stylistic range of the material is broad, extending as it does from sweetly singing folk (“Øyhopping” - [Island Hopping]) to blues (“Pøsende Regn Blues” [Pouring Rain Blues]) and modern classical (“Stilleben Med Gult” [Still Life With Yellow]). While many pieces exude a good-time feel—see the swinging “En Liten Boogie-Woogie Dans” (A Small Boogie-Woogie Dance), for instance—the album encompasses many moods. In keeping with their titles, “I Natt Har Det Snødd” (It Snowed Last Night) and “Vals Blå”(Waltz Blue) are both melancholy, whereas the respective cello, piano, and cello-piano settings “Månefisk” (Mola), “Lilla” (Purple), and “Drømmen Og Valsen” (The Dream and the Waltz) ruminate broodingly.

Sure enough, “Høstfarger I Gata Hvor Erik S. Bodde” (Autumn Colours in the Street Where Erik S. Lived) nods to Satie in its piano part whilst still preserving the spirit of the album project; Vivaldi's likewise namechecked in “SMS Fra Antonio V.” (SMS From Antonio V.). Many tracks do, in fact, sound like pieces written expressly for students, the jubilant piano piece “Tinnsoldatvals” (Tin Soldier Waltz) and violin-and-guitar duet “En Vals Til Regina” (A Waltz For Regina) cases in point.

Needless to say, the four musicians execute the material superbly and give clear voice to the songs' different moods. Gimse and Spigseth perform the cello-piano title track, for instance, with intense feeling, and heartache is movingly expressed by Thorsen and Strømdal in the violin-guitar duet “Lykkens Stjerne” (The Lucky Star), but really the same could be said of any piece. Plentiful in number, the solo pieces offer the best opportunity to sample the players' individual gifts, and all four invest their performances with the commitment one would expect from professional musicians.

September 2020