The Oslo Kammerkor return to LAWO Classics under the direction of Hakon Daniel Nystedt in these two world premiere recordings. "As the title would suggest, Purgatorium is a work about purification-a journey through strange inner landscapes, never knowing which road you'll end up on. The parts culminate into each other in the least expected ways, transformations materialise, and we are thrown into mysterious and unfamiliar sounds and circumstances. While working on this I sensed the need for an a cappella motet in the middle of the piece. This meant I needed a lyric, and so I wrote a letter to the Swedish poet, librettist, and writer Peter Backstrom. After a bit of letter correspondence between Nesodden, where I lived, and Malmo, where he lived, a sonnet turned up in the mail, and it was as if the music was already finished. We'd written it together, without any sense of trying to control it.

The rest of the work is without text, with the exception of two short excerpts from Dante's Purgatorium in the second part- the Latin hymn Te lucis ante terminum and Dante's poem Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona."

Hakon Daniel Nystedt

Four Pieces from a Distance was composed in the spring of 2020 during the first part of the COVID-19 pandemic under the strict regulations of social distancing. In several sections of the piece, the musicians are asked to play completely without coordination with the other performers. Two of the songs are based on traditional hymns, 'O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus' and 'Children of the Heavenly Father'. The latter has been given the subtitle 'Andra tutto bene', the Italian expression that children all over the world wrote on their rainbow drawings, with a desire and hope that in the end everything would turn out alright.

Performers on this recording:

Oslo Kammerkor, Hakon Daniel Nystedt, Messingkvintett (brass quintet), Anders Eidsten Dahl (organ), Hans-Christian Kjos Sorensen (percussion), Torgeir Koppang (piano), Silje Aker Johnsen (soprano), Eir Vatn Strom (soprano)