This new CD from cellist Ernst Simon Glaser, the Norwegian Navy Band, and musical director Peter Szilvay presents a collection of four fascinating and varied works for cello and wind orchestra. The music includes concertos by pianist Friedrich Gulda, Jacques Ibert, and Olav Anton Thommessen, and the disc’s title piece ‘Zvezdochka in Orbit’ by contemporary Norwegian composer Jon Øivind Ness.
Friedrich Gulda was known as a virtuoso pianist and a remarkable performer, famous of course for his collaborations with Chick Corea. His Cello Concerto was written in 1980 and its style, as with many of his compositions, is highly eclectic. Consequently the ouverture is a rock song, and the finale resembles a virtuosic Sousa march (with a little touch of jazz in the middle) - a superb ending to a virtuosic and highly enjoyable work.
Jon Øivind Ness’s ‘Zvezdochka in Orbit’ refers to the last dog that the Soviet Union sent into orbit only a few weeks before Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. It was commissioned by the soloist here, Ernst Simon Glaser. Olav Anton Thommessen's ‘The Phantom of Light’, a miniature concerto for cello and two woodwind quintets, is a musical representation of a search for light that can never quite be captured. Jacques Ibert’s Concerto, composed in 1925, reminds listeners of his skill at producing musical pictures, most likely as a result of his experience as an accompanist of the silent films.
The Norwegian Navy band is a full-time wind orchestra consisting of 28 musicians and the conductor on this CD is the ensemble’s artistic director Peter Szilvay. With deliberate focus on contemporary music in recent years, both in concert and on recordings, the NNB has established a profile as a key member of the Norwegian contemporary music scene. Ernst Simon Glaser, born in 1975, is the current principal cellist of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and was formerly the principal cellist of the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra and of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra.
