This album features the world premiere recording of Jesper Koch's "A Twilight Song."
Composition History
Jesper Koch, the composer, wrote "A Twilight Song" as a horn concerto for Jeppe Solløs Rasmussen, a horn player with the Danish Philharmonic Orchestra.
Performer Biography
Christian Øland, the conductor, will become the Principal Conductor of the Danish Philharmonic Orchestra starting in the 2025/26 season.
Compositional Technique
Jesper Koch directly set two Walt Whitman poems to music as "songs without words" in movements 3 and 5 of the concerto, with the horn singing and the orchestra accompanying.
Compositional Technique
The work's journey moves from "dawn, awakening in the camp, to battle, death, reflection and resurrection," with the introductory movement featuring distant timpani and the soloist sounding a reveille.
Composer's Artistic Vision
The concerto's title, "A Twilight Song," and its final movement refer to war poems by Walt Whitman, an American poet who served as a medical orderly during the American Civil War.
Performer Biography
Jeppe Solløs Rasmussen, the horn soloist, has been a core member of the Danish Philharmonic Orchestra since 2003 and performed with the World Orchestra for Peace in London in 2014.
