• Per Nørgård
  • Tre Magdalene strofer (1994)
    (Three Magdalena Stanzas)

  • Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
  • pf
  • 10 min

Programme Note

MAGDALENA STANZAS (1991/1994) for piano solo
Paraphrase over '3 Magdalena Songs' to texts (in Danish) by Hanne Groes:

I. PRIVATION
II. DEPARTURE
III. MEETING

Rosalind Bevan was really the originator of this piece since she urged me to write a piano version of my “Magdalena Songs” (to Hanne Groes texts, in Danish) which she so often had accompanied.

Moved by Rosalind's interest in the two contrasting songs (Kaldedrømme (´Calling Dreams), “Sent Møde (´Late Meeting) I wrote this little suite of Magdalena Stanzas for the piano. As the titles suggest the arche-typical 'longing for fulfilment'-motive (or ´longing´ and ´fullfilment´) is in focus. Less obvious is it that the two tunes supplement each other (as the famous 'Rubin vase-and-profiles'-complementarity manifest visually). But they do!

Per Nørgård