POLYPHONIC DIALOGUES
Joachim Kwetzinsky, piano

The Russian composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Rodion Shchedrin each composed a set of 24 preludes and fugues for solo piano. When a selection from these sets are combined into a new arrangement, we get POLYPHONIC DIALOGUES that move between the boarders of tonality, often with rhythmic elements from the world of jazz. The dialogues are characterized by humour and irony, but also by melancholy and anger. There is a lot of playfulness, combined with seriousness, with perhaps a little greeting from Bach.

2L-063: Stereo + 5.1 surround Hybrid SACD

Release Europe and Asia: April 6, 2010 (EAN 7041888514428)
Release USA and Canada: April 27, 2010 (UPC 845829000622)

The polyphonic structure allows many voices to be heard at the same time. Sometimes disharmony arises, other times harmony; the distinctive character of each voice is preserved, however, while still giving the feeling that they belong together. It is precisely such a combining of voices which reveals life's diversity and complexity in human experience. Or to put it in the words of the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, "everything in life is counterpoint; that is, contrast".

Joachim Kwetzinsky is a young, prominent and versatile Norwegian pianist. He gained his postgraduate diploma at the Norwegian Academy of Music where he studied with Einar Steen-Nøkleberg, and he has also studied with Liv Glaser and Jiri Hlinka. Kwetzinsky was a prize winner at the Concours Grieg in 2002, and in 2004 he won Rikskonsertene's three-year launch programme for young musicians, INTRO-Classical. In 2009 he received the Robert Levin Prize at a concert during the Bergen International Festival. Kwetzinsky has appeared at numerous festivals and given recitals in twenty countries. He also appears together with cellist Johannes Martens in Elliott Carter's cello sonata on the critically acclaimed "Figments and Fragments" released by 2L in 2008.

In Nativitate
Beatae MARIAE Virginis
Schola Sanctae Sunnivae

BIRTH OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY. Very few liturgical codices survived the 1537 Reformation in Norway. From an Antiphonarium, a liturgical choir book for office chanting written for the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim in the 3rd quarter of the XIIIth Century, ten folios survived. Schola Sanctae Sunnivae has worked extensively with this material and focused on the surviving parts of the magnificent music in honor of the birth of the Holy Virgin Mary - Music of breathtaking spiritual and musical beauty.

2L-069: Stereo + 5.0 surround Hybrid SACD

Release Europe and Asia: April 6, 2010 (EAN 7041888515029)
Release USA and Canada: May 25, 2010 (UPC 845829000691)

Complementing the vocal offices, MARIA is originally a work in five movements by Henning Sommerro for organ based on the antiphons of the Laudes. The work was a commission for the 800th anniversary of the Our Lady Church, Trondheim in 2007 - here in an exclusive transcription for melodic percussion instruments especially for this recording.

Schola Sanctae Sunnivae was established in 1992 and consists of 12-14 female singers led by founder and conductor Anne Kleivset. The schola chose Norway's first female saint, the Irish princess Sunniva, as their patron. The ensemble is connected to the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim and is widely regarded as one of Europe's leading Gregorian chant ensembles.

Black Bird
Fredrik Fors (clarinet) & Sveinung Bjelland (piano)

Few woodwind instruments have appealed as much to composers' imagination as the clarinet. Its remarkable propensity for timbral variation - from the softest, barely audible tone to piercing, almost desperate sounds make it particularly suited to expressing the whole gamut of human emotion. Clarinettist Fredrik Fors and pianist Sveinung Bjelland have assembled a comprehensive menu of musical delicacies for this recording. In music by composers as Stravinsky, Saint-Saëns, Schumann, Grieg, Madsen and others, we are taken on a journey in sound which covers the entire spectrum of expression, from fragile, relaxed and inquisitive to brilliantly virtuosic.

2L-055: Stereo + 5.1 surround Hybrid SACD

Release Europe and Asia: April 6, 2010 (EAN 7041888513322)
Release USA and Canada: February 23, 2010 (UPC 845829000660)

Fredrik Fors is one of Scandinavia's leading clarinet players, since 1995 co-principal in Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Born in Sweden, Fors studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and later with clarinettists as Karl Leister, Yehuda Gilad Anthony Pay and Richard Stoltzman. Fredrik Fors is also a much sought-after chamber musician and has appeared at many music festivals in the Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe.

Sveinung Bjelland has already for several years been in the forefront among classical pianists in Norway. Bjelland has most of his musical background from Central Europe, mainly through studies with Hans Leygraf at Mozarteum, Salzburg and Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Bjelland has been soloist with leading Norwegian and European orchestras with distinguished guest conductors and visited various concert series and festivals in Europe, where he has made his mark just as much as a soloist as in a chamber music setting, performing with artists like Pahud, Collins, Mørk and Wispelwey.