Knussen: Two organa

Day 45

Knussen: Two Organa op 27

London Sinfonietta

Oliver Knussen

I have long admired Oliver Knussen's recordings of Stravinsky and Britten and always found him a compelling speaker on television and radio. But I don't think that I have ever listened properly to any of his music.  I might have seen a bit of Where the wild things are on TV but that would have been in the middle of noisy children and so doesn't count.

Today was a busy day so I didn't have time to listen to anything  long. But as Knussen himself says in the notes to this recording 'I prefer to be bewitched for a few minutes than hypnotised for an hour'.  These two organa are very short - the first lasts just over a minute and the second not much longer. But they are full of invention and I really enjoyed listening to them. Knussen had a fantastic ear for orchestral sonority and the rhythms here were always ingenious. They take their inspiration from medieval music - the organa was  one of the earliest forms of polyphony, with a slow cantus  firmus in the back ground and more animated music in the foreground. Both of these pieces use the technique - the first is a only on the white notes and derives from a project to write music for a musical box. One is reminded that Haydn wrote pieces for a mechanical clock so there is certainly a sense here of acknowledging various different historical roots.

So when I have a bit longer I will certainly listen to more of his music. The horn concerto seems a good next step.