Sigurd Lie: Songs [DSD Bundle]

This DSD Bundle consists of two albums in a series of Sigurd Lie‘s collected works for voice and piano featuring Mezzo Soprano Marianne Beate Kielland with pianist Nils Anders Mortensen.

It is an adventure to immerse oneself in the Norwegian treasury of song. There is so much magnificent music, and so much of it bears witness to the time in which it was written. It tells which poets were setting the tone, how strong were the influences from European musical life, or whether the composer looked more to what Norwegian traditional music had to offer.

Sigurd Lie was a central composer in his time, although he had a short life. With the two releases of his Songs we get an insight into why he was predicted to become the new, great, Norwegian composer after Edvard Grieg. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to experience it, but here we can at least enjoy his broad compositional pen in around 75 songs, spread over the two releases.

Volume 1
The songs on this release are all songs that were published during Sigurd Lie’s lifetime. Apart from the “super hit” Sne (Snow), with which the album begins, the songs follow in chronological order. There are texts from Vilhelm Krag, Theodor Caspari and Per Sivle, all well known and acclaimed lyric poets whose verse has been set to music by many other Norwegian composers. But we also find a large number of texts by Helge Rode and Idar Handagard, who are lesser known. Idar Handagard was a doctor, botanist, writer and poet, while Helge Rode was a Danish poet and writer whose verse was also set to music by Carl Nielsen.

Volume 2
The songs on this release continue the chronological list from Volume 1. The album begins with the remarkably special cycle Wartburg, encompassing an enormous range of singing pathos. The text by Theodor Caspari has to do with Wartburg Castle, with its sweeping history. After Wartburg come the last of Sigurd Lie’s published texts: Sange Sub Rosa, Sol-Laug and Sidste Sange. They are followed by songs found as manuscripts and later published in the book Sanger (Songs) from 1999.

Marianne Beate Kielland, Mezzo-Soprano
Nils Anders Mortensen, Piano