Floating Islands – Guitar Music by Axel Borup-Jorgensen

Axel Borup-Jørgensen was by any definition, a singular figure in Danish music. Despite several major successes, he remained somewhat of a beloved outsider, embracing the modernist ideal throughout his career. Yet, there is an organic lyricism in his music which has been identified as uniquely “Scandinavian” in nature. The guitar provided Borup-Jørgensen with an ideal medium for musical expression offering both an intimacy and an ephemerality that complimented his increasingly inward looking aesthetic. The current program, meticulously played by Frederik Munk Larsen, winner of several international guitar competitions, provides an overview of the composer’s guitar music, from his first major composition, the dramatic and gestural Praeambula, Op. 72, (1974-1976) to the late, aphoristic cycle “floating islands”, Op. 169, (2002), unique in the instrument’s literature for being composed entirely in harmonics.

Borup-Jørgensen worked closely with musicians at every phase – from pre-compositional strategies to performance – among them, guitarist Frederik Munk Larsen, whose extraordinary virtuosity and attention to the most fragile nuance, draw out the deep melancholy and organic beauty of this fearsomely difficult music. There is little doubt that this new recording will become an extraordinarily important document of 20th Century Guitar music.

This album is Recorded in the DXD audio format (Digital eXtreme Definition), 352.8 kHz/32bit by Grammy nominated producer Preben Iwan, in the Church of the Royal Castle in Fredensborg, Denmark.