For those curious to explore the composer’s unique style, Playing Axel Borup-Jorgensen is an ideal entry point, featuring works from throughout Borup-Jørgensen’s creative journey, in equally diverse and colorful arrays. Including his only woodwind quintet and a work employing junk yard percussion, performed by the leading Danish chamber orchestra the acclaimed Esbjerg Ensemble. Joining the Ensemble for this recording, the 8th album in OUR Recordings series with music by Axel Borup-Jørgensen, is the award-winning pianist Kristoffer Hyldig and special guests, all captured in crystalline clarity in the DXD audio format by producer Mette Due.

Danish composer Axel Borup-Jørgensen was one of the 20th century’s great “silent individualists.” Although largely self-taught, he was the first Danish composer who attended the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. Without a doubt, the avant-garde of the sixties exerted a strong influence on Borup-Jørgensen’s sound world, but he never embraced any specific “ism,” following instead his own intuition and his extraordinary sense of organizing sound.

Borup-Jørgensen’s handwritten scores are of almost calligraphic quality and beauty and reveal him to be a meticulous craftsman and magician of tone color, traits on full display on this very special tribute in honor of the composer’s centenary.

The vast majority of his work is devoted to chamber music. Here he enjoyed the freedom and inspiration to work closely with the artists and explore new sonic possibilities of their instruments. This album is the final entry in a decade long documentation of the life and work of Axel Borup-Jørgensen’s music, a project that has seen multiple critical triumphs, innovative concert installations and even an award-winning video. The animated short film for his masterpiece MARIN won Opus Klassik Award as best DVD or Blu-Ray as well as the Danish Radio P2 Prize for Best Album.

Esbjerg Ensemble
Kristoffer Hyldig, Piano