The Frobenius Prize

I am indeed happy - and proud - to announce that the Frobenius Foundation has awarded me its Prize of honour, 250.000 Dkr. Up to now the Prize has been awarded only once, in 2015. The substantiation does not specifically focus on my work as a composer, but underlines "extraordinary importance and lasting effect on Danish musical culture". Thus I am particularly happy that my widespread activities as a writer, intermediator and organiser are considered part of my creative work.

LAUDATIO for the Reformation

Commissioned by the Danish National Orchestra and the Radio Choir for a concert on the 31st of October I have written a Laudatio to commemorate the 500 years since Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Few single events in history have had such tremendous and lasting effects on Western culture.
The pieece will be first performed conducted by the young Briton Jamie Phillips on a concert which also contains music such as the Prelude to Wagners Parsifal and parts of Bach's Mass in b-minor. The concert can be heard live on Danish Radio - and in the audience will be our Queen.

Athelas' Birthday Concert

Age may seem irrelevant, but Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen chose to celebrate my upcoming 70 years birthday with a concert on Sunday 15.10. which will remain an illuminated piazza on my Memory Lane. Three of my main works magnificently played with Giaordano Bellincampi on the podium and with Anne Søe as soloist in my violin concerto. And four admired collegues had written small pieces for 15 instruments lovingly commenting on my way of musical expression - John Frandsen, Anders Brødsgaard, Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen og Simon Steen-Andersen.
A Night to Remember indeed!

Baroque Birds

The Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was a connaisseur of bird song as well as of baroque music. In 1928 he created a suite for orchestra build on movements by baroque composers imitating bird song. Under the headline “Baroque Birds” Concerto Copenhagen on the 4th of September at 8 PM presents a concert in the Garnisons Church, Copenhagen, featuring the fascination of birds in the baroque period. It will include the prima assoluta of the version I have made for the ensemble of Respighi's “Gli Uccelli” - The Birds.

Niels W. Gade's unfinished 1839 Piano trio completed

My completion of Niels W. Gade’s piano trio of 1839, left by Gade with only the first of four movements finished and very sparse sketches for a slow movement and a scherzo, will be world premiered on the 2nd of September at 3 PM in the Ribe St. Catarinae Church as part of the Langgaard Festival. Performers are the prominent musicians of the Danish Piano Trio, Lars Bjørnkjær, Toke Møldrup and Katrine Gislinge.

Sister Works

At the SUSÅ Festival opening concert 1.9 Athelas Sinfonietta will play my “Webs in a Stolen Dream”, and at the last festival concert on the 3.9 Aarhus Sinfonietta will perform the sister-work “Twin Dream”. The festival takes place at Grønnegaards Kaserne in Næstved, 90 kilometres southwest of Copenhagen and the festival celebrates 25 years of existence.

Northern Lights in Tivoli

ENSEMBLE NORTHERN LIGHTS 20 YEARS
KARL AAGE RASMUSSEN 70 YEARS
THE TIVOLI CONCERT HALL
9. JULY at 3 pm.



See program, ticket-information, about ensemble Northern Lights etc.

https://www.tivoli.dk/da/kultur+og+program/sommerklassisk/2017/ensemble+nordlys++20+aar

Three new works by  Karl Aage Rasmussen:

Le tombeau de père Igor (Stravinsky), first performance
Scherzino, Homage to Brahms (1916)
Carl’s Masks - after Carl Nielsens opera “Masquerade”, first performance

Rostrum of Composers

In Palermo by mid-May this year at the International Composers Grand Prix - organized annually by the European Broadcasting Union - Concerto Copenhagen with the soloist Alfredo Bernardini represented Denmark in a recording from the Tivoli Concert Hall of the first performance of my Concerto for Baroque Oboe, June 2016.

New book: Johannes Brahms

Friday 28. April Gyldendal will publish my latest book, a monograph on the composer Johannes Brahms. Brahms's music was described by a newspaper as a "Reproach to the Haste of a Superficial Generation". But if anybody is assuming that the generation referred to is his own, it may be comforting to know that it was written shortly after Brahms' death in 1897.

Ny bog: Johannes Brahms

Fredag den 28. april udkommer min bog om den uudgrundelige Johannes Brahms på Gyldendal. Titlen “En sørgmodig drøm om idyl” forsøger at indkredse en side af de endeløse modsætninger der karakteriserede den ene af de tre “store B’er”. En avis beskrev hans musik som “et værn mod en overfladisk generations hastværk” . Men føler nogen sig ramt, kan de trøste sig med at det var kort efter hans død i slutningen af 1800-tallet.

Follia, follia ...

Mr. Paul Gabler from Holland has included “Follia, follia…” - a tribute to this ancielt melody which I composed for Concerto Copenhagen in the autumn of last year - in his impressive website about this melodi and its appearance in old and new works from all over the world.
folia@chello.nl
My Follia-piece can be heard in a recording with Concerto Copenhagen conducted by Magnus Fryklund (go to 1.18.30).
http://www.dr.dk/p2/p2-koncerten/p2-koncerten-2015-12-09/

Six first performances in two days

This coming weekend (11.-12.6) Concerto Copenhagen will present no less than six new Rasmussen-works. A concerto for baroque oboe written for the Italian virtuoso Alfredo Bernardini, a playful "update" or new "staging" of Vivaldi's evergreen "The Four Seasons" (with Fredrik From and Peter Spissky as soloists) and a kind of subterranean "Holberg-suite".
CoCo is celebrating 25 years of existence with festival concerts in the Garnison Church and in Tivoli ... see the full program for Friday through Sunday here
https://concertocopenhagen.box.com/s/g05ejy4mtcxbm0pk82vam808tsmann51

Regret

Regrettably this site has not been updated for quite some time. From now on I promise to turn over a new leaf!

St. Petersburg

By mid-October the Danish Cultural Institute in St. Petersburg hosted a conference on Carl Nielsen with many Russian researchers and musicians participating. I contributed a paper and possibly acted as "key-note" speaker. The travel included a lecture at the Rimsky Korsakov Conservatory and a presentation in the city of Petrozavodsk, where the conservatory is known to be the northernmost in the world. I was happily accompanied by Finn Andersen, the committed and inventive head of the institute. His Russian wife, Elena, fluent in Danish, acted as my expert interpreter. With a week in the a spacy flat at Fontanka, belonging to the institute, the visit was truly memorable.

Clara - inner voices

Following the premiere at the fine old Court Theatre at Slotsholmen my first play for the theatre, a monologue with music about Clara and Robert Schumann, will be shown at the Bellevue Theatre in Copenhagen 27. and 28. September with the German actor Katrin Weisser as Clara Schumann. Next year the staging will be shown in several other parts of the country.

http://www.bellevueteatret.dk/forestilling/clara-indre-stemmer/

Concerto Copenhagen

I am proud from now on to be "Composer in Residence" for the Danish-Nordic period ensemble Concerto Copenhagen. During the coming three years I shall compose several new works for them as well as new “stagings” of well-known works from the core repertoire of the ensemble. Further I shall participate in the development of the concert profile and the public relations. I am looking very much forward to this collaboration.

Johann Sebastian Bach

By the beginning of October Gyldendal will publish my latest book, a book on Bach’s life and music. Curiously - considering Bach’s enormous popularity - it seems to be the only full-scale Bach-biography ever in Danish.

On Saturday the 8th of November during BogForum, the annual Danish book-event, I will discuss the book with Danish harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen. Lars Ulrik can be heard in dozens of highly praised Bach-recordings, not least all of Bach’s 15 concerti for one or more harpsichords. In 2007 he received the Sonning Prize.

Give listening a try!

During 2013 I had a series of conversations with Lars Lilholt, an ikon of Danish popular music culture. The result became a book which draws a motley picture of the colossal variety in Danish music and also of two creators of music who have - despite all the evident differences - quite a bit in common. The title of the book comes from one of Lars’ most popular songs.

At BogForum, the annual Danish book-event, on Sunday the 9th of November at 5 pm Lars and I will discuss the book with it’s editor, Henrik Marstal, and there will of course be time for some music.

Concerto in Amber, world premiere

On the 24th of September Concerto Copenhagen will present the world premiere of Rasmussen's Concerto in Amber. The piece represents the first commission ever from the Danish period ensemble and the first addition of a contemporary piece to their baroque repertoire. The baroque strings of the ensemble will be joined by the internationally well-known Rascher saxophone quartet in a kind of concerto grosso counterposing the sound world of two different times. 
The concert, featuring mainly music by Bach, is at 8 PM in the Black Diamond concert hall at the Copenhagen harbor.
Later this year Concerto Copenhagen will present the work on tour in Germany.

New book on the life and music of George Gershwin

On the 12th of November the Danish publisher Gyldendal will publish my most recent book All Colors, all Souls. A Book on George Gershwin. It will - amazingly - be the first book in Danish on this subject. It will be available in Danish only until further, unfortunately.