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Programme Note

VILTIR SVANIR (WILD SWANS) - (1994). 5 movements for saxophone quartet.
Viltir Svanir (Wild Swans) was commissioned and composed for The Nordic House in Reykjavik in 1994, to celebrate the 5oth anniversary of Iceland´s independence. The work´s five relatively short movements have a distinctly Nordic character is, for this composer, easy to hear yet impossible to demonstrate.
He prefers, therefore, to concentrate on the work´s individual form. Each of the five movements has its own character, yet the work as a whole can be understood as one continuous movement, in the manner of a stream hidden momentarily from earshot as it flows under the ´bridges´ of the pauses. Whenever motifs of melody, tone and rhythm reappear, they are brought together in ever-new relationships. A melodic fore-phrase, for example, returns as the after-phrase to a motif which has been, perhaps, an after-phrase to another motif, and so on.
My saxophone quartets No. 1-2-3 was composed between 1992 and 1995 and has the following titles:
Roads to Ixtlan , 1992-93
Viltir Svanir (Wild Swans), 1994
Dansere omkring Jupiter (Dancers around Jupiter), 1995

Per Nørgård (1995)