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SSO - Kverndokk: Symphonic Dances makes WQXR: Best New Classical Releases of July 2018

This scorching July, I was especially grateful for two things: air conditioning and a heap of phenomenal new classical releases to listen to while riding out the heat and humidity. From contrasting visions of Brahms to an unusual take on the words of a Supreme Court justice, here are our favorites.

On the subject of culture clashes: Imagine a scenario in which a composer is required to synthesize folk music from not simply the "East" and "West," but from a dozen wildly different musical heritages. This was the task at hand for Norwegian composer Gisle Kverndokk, who was commissioned to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Norwegian Constitution with a piece that celebrated the "cultural diversity" of modern Norway. Where other composers would've simply written a theme and variations on "Kumbaya" (or its presumptive Scandinavian equivalent) and left it at that, Kverndokk's material was carefully sourced. For several weeks, the composer became a sort of aural Carmen Sandiego, embedding himself in immigrant communities around the city of Stavanger and transcribing hundreds of ethnic melodies from traditions as wide-ranging as Venezuela to Eritrea. The resulting five-movement Symphonic Dances - premiered in 2014, but first recorded by the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and Ken-David Masur earlier this year - is based entirely on these tunes, a marriage of ethnomusicology and contemporary composition that blurs geographic boundaries into new tonal worlds.

Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, led by Ken-David Masur in Gisle Kverndokk - Symphonic Dances makes the WQXR: New York 'Best New Classical Releases of July 2018.' SEE THE PAGE