Ludvig Irgens Jensen is a composer barely known outside his native Norway. It is a fate he shares with many Scandinavian composers of his generation, including Kurt Atterberg, a composer cpo has worked hard to revive.

 

This month cpo presents a release of Irgens Jensen’s major orchestral works with the formidable Trondheim Orchestra, proving he is a composer worthy of the attention enjoyed by his contemporaries Sibelius and Carl Nielsen. Here is how our author describes Jensen’s work: "He towers above most of his colleagues, not only in wealth of invention, thematic coherence, and phenomenal orchestration, but especially in his mastery of nuance and his far-reaching control of the harmonic process. Hardly any of his contemporaries can match his masterly handling of modulation."