The Norwegian Gisle Kverndokk (*1967) is a composer of musical and film music and has also published several orchestral works. His music is about impact, expression and message, not within the narrow confines of what is understood by contemporary music, but in an open style that focuses on melodies, rhythm and impressionistic as well as expressionistic developments. There is a lot going on in this music, and the orchestrations are outstandingly good.

Three Pictures refers to three pictures by the painter Edvard Munch, Rue Lafayette, Night in Saint-Cloud, and At the Roulette Table in Monte Carlo. These are exciting pieces that you can also visualize at your own discretion if you don’t know the Munch paintings.

Around the World in 80 Days exists in various forms, as an opera, a musical and as a symphonic suite from the opera, which can be heard on this album.

In the suite, Phileas Fogg begins his journey in London. We then see him in Paris (with Violetta), Rome (with Tosca), Suez (with the dancing Salome), in Beijing (Turandot), in the Pacific and finally back in London. Quotations allow us to recognize the operas mentioned as well as Rule Britannia, the whole in a colorful and lively, richly orchestrated sound. Absolutely brilliant!

For the title of the last piece, A Desperate Light, Kverndokk was inspired by two lines from a poem by Pablo Neruda: Today is that day, the day that carried a desperate light that since has died … The music is unmistakably a homage to Leonard Bernstein, from whom themes from West Side Story are quoted and varied. And once again, Kverndokk fascinates with an exuberant imagination and attractive, easily accessible narrative and atmospheric music without any idle time.

The interpretations are impeccable and present Kverndokk’s music in the best possible light, and the sound recording is excellent.