Poul Ruders

Cembal D'amore

Cembal d'Amore - First Book - a suite for Piano and Harpsichord by Poul Ruders (1985-86) Dedicated to Amalie Malling and Lars Ulrik Mortensen. Prgramme Note: Cembal d'Amore is a five-movement suite for harpsichord and piano which works with the timbres of two very different-sounding instruments. The composer says that he &lsquo, hears early music through the tears of centuries&rsquo,. This moving formulation comes to expression in the work, in the sense that the early music glitters, so to speak, as a poetically imaginative undertone, through the highly contemporary structure. At one point the old music emerges so strongly in the sound-picture that it becomes quitetangible: a sarabande by Hä, ndel. Just as the external appearance of the instruments embodies the opposition between ancient and modern, the work itself profiles a meticulously calculated tension between archaizing expression and contemporary construction