Rued Langgaard’s (1893-1952) inner division can be experienced at its extreme in the chamber music written between 1913 and 1924, in which the secure world of his youth is undercut by a dark musical understream. This is most apparent in the work for piano, Music of the Abyss, which is presented here in a transcription for chamber ensemble by Allan Gravgaard Madsen (b. 1984) of which this is the first recording. This meeting between Langgaard and Gravgaard brings to a climax the work’s view of modern man’s destructive strength in a crazy ride towards the Abyss.

Danish composer Rued Langgaard was divided, both as man and as composer, and an outsider in Danish musical life with his late romantic idiom and religious presentiments.

The album Music of the Abyss presents chamber works from 1913-1924 when Langgaard was in his 20s – an age when Langgaard’s personal view of the world changed radically.

The title work Music of the Abyss is a highly expressive piano sonata, here presented in the world-premiere recording of a transcriptionby Allan Gravgaard Madsen written for Esbjerg Ensemble.

The work is closely related to Langgaard’s apocalyptic opera Antikrist, a time when Langgaard is occupied with ideas of the demonic and the modern human egocentricity and megalomania.