Rooms of Elsinore is a new CD of music related to Brett Dean’s opera Hamlet.  Those familiar with the opera will quickly recognise the sound worlds of all five pieces.  Two began life as “character studies” for Ophelia and Gertrude respectively and so set words by Matthew Jocelyn.  The first, And once I played Ophelia is scored for soprano and chamber orchestra.  Some readers may recall Barbara Hannigan performing it with the TSO in 2019.  Here it’s performed by Jennifer France with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the composer.  It’s a tough sing with some very high sections and staccato repeated phrases.  She does a fine job.

Gertrude Fragments is shorter and scored for mezzo-soprano and guitar.  In some ways it’s a riff on the Elizabethan lute song but it’s unmistakeably Dean!  Dean/Jocelyn’s Gertrude is a troubled and introspective character and that’s emphasised by the minimalist guitar part (nicely played here by Andrey Lebedev).  The singer is Dean’s daughter Lotte Betts-Dean.  She’s much younger than Sarah Connolly and has a brighter tone.  he’s got very solifd low notes though and copes well with he fragmented text.

Rooms of Elsinore consists of seven short pieces for viola (Dean) and piano (Juho Pohjenen).  Each movement takes us to a different part of Elsinore from the gate to the tower.  It’s unsettling music; busy and disturbed and virtuosic.

Confessio is scored for bass clarinet (Volker Hemken) and is inspired by Claudius’ monologue/apologia.  It’s dark and by turns very sparse and very busy.  Definitely a piece that will repay another listen.

The final piece, The Players, is a concerto for accordion and chamber orchestra.  It started life as a study in how accordion might work in the opera where it plays a key role in the Murder of Gonzago scene.  The sketches and resulting music were reworked and extended to form this concerto with Scottish accordionist James Cragg, who is the soloist here, very much in mind.  It covers a lot of ground musically and emotionally in 20 minutes and features some really virtuosic accordion work.  The orchestra is again the Swedish Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer.

So there it is; a generous eighty minutes of very well constructed music.  I don’t know that one needs familiarity with the opera to get these pieces but I’m sure it helps.  The recordings were made at various times between 2019 and 2023 in various different venues but it’s all very well recorded.  It’s being released on August 16th 2024 as an SACD and digitally in MP3 and standard res and 96kHz/24bit FLAC.  I listened to the Hi-res FLAC.  There’s a comprehensive booklet with texts, notes and bios.

Catalogue information: BIS2454