Rune Glerup - Dust Encapsulated (2014)

This CD presents five world premiere recordings of acoustic and electronic works by the Danish composer Rune Glerup (b. 1981). Instead of offering a narrative flow of music, Glerup uniquely allows the listener to move around among independent three-dimensional blocks of sound with powerful energy fields between them.


Rune Glerup (b1981) is a young Danish composer of whom there are high hopes for the future in his native country. He studied in Berlin and at IRCAM rather than the Royal Danish Academy and this shows in the cosmopolitan side of his music. The pieces on this debut CD reminded me a touch of the early works of Magnus Lindberg - in which case Glerup has a glittering career ahead of him, indeed.

The brilliant trio objets/décalages (‘objects/ displacements’, 2008) for recorder, violin and accordion is typical of his compositions, constructed as a series of mosaics that seem to define a physical space. Glerup is quoted in the booklet as saying how the locality of the first performance helps him create the final work and this can determine the spatial disposition of the performers. In the titletracks, an additional visual stimulus came from a Man Ray photograph of a Marcel Duchamp artwork: dust encapsulated #1 (counting is OK) (2008–09) for percussion and live electronics is a compelling duo for the analogue and the digital. The Piano Sonata (2011) is a reinvention of the form, turning its elements inside out; he has perhaps not yet learnt to knit them back together yet.

Not everything comes off, quite: dust encapsulated #2 (2009), a quintet for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, is too complex for its own good and sounds a lot like a lot of other pieces. The Divertimento for sinfonietta (2010–11) was originally dust encapsulated #3 but has undergone a number of changes and lost its title in the process.

Performances and recordings are excellent, mostly by the players for whom they were written. Definitely a talent to watch.
Review by Guy Rickards, Gramophone