PERSONAL BEST
With Personal Best, Norwegian composer Eivind Buene presents a new work written for Trio Accanto that blurs the boundaries between composition, performance, and reflection.
The title suggests competition and measurement, but Personal Best turns the idea inward. Rather than striving for virtuosity in the conventional sense, the work investigates what it means to perform at one’s limits—artistically, physically, and mentally. The instrumental writing moves between sharply etched gestures and moments of suspended clarity, creating a constantly shifting terrain in which sound, text, and presence interact. The result is a work that feels at once rigorously constructed and strikingly immediate.
The album also includes Serious Songs, Buene’s adaptations of Johannes Brahms’ Four Serious Songs. Here Buene himself appears as singer, his performance bringing back imperfection and vulnerability to art music and blurring the boundaries between real life and the art of interpretation.
Trio Accanto, one of Europe’s leading ensembles for contemporary music, brings its characteristic precision and openness to Buene’s multifaceted score. The ensemble consists of Nicolas Hodges (piano), Marcus Weiss (saxophone) and Christian Dierstein (percussion).
Personal Best continues Buene’s long‑standing engagement with music as a performative and social practice. Rather than presenting a fixed statement, the piece invites listeners into a process—one that is searching, self‑aware, and acutely attuned to the conditions of contemporary music-making.
This release offers a compelling portrait of a composer unafraid to place himself inside the work, and of an ensemble uniquely equipped to navigate its demands with intelligence and intensity.
EIVIND BUENE (1973*)
Personal Best
Serious Songs
Kommentarer