Eyvind Alnæs Songs/ Norwegian Composer. Bodil Victoria Arnesen Soprano and Erling Ragnar Eriksen piano.Recorded 28-29-1 December 1993. Produced/Edited by Tony Harrison. Balance engineer Arne Akselberg. Eyvind Alnæs is first and foremost known as a composer of romances.Although he has also written two symphonies and a piano concerto, it is his hundred or so songs that have given him his place in the history of Norwegian music, as the most important romance composer since Edvard Grieg. Several of his romances are formulated as variations on and development of a handful of themes, a procedure that reconciles continuous musical interpretation of text with a formal tautness and concentration of expression. Alnæs employs all the harmonic devices of Late Romanticism as these are expressed in for example Sinding's work. This means inter alia frequent use of altered chords, chromatic scoring,harmonic jumps and a tendency to tonal independence. The piano accompainment in the romances often resembles Schumann, in that the piano part alternates between carrying the melody and beeing a pure accompainment.This alternation occurs in many of the romances, as for example Liden Kirsten op 2 no 4, or Der du gjekk fyre,op 17 no 1.The piano movement may also sound heavy and almost orchestral, and in several cases Alnæs has taken the consequence of this by transcribing the piano part for orchestra. Bodil Victoria Arnesen has toured much of the the world. This recording of Eyvind Alnæs Songs was her debut CD in 1993.Among her many CD recordings are: Grieg Songs ,Sinding Songs, Beethoven Kaiser-Kantaten,Richard Strauss Die Ruinen von Athen,Des Esels Schatten/The Donkey's Shadow etc. Professor Erling Ragnar Eriksen lectures in piano and accompaniment at University inStavanger.He made his debut in Oslo 1978. Since then he has given many concerts both in Norway and abroad.