Osten Mikal Ore
Bergmann Edition: 4 pages
Every so often a piece comes along that really captures your imagination, and that really feels as if it was meant for you to play it. I don’t get that feeling too often these days, but this piece is one of them. Osten Mikal Ore is a Norwegian – born guitarist composer and this is the first of his pieces I have come across, and it is highly imaginative, very emotional, and utterly original in its style, and yet actually doesn’t feel like anything I have seen before. Such is its originality.
At three minutes long, this lyrical and, at times, jazz styled piece begins with a theme that glides up the fingerboard, and back down again in a portamento. It is marked calm and expressive and quickly goes through several keys along its path before having a varied repeat that leads into a faster Con Moto idea that almost seems to be derived from the opening theme, albeit written in a completely different way. A sequence of arpeggiated augmented chords lead to a return of this second theme, but now in a new variation before the first theme, now arpeggiated into some semi – quaver arpeggiation returns .There are numerous moments when the writing involves harp – like string cross overs. A Dal Segno marking takes us back to the original opening idea for the first 8 bars before the coda intervenes. This now is replete with a mixture of harmonic notes as well as normal ones, some harmonics played with the right hand owing to the nature of what else is being asked of the hands at these points. After this a brief close based on the opening theme leads to the final cadence.
This is a beautiful piece of music and a lovely piece to play and if that is typical of this man’s musical style then I would love to see more.
Chris Dumigan
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