RIP to new music’s gentle, smiley radical

Danish composer Per Norgard – whose death at the age of 92 was announced this morning – was a towering presence in European new music, and the shine-bright timbres and heady narrative drive of his eight symphonies posed crucial questions about what it meant to be a symphonist during the late 20th century.

In 2000 I was despatched to interview Norgard for a magazine and found a man as gentle and thoughtful as his music suggested he would be, with eyes that gleamed just like his woodwind writing. He had been in London to hear a performance of one his works – I forget which – but under discussion that afternoon was a new recording: the violin concerto he’d written in 1987, Helle Nacht. I’m listening to it again as I write this, and its luminous textures and the filigree of his violin writing could really be by nobody else.