2008 release ** "The composer Jørgen Plaetner (1930-2002) is well known as one of Scandinavia's electronic music pioneers. His electronic works from the 1960s remain among the most original of their kind. However, Plaetner also has a more traditional side and wrote a large number of acoustic works.
One of the big chamber works from Plaetner's late period is the trio Episodes and Collisions. It was written in 1996 for LINensemble with its combination of clarinet, cello and piano. Jørgen Plaetner himself sent it out with a few discreet words: "In my view a title should exclusively whet the appetite - not serve as a pre-masticated, dissected and fully-moulded view of the work and thus spoil the experience before the work has had any chance at all to make its impact. On the other hand the ‘heading' must be clear and indicate the direction of the experience. So as regards the trio Episodes and Collisions I will simply mention that it consists of two movements which are however played continuously. The episodes and collisions that occur and the way they come to expression I will leave to the listener." In the even later Sonata for clarinet and piano (2000-2001) one hears the clarinet as if torn between the frantic, the touching and the wounded - an instrumental ‘reading' that goes all the way back to Carl Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto from 1928. Plaetner's clarinet sonata is one of his last works. He died the year after it was completed, and he never managed to hear it himself. This recording is in fact the sonata's first performance.Plaetner's songs to Swedish texts by Stig Dagerman also show his interest in politics. From 1943 until his suicide in 1954 Stig Dagerman wrote down his daily observations in the form of ‘diary leaves' that were printed in the left-wing Swedish newspaper Arbetaren. Plaetner came across the little texts when they appeared in book form in 1983. They became shrewd, ironic aphorisms on the meaninglessness of war. In Toyland goes in a skewed march tempo and Little Lasse - Model 44 is a grim pastiche of a well known Swedish children's song."