Light Overture - A Symphonic Entertainment was composed by Poul Ruders in 2006. Commissioned by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and Music Director and Principal Conductor Justin Brown for Alabama Power Company’s 100 Year Anniversary Concert. Light Overture subtitled A Symphonic Entertainment is a short piece for symphony orchestra lasting approximately eight minutes. Light Overture is focusing on two interpretations of the word light: ”light” as in the absence of darkness and “light” as in easily comprehensible; in other words a piece with few or no metaphysicalconnotations. It is just a piece setting a festive mood as is often the case with this sort of short “concert opener”. However the journey through Light Overture is not entirely happy-go-lucky. Once in a while slightly darker colours are introduced for the sake of variety and contrast. And formally the composition is quite strict: an outright Prelude and Fugue the former sliding seamlessly into the latter. The Fugue juggles not only its own tune but also picks up stuff from the Prelude. Poul Ruders May 2006

Poul Ruder's Wind-Drumming for Wind Quintet and 4 Percussionists (1979/85). Parts are for hire: hire@ewh.dk Programme NoteWind-Drumming was written in 1979 on a commission from The Danish Percussion Ensemble.The piece is a clash of two kinds of sound-associations; the mystic exotic impact of Latin-American drumming and the more well dressed reputation of Western concert-instruments in this case a wind-quintet (w. electric flute).The two instrumental camps either melt into one soft humming ritual or are split wide apart the winds tearing their way through the undergrowth ofrainforest-drumming. There is more than one way of getting on to WIND-DRUMMING: obviously it is about the confrontation of two incongruent ways of living a lament on the damage done to the tropical rainforests of the world by modern civilisation. One can hear it plainly as a direct rhythm-show a downright number or a joyous homage to the most exiting kind of folkloristic music at all: the carnal spell of the Brazilian Samba. Poul Ruders

POD-Fanfares And Chorales for Brass Ensemble was composed by Poul Ruders in 2016. Commissioned by the Royal Danish Academy of Music and professor Jesper Juul Windahl in celebration of RDAM´s 150th anniversary in 2017.

Poul Ruders' Prologue To Dido And Aenas by Henry Purcell (2011). Text by Nahum Tate. Commissioned by The Danish National Vocal Ensemble / DR Scored for Mixed Choir (SATB) String Quartet Percussion Theorbe and Harpsichord.Vocal score available: WH31460CParts available: WH31460A

Programme Note This short one-movement quartet is a kind of modernization of the 14th century French motets a cadeau to this weird and fantastic music whose abstract and almost deprecatory introvert expression appears unaccountably modern and incredibly ancient at the same time. MOTET is a sober cool treatise on rhythm and statics depicted in a Gothic crypt-like atmosphere. The almost completely non-vibrato movement is suggestive of boys’ choir monks’ processions and the piercing sound of musical glasses. An ancient world is reborn and becomes the world of today. Poul Ruders 1979

The full score of Ruders' first Symphony subtitled Himmelhoch jauchzend - zum Tode betrübt. Written for large orchestra.

Ruders writes: 'gl0rIA' is subtitled: 'a relique for large chorus and 12 brass-instruments. At the same time it is an exercise for chorus because only vowels do occur or virtually no consonants are heard. The second part of the Missa Ordinarium the Gloria in Exelcis Deo makes the literary basis of 'g10rIA' but I employ only the vowels which in their full context form a 'non-language' - fragments of a tradition. A less dim vision of the 'severed body' appears in the center of the piece where the Domini Fili-section surfaces in its original shape. 'gl0rIA' is a 20th century composer’s hommage to the innocent faith of bygone days and a fanfare in honour of ClaudioMonteverdi; thus the ever present elaborations of the introduction to the Vespro Della Beate Vergine. Superimposed on the 'torso' of Latin I wedge in a quotation from the Spanish renaissance poet Gonzalo de Berceo’s 'Duelo de la Virgen' a surrealistic Lamento in which the Jews sent by Pilate to stand guard at the tomb of Christ mock and ridicule Maria Jesu mother. Thus a shadow has been cast over the jubilant religious appraisal of the past which today’s knowledge of atrocities and enormities engineered by Mankind has - alas - made so hard to repeat.

Corpus Cum Figuris is a uniform composition in three major parts. The first part is a slow marche funébre a kind of prologue with dark and sombre sounds and a massive wall of chords which leads us to the other part of the works where the static and solemn atmosphere is suddenly stopped and replaced by a rhythmic/melodic ritual which accelerates the music. In the third part the block structure is softened gradually different figurations and stylistic elements arise to live their own lives: distant waltzes and pictures from the Middle Ages appear in this gigantic sonorous body. After a wild percussion orgy a short flash-back and a scream from the edge end Corpus cumFiguris. The piece has no literal content at all even though the title leads the thought to Adrian Leverkühn?s Apocalipsis cum Figuris from Thomas Mann?s Doctor Faustus. More likely my piece will arouse associations as with all my music. It has to be heard in it?s own conditions in this case as a big body of music or perhaps as a great screen where the details of course are part of the whole body but at the same time are foreign and odd. It is as if one climbs a mountain and from the top of that mountain discovers a world which is completely different from expected. Corpus cum Figuris for 20 musicians was composed in 1984 commissioned by Ensemble InterContemporain and the Danish Radio. Ensemble InterContemporain world premiered the work in April 1985 conducted by Peter Eötvös. The piece was also played at the ISCM-festival in Amsterdam by Netherland Radio Chamber Orchestra conducted by Ernest Bour.

This short orchestral piece is a tone poem based on a passage from one of Hans Christian Andersen’s lesser known fairytales THE WIND TELLS ABOUT WALDEMAR DAAE AND HIS DAUGHTERS a mighty allegory about the transitoriness of Life about Vanity and Pride and the inevitable victory of Death (alias the wind) whose scything ravaging is sublimely depicted by Andersen in these few truly breathtaking lines: 'And Winter rushed Winter and Summer they rushed and they rush like I rush like the howling snow the flurrying apple blossom the scurrying foliage; rush! rush! The people too!'

Premiered at the festival 'Magma Berlin 2002' by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by David Robertson 29th November 2002.3 Flutes 1st and 2nd also Alto Flutes in G 3rd also Piccolo3 Oboes 3rd also Cor Anglais in F3 Clarinets in Bb 3rd also Bass Clarinet in Bb3 Bassoons 3rd also Contra Bassoon4 Horn in F3 Trumpets in Bb3 Trombones1 TubaTimpani4 Percussion four playersPlayer 1 - Vibraphone Glockenspiel Water Chime Bell Tree Japanese Wood Blocks Cymbal (Suspended) TamTam (Medium)Player 2 - Triangle Tubular Bells Crotales Marimba Chinese CymbalPlayer 3 - TamTam (Large) Java Gong(Large very low) Bell Lyra (Handheld) Sizzle CymbalPlayer 4 - Bass Drum Glockenspiel Xylophone1 Harp1 Piano also CelestaStrings - 16/14/12/10/8All transposing instruments are notated in their relevant transpositions.Any accidental apply only to the note that it immediately precedes except tied notes.Naturals appear occasionally 'for safety'.'LISTENING EARTH' is a symphonic drama a one- movement composition in four parts based on the work by two writers Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and W.H.Auden (1907-1973). Joseph Addison is not particularly well known; he was English a classical scholar essayist poet and politician but one of his hymns was used by Benjamin Britten. in his setting of a Thomas Tallis canon.The hymn is singularly beautiful and being a composer always inspired by extramusical stimuli such as poems nature paintings I was immediately convinced when I carne across the Addison hymn that here was exactly what I wanted to use as my major source of inspiration for this piece commissioned by and written for The Berlin Philharmonic. I don't refer to the hymn in its entirety but have chosen the following 3 excerpts all acting as mottos for the first three sections of the piece thus turning the piece into a straightforward tonepoem in the classical

Thus Saw St. John is a work for Orchestra which was inspired by Chapter 6 of the Book Of Revelation.

The word GONG is saturated with associations: the splendour of the Orient mysticism drama loud metallic clangour violent impact etc. The present piece draws upon all those connotations but it is primarily a symphonic drama about the life and behaviour of the sun our closest star and prime source of life on Earth. Describing the sun in music is not a new idea of course; during a visit to Greece Carl Nielsen was inspired by the orbit of the sun and its very un-Danish ferocity and thus wrote the 'Helios Overture'. GONG is a 'Helios Overture' too of sorts albeit more abstract. Recent astronomical research shows that the surface of the sun reverberates like a gong infour different simultaneous tempi (not directly depicted in the score though); the sun looks like a GONG - the O in the written work looks like the sun; there is even a solar research group called GONG (Global Oscillation Network Group). Formally the composition follows the life and fate of the sun from the initial explotional birth through the hyper-activity as energy source as we know it today to the final predicted flaring up and collapse into a so-called 'white dwarf'. But - being a musical composition not an astrophysical thesis - GONG is brought to its compositional conclusion by a 'real concert-ending' a chord taken from the middle of the piece and sustained over several bars from virtual nothingness to full force.