Danish Composer Mette Nielsen is nominted for the Danish Carl Prize 2017, in the category Classical Composer of the Year – Small Ensemble, for her piece Odense Havn 1991/2016. Uusinta Ensemble commissioned the piece in 2016 within the Nordlyd project and gave the premiere of in Copenhagen at the Klang Festival 2016. Congratulations to Mette Nielsen for the nomination!
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The Carl Prize 2017 winners will be announced on April 24th 2017.

The Furrer album by Uusinta Ensemble and Helsinki Chamber Choir (Toccata Classics 2016) awarded internationally.

The ensemble collaborated with the Helsinki Chamber Choir and its conductor Nils Schweckendiek on an album of Beat Furrer’s music last year. The album has received many awards, listings and acclaiming reviews worldwide.

Awards and nominations:

• Sunday Times:
  100 Best Records of the Year 2016
• The German Schallplattenkritik’s Prize
  “Bestenliste” 4/2016
• Huvudstadsbladet (HBL, one of the main newspapers in Helsinki, Finland):
  The 10 Best Finnish Records of 2016
• YLE (The Finnish Broadcasting Company):
  Record of the year nomination 2016

Reviews:

The Guardian 28.7.2016
“…a hugely attractive collection”
4/5 stars
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Gramophone November 2016 (Peter Quantrill)
“Quiet poise and patience are required both by listeners and by performers, and supplied by the Uusinta Ensemble.”

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Fanfare Magazine Issue 40:3 Jan/Feb 2017 (Maria Nockin)
“Toccata’s pristine sound gives the listener the feeling of having a fifth row center seat in an intimate concert hall…I enjoyed this foray into the avant-garde and think many lovers of new vocal music will want to hear it.”

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Frankfurter Allgemeine 13.2.2017
“The brilliant interpretation by the Uusinta soloists makes the music even more drunk and the listener bewitched”

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Yle Classical Music, New Records 14.10.2016 (Ville Komppa)
“These two ensembles that have broadly taken part in the Finnish music exports lately, the Helsinki Chamber Choir and Uusinta Ensemble, take a very meaningful step with the recording of Beat Furrer’s works for choir and ensemble – and they do it with extraordinary success.”

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Huvudstadsbladet 5.10.2016 (Folke Forsman)
“The Enigma suite is complemented by voices – still, written originally for an instrumental ensemble and later expanded with the choir and a text from Virgil’s Georgica. Furrer treats the instruments as ruthlessly as he treats the human voice, with the timbre as means and ends – different ponticelli (bowing close to the bridge) for the strings and multiphones for the woodwinds.”