"The best Bassoonist in the world" he has been named by conductor Ingemar Månsson, Knut Sönstevold, first basson player of the Swedish Radio Symphonic Orchestra. He has been concerning himself with contemporary music, both as instrumentalist and as a composer all his active musical life. Now he presents chamber music pieces by Karlheinz Stockhausen, pieces Knut played many times, all with great success and amazing skill: Tierkreis, Spiral, Solo and In Freundschaft. This technically very intricate music is also good representatives of the experimental views on composing during the 70:s. Listen with Real Audio for uninterupted replay: K Stockhausen: from Tierkreis [ .ra 219 Kb, reduced quality, mono ] Listen to all nosag CDs on the air: "YESS music" with the whole CD-catalogue of nosag records

THE CRITICS:

Fanfare Magazine:
"In Freundschaft: In concert, Stockhausen requests that the musician dress in a teddy-bear suit, and some onstage movement is also suggested; listening to Sönstevold´s lyrical version, one can almost visualize the choreography. Solo: The instruction in the score that asks the player to create three unconventional timbres from the instrument as well as three degrees of ´noisiness´ suits the bassoon well, and this is as valid and interesting a performance of the score as I have heard. Spiral: Sönstevold creates a convincing, if not conventionally coherent, musical experience, extracting a more expansive palette of sounds and colors from the bassoon than in the other works here."

SvD:
"Sönstevold finds and makes obvious the art of the German composer as a complex pattern of scratchy, almost ugly and raw clang together with a lyrical warmth. In Freundschaft is an almost romantic monologue sounding related to the most beautiful songs of Mendelssohn and Schumann (---) Sönstevold is an interpreter with a secure tone, stabile sense of form, where other musicians played Stockhausen as a flipped out adventurer."

SonoLoco: "On this CD from Nosag the two are combined; the demon bassoonist and the angel composer – and the result is radiant! This is an important CD with innovative works by the most important composer of the 20th century – Karlheinz Stockhausen -, interpreted by one of the foremost virtuosos of the bassoon; Knut Sönstevold." (Read the whole rewiew at SonoLoco Home page)