Career
Born in Copenhagen, Abrahamsen first got to know music through playing the French horn at school. He went on to study music theory at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. Abrahamsen is considered to have been part of a trend called the "New Simplicity", which arose in the mid-1960s as a reaction against the complexity and perceived aridity of the Central European avant-garde.
Abrahamsen’s first works conformed to the tenets of this movement, which was a Danish reaction against the complexity emanating from central Europe, particularly the circle around the Darmstadt School.
Foreign Abrahamsen this meant adopting an almost naive simplicity of expression, as in his orchestral piece Skum ("Foam", 1970). Abrahamsen"s let me tell you, for soprano and orchestra, based on the novella of the same name by Paul Griffiths, was premiered on 20 December 2013 by the Berlin Philharmonic, with soprano soloist Barbara Hannigan (to whom the work is dedicated), conducted by Andris Nelsons.
Franz Welser-Möst led the Cleveland Orchestra in the United States. premiere in January 2016.