Danish String Quartet (Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and Frederik Øland, violins; Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola’; Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, cello); Nikolaj Busk, piano; Ale Carr, cittern.
Turlough O’CAROLAN: Mabel Kelly
Danish traditional : Pericondine
Rune Tonsgaard SØRENSEN: Fair Isle Jig
Ale CARR: Stormpolskan
Danish traditional: En Skomager Har Jeg Været
Rune Tonsgaard SØRENSEN: Once A Shoemaker
English traditional: Lovely Joan
Turlough O’CAROLAN: Carolan’s Quarrel With The Landlady
Faroese traditional: Regin Smidur
Turlough O’CAROLAN: Captain O’Kane
Fredrik Schøyen SJÖLIN: Kjølhalling
Turlough O’CAROLAN: Planxty Kelly
English traditional: As I Walked Out
Danish traditional: Marie Louise
Fredrik Schøyen SJÖLIN & Rune Tonsgaard SØRENSEN: The Chat
Rune Tonsgaard SØRENSEN: Gale Warning
Norwegian traditional: Når Mitt Øye, Trett Av Møye
ECM 4875884
Formats: CD, vinyl, digital
Release Date: August 30, 2024
Total Duration: 51 minutes
Giorgio Koukl | 23 SEP 2024
During their career, the Danish String Quartet (violinists Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and Frederik Øland, violist Asbjørn Nørgaard, and cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin) have frequently mingled into the world of folk tunes, where they find inspiration and a friendly substrate where they can let their art grow and flourish.
ECM 4875884 (click to enlarge)
This time, we are taken on an imaginary Atlantic ocean trip, which, as mentioned in the booklet, was the first road uniting people so different as Icelandic, Irish, or Scandinavian.
The goal of this ECM album, called Keel Road, is a creation of emotion. As their typical house style is pretty stable in obtaining such a result, the listener certainly gets what he is awaiting: a total immersion into different Celtic tunes, skillfully arranged for a string quartet with occasional help of other instruments such as piano, clog fiddle, cittern and using every imaginable sound engineer trick to render the whole as smooth as possible. So we can listen to a historical tune sung by a fisherman, transformed into a nice if short score, we can listen to a sad Icelandic tune mixed with rain sound and we can even enjoy the quartet members whistling and stomping in a precision near to perfect.
But even if the smallest detail is tuned to perfection, the whole CD nevertheless risks keeling over (to use the seaman’s slang) because of the enormous amount of similar products already on the market and the difficulty of emerging with something substantially new. These are no longer the times when Kronos Quartet emerged over 30 years ago as something revolutionary and disturbingly new.
The idea of using folk music has been widely exploited in the past. Folk music often uses modes and scales that differ from classical music, like pentatonic scales, which many composers borrowed. It often features complex and irregular rhythms (such as in Slavic, Hungarian, or Balkan music), which classical composers adopted to add vitality and variety to their compositions. In this sense, Dvorak, Strawinski, or Chopin are easy examples.
Folk dances (like polka, mazurka, tarantella) provided classical composers with new structures for orchestral and chamber music. Folk music was often a way to express national identity, especially during the Romantic period when nationalism became an important cultural and political force in Europe.
Folk music’s influence allowed classical composers to connect with their cultural roots, bring freshness and originality to their music, and create works that were both sophisticated and accessible to a broader audience.
All this is to say that a wide use of folk-song material and its translation into classical structures is a common good and has been mastered extensively.
Today, taking a song from, let’s say, a remote British isle and transcribing it for a string quartet can be extremely tricky. Well, even if it is not specified who exactly is the author of these transcriptions, the way they are done is a strong point for this album. There is never a feeling of overdone accentuation or too bland treatment of a melody; the way of adapting the bowing technique, especially for the first violin, is top-class and respectful of the musical material. What is sometimes lacking is the sense of dance. After all, this music was intended to create a common joyful atmosphere, and here, the Danish String Quartet is a hint too cool.
But this slight lack in performance is more than outweighed by an astonishing precision, powerful sense of color, and imaginative use of counterpoint.
Perhaps this group of gifted musicians is not ideal for playing Beethoven, but what they deliver on this ECM CD will undoubtedly find its admirers and fans. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Danish String Quartet: danishquartet.com
Read more by Giorgio Koukl.
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