A foray into folk is another winner for this Nordic quartet
THE STRAD RECOMMENDS
The Strad Issue: October 2024
Description: A foray into folk is another winner for this Nordic quartet
Musicians: Danish Quartet, Nikolaj Busk (piano) Ale Carr (cittern)
Catalogue number: ECM 4875884
KEEL ROAD
The musicians of the Danish Quartet are carving quite a niche for themselves with discs of inventive but quite classically cool arrangements of traditional tunes. Keel Road is their third album of that ilk: it’s an ambitious undertaking, but the Danish players pull it off with inspired insights and sheer exuberance.
The three Danes and single Norwegian turn to the North Sea for inspiration, and the musical traditions of countries – Denmark and Norway, certainly, but also Sweden, Ireland, England and even the Faroe Islands – linked by that expanse of water. Keel Road explores and reveals musical connections between these regions, and also between centuries’ old tunes and often surprising reimaginings from our own times. It’s far from an academic exercise, though: it’s a cunningly conceived, exquisitely structured collection that brings the Danish players’ classical sensibilities to bear on sometimes raw, rousing melodies.
Watch: The Danish Quartet performs ‘Once a shoemaker’ (featuring a clog fiddle!)
Watch: The Danish Quartet performs ‘Danny Boy’
Watch: Danish Quartet: Last Leaf
There’s an unadorned simplicity, even a sense of contrapuntal ingenuity, to their opener, Turlough O’Carolan’s ‘Mabel Kelly’, and English trad tune ‘Lovely Joan’ (known to many from Vaughan Williams’s Greensleeves Fantasia) gets a spicy reworking in which its melodic richness – intensified by first violinist Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen’s subtle decorations – is offset by icy accompaniment figures.
Swedish citternist Ale Carr is welcomed to the party with the driving rhythms of his own dramatic Stormpolskan, while the collection closes in almost Pärt-like contemplation with Norwegian trad tune ‘Når Mitt Øye, Trett Av Møye’ (‘When My Eyes, Grown Sick of Weeping’). It’s a disc of quiet revelations and arrangements that are as exquisitely crafted as they are captivating, performed with abundant spirit and conviction, and captured in warm, close sound.
DAVID KETTLE
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