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Emanuel Vigeland’s mausoleum in the hilly, leafy northern suburbs of Oslo is a
big, windowless, barrel-vaulted space, which one stoops to enter through a low
doorway.
Inside, as the eyes begin to adjust to the very low illumination, one begins to
see that the walls are covered with Vigeland’s murals of writhing naked bodies,
depicting human life from birth to death. But the first revelation is of the
acoustics: the slightest sound initiates a very long reverb, around 13 seconds
at speech frequencies, that’s particularly musical and beautiful because not
only is it smooth but it’s longer for low frequencies than for high, which
makes it wonderfully rich and warm, attaching awesomeness to almost any sound
So it’s a wonderful place to play or sing, if one keeps the music fairly
uncluttered. It hosts occasional concerts, for a small audience (more than
about 20 and the acoustics begin to change), and unsurprisingly this isn’t the
first recording made there. But it suits the ringing strings of solo Hardanger
fiddle very well indeed. Notes overlay one another and become chords,
double-stopping becomes orchestral.
Erlend Apneseth is a leading player of the instrument who, with his trio and
other ensembles (including Frode Haltli’s splendid Avant Folk) crosses the
divide between traditional music, Norway’s distinctive form of atmospheric,
misty jazz that’s a long, long way from New Orleans, and contemporary
classical.
For this album he’s entirely solo, which is the traditional context of
Hardanger fiddle playing, and the building provides the ensemble for his
minimalist playing, which is mostly improvisations but opens with a ‘listening
tune’ from the repertoire of Sigurd Eldegard which, in the way of such tunes,
would have been pretty much improvised by its player. So in effect everything
here carries on that tradition.
Apneseth bows, shuffles and plucks, with his occasional footstamp becoming a
resounding bass drum. He and his fiddle are the sound source, creating a
variety of whispering, keening, moaning, percussive or flurrying sounds that
the acoustics of the Mausoleum receive and develop.
Given the time it takes for the reverb to decay to silence, not all tracks wait
for that to happen; some flow into one another, so if one tries to play just an
individual track it can end abruptly. It’s an album to put on and let flow,
imagining the dark, illustrated cavern of the Mausoleum.
Find the artist online.
Further reading:
Erlend Apneseth Trio
Benedicte Maurseth
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