The opening track, “Dans,” sets the tone: voice and plucked violin, the piano tentatively entering, before the music gradually opens up and blooms, just two instruments and a voice taking on the sweep of an orchestra.

The instrumentation might be pared down, but the sound is remarkably full, even on the instrumentals, like Haugaard’s “Boy Under Lime Tree,” four and a half minutes of calmness and bliss, where the fiddle line simply floats over piano chords like a dream suspended, then the delicate keyboard lines dance; it’s quite magical as they combine in cadences that hint at a connection between Denmark and Ireland. Like the majority of pieces on the album, it comes from the pens of Ophav’s members; “Opstandelsen” is an old composition of Blum’s, for instance, while Møller is responsible for five of the 18 cuts here.

Mixed in with the originals are three songs by Carl Nielsen, Denmark’s most famous composer, who wrote over 300 songs in his illustrious career, many of them now part of the national repertoire. In probably the best of the three here, “Tit Er Jeg Glad” focuses on piano and voice, with violin offering a haunting obbligato under the main melody.

More than 20 years into her career, Blum still has a transcendent voice, and here it’s presented in a different frame, where things are more angular, sometimes even bony. But she handles it majestically. Yet she never dominates; she’s simply one-third of the small ensemble playing here. The three musicians on this album are in a conversation with each other and with the music. All superb, but with no reason to demonstrate any pyrotechnics. It’s an album where the song is everything.

It might not be as straightforward as other music Haugaard and Blum have released, but it’s a beautiful, satisfying and remarkably intriguing digression.

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