Tveitt: A Hundred Hardanger Tunes: Suites 2 & 5 [CD]

This is a simply wonderful disc, featuring two colorful, brilliantly orchestrated, evocative works. The suites have a lot in common, though each stands out (and indeed, they are quite distinguishable from suites 1 and 4, previously released on Naxos). The Fifteen Mountain Songs, Suite No.2, captures an earthy, bawdy, yet unimistakably supernatural world. They provide a fitting soundtrack to any collection of Scandinavian folk tales, with subjects ranging from Mountain cattle-calls (a particularly haunting piece) to "Beard ablaze," which depicts a humorous folk anecdote. The orchestration is phenomenal, hardly the monochromatic textures of Grieg, but much closer to Ravel at his finest--Daphnis et Chloe, for example. Listen to track number 9, "Do you hear the song in the waterfall's roar?" where Tveitt conjures up a sublime orchestral waterfall, yet manages to balance it carefully enough so that, if you listen carefully, a haunting melody emerges behind it.

Troll Tunes, Suite no.5, conjures up the world of fairy tales and magic more explicitly, but this is not your typical elvish fair. His sound world is much darker, yet infinitely more "magical" in the best sense. Each piece brings a new texture, a new mood, and a new surprise. A personal favorite is track number 20, "the Changeling," which grows in intensity and orchestral effects.

Again, Naxos really deserves credit for unearthing such wonderful music. Its neglect is astonishing, since they would make wonderful showpieces for any orchestra, as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra proves. Bjarte Engeset's conducting is first rate, and the sounds he coaxes out of his winning orchestra will remain a treasured CD for quite some time. If you're curious about Tveitt, enjoy Scandinavnian music, and have a penchant for fairy tales, this might be the disc for you.

Tveitt will soon become a phenomenon like Gorecki. But his music is better. Unique. Conservative and radical. Highly sophisticated and naively primitive. I was bowled over by Tveitt's orchestrations, and the depth of his simplicity.

The Suite #2 is the best, an absolute must for lovers of the rough outdoors. Tveitt's depiction of a waterfall in one number must be heard to be believed. The performance and sonics are superb. At Naxos prices--this is a free diamond.

Do not hesitate!

I strongly recommend this disc. One encounters the odd name of Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981) with some frequency nowadays, as producers of "classical music" on compact disc explore the roads less traveled of modern repertory. Tveitt, a Norwegian, shares a musical language with two of his landsmen-contemporaries, Eivind Groven and Harald Saeverud. Each draws immediately on the Norse folk-idiom; none is aggressively modern in the sense that he writes deliberately ugly music although Saeverud absorbed certain rhythmic gestures from Stravinsky and of the three he dared the most in his style (because he dared the most acerbic harmonies). Tveitt and Groven remained tied to a national romanticism stemming from Grieg, Halvorsen, and Sinding; they learned from Bartok how to exploit the motifs or constituent "germs" inherent in a folk-melos to create real development in convincing large-scale musical structures. Both exploited the same niche within Norwegian folk music, the deeply seated and melodically rich tradition associated with the region around Hardanger Fjord, the folklore heart of the country. In scores like "Hjalarljod" ("Shouting from the Hills") and "Brudgommen" ("The Bridegroom") Groven can make the string section of an orchestra sound like a gigantic Hardanger fiddle. The prolific Tveitt went Groven one better and wrote two concertos (recently recorded by BIS) especially for this peculiarly Norwegian instrument. He also wrote a series of orchestral "Suites" based on similar regional material under the collective title "One Hundred Hardanger Tunes." Like Groven, Tveitt often uses the orchestra to imitate the sounds of the folk instruments. Of the six suites, two perished in a 1971 house fire that burnt most of the composer's many manuscripts, but the others were preserved either in autograph score kept elsewhere or through reconstruction from providential sketches and parts. Naxos has now released the four extant "Suites." The new disc programs Numbers Two and Five of the series. The form that Tveitt adopts in these works is simple but unusual. He deploys the tunes consecutively, making each the subject of a section of the whole, but the articulations are so smooth, and the tunes so closely related in their outlines and feelings, that the unfolding music makes an impression of continuity and development. At the same time, the music can be quite pictorial or programmatic. Each "Suite" has a name. Suite Number Two bears the moniker "Fifteen Mountain Songs" and Number Five "Troll-Tunes." Both "Fifteen Mountain Songs" and "Troll-Tunes" emphasize the grotesque aspect of Norwegian folklore. "Fifteen Mountain Songs" has the same outline as Strauss' "Alpine Symphony": a trek up the mountain, from the summit of which the observer then looks out on the prospect. There is vivid nature painting, much Norwegian vernacular yodeling, and quirky, lurching rhythms reminiscent of the Icelander Jon Leifs. "Troll-Tunes" is a degree or two more macabre: in Scandinavia trolls are not the dwarfish dolls collected by American children; they're impish, untrustworthy, downright dangerous denizens of mountain and forest. No one in his right mind would have anything to do with them. Here, Tveitt alternates mysterious slow movements with grotesque scherzos: the episodic sequence of movements should result in an impression of starting and stopping, but it does not. There are echoes of Edvard Grieg, naturally enough, but echoes only. In fact, in comparison with Tveitt, Grieg seems to have worked in picture postcards, the hazy photography of which softens all edges and shows everything in a too-sweet light; Tveitt understands that folk music is rude and hard, all the more so in reflecting the ethos of the Norwegian fjords, where life could be severe. These works are modern, Nordic-flavored counterparts of the regionally inflected orchestral suites composed by audience-friendly artists such as Jules Massenet or Joachim Raff. They are "minor works," but of the first class, and well worth the investment. Tveitt more than deserves his rediscovery by record collectors. Look for his Variations on a Norwegian Folksong for Two Piano and Orchestra and his Piano Concerto No. 4, "Aurora Borealis," also on Naxos.