opis
Four orchestral suites of fifteen pieces survive the 1970 fire, Suite No. 3 among the missing. Naxos 8.555078 contrasts Suite No. 4, telling a fifteen-chapter wedding story, with No. 1, whose diversity mirrors the fifty piano folk-tunes. The remaining two suites recorded here have no narrative, but are unified by their themes: the musical Hardanger unity of mountain life, reality and mysticism, the natural and the supernatural.
Suite No. 2, Fifteen Mountain Songs, opens on the Hardangervidda: a reindeer hunter sighs Far, far across the fells to Turid - "her song will ease sadness"; a boy has lost his love: bereft, he wanders With wolves and reindeer in the upland storm. In the children’s rhyme Hen, hound, cow and horse Tveitt had fun finding the best instruments for the animal sounds. •
So Tveitt’s Fifth Suite, Troll-tunes, travels deeper into that netherworld: fount, in folklore, of "true tones". To tune up, try "Troll-tuning": the decorative Hardanger folk-fiddle has extra, sympathetic, under-strings and multitudinous tunings - this one sounds eerie, for "real", unearthly music.