Customer Reviews

Geirr Tveitt: A Hundred Hardanger Tunes, Suites Nos. 1 & 4

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Beauty, laughter, longing, drunken revelry - all of these and more are expressed in the wonderful music of Geirr Tveitt. The Hardanger Tunes are very interesting in this regard, having unusual titles such as "Lament for an empty brandy keg" or "Braggart's Ballad". In these songs is the essence of humanity as Tveitt saw it: nature's beauty, love's heartbreak, pain, and warmth, the drunkard's foolishness, and the world's chaos.

The music is distinctly Norwegian, making extensive use of fifths and having at times a rustic feel which paints an authentic picture of the countryside in which he grew up. But more important is the variety that he expresses: emotions such as grief and longing, jesting and drunken laughter, distant echoes of melodies, and many other tales are told here. Atonality and dischordance arise to express even more, but are used sparingly.

The conducting is excellent, conveying Tveitt's character beautifully. The orchestra responds wonderfully, leaving nothing to be desired. And the recording quality is perfect, with a good sense of space, but not too much reverberation. I don't have any other recordings to reference this with (I believe this is one of the only recordings existant now), but believe that the music is conveyed without distraction or fault.

I highly recommend this recording to any classical music-lover.

I penned copious notes while repeatedly listening to this CD but I'm forsaking those detailed observations to simply speak of this wonderful music in more general terms.

I originally grabbed music by Tveitt, (on the general recommendation of works by this composer by knowledgeable Classical Music enthusiasts here on Amazon), so I could enjoy some Hardanger fiddle solos subsequent to first hearing this fascinating folk instrument on the soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition), the music for which is available in its entirety here: The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers (The Complete Recordings), which I also highly recommend.

But if there exists any rendering of Hardanger fiddle within this particular music, it's certainly not very overt. Rather, these are superb orchestral suites derived from the Hardanger *region* of Western Norway... and what marvellous music it is!

Over his lifetime, Tveitt collected traditional folk songs from his home region, eventually transforming many of them into larger orchestral works, much in the spirit of Dvorak's and Smetana's interests in such worthy tasks. They are Hardanger [region] *tunes* but not actually conveyed as Hardanger *fiddle* pieces. The two Suites, played artfully by a superb orchestra in this instance, are atmospheric and ethereal throughout -- if you enjoy the wandering symphonic poems of Scriabin, Dvorak, Debussy, and so on, then you'll much savor this magnificent pairing of Classical works.

100 tunes? Not really, but Tveitt probably extrapolated to some degree from at least 100 such nationalistic folk works, (perhaps at times only a two-note counterpoint idea from one or another), which ultimately culminated in these two masterpieces. Most Classical Music enthusiasts will already know that Tveitt tragically lost most of his written compositions in a raging house fire but here we have two treasures which managed to survive that untimely disaster.

In summary, I have never been more pleased with a blind purchase of orchestral music from a minor composer, (albeit, Tveitt was as competent and as formally well-trained as they come.) If your objective is to actually take in some terrific Hardanger fiddle music, here's the CD that you want: Hardanger Fiddle Concertos. And if you're inclined toward this genre of Classical Music you will be equally gratified with either CD, I'm sure.

My highest recommendation.

The story about the disaster that hit Geirr Tveitt in the early seventies, when a fire at his farm consumed most of his huge output (some say about 75 % of it, but several works once presumed lost have resurfaced later) leaving the composer a broken man for the rest of his life, is by now rather well known. Both Naxos and BIS have recorded the suites nos 1, 2, 4 and 5 from the Hundrade Hardingtoner ("100 Folk Tunes ..." is something of a mistranslation, since "hundrade" is apparently used as a generic term for "many" - there isn't, and was never intended to be, exactly 100 of them), and it should hence be mentioned that the missing suite no. 3 was (probably) not a casualty of that fire - it has probably never existed at all. If you don't know them already, I urge you to rush out and acquire them, for these suites contain a selection of outstanding musical gems, masterpieces even, and while the performances on BIS and Naxos have different virtues (the BIS ones coming across as slightly preferable, perhaps, but also more expensive), they are uniformly excellent, and no one who acquires either set will come away disappointed.

The "Folk Tunes" are, at least for the most part, Tveitt's own, superbly scored and full of life, vitality and color. Stylistically, and as a pointer to those who aren't familiar with the composer, a first approximation might perhaps be a cross between Grieg and Bartók, with some Ravel-like and Szymanowski-like otherworldliness thrown in - but Tveitt is really his own man, and the music has a very distinctive character. Throughout the pieces here you can almost literally see the mountain tops and fjords covered in hazy morning light, smell and hear the cold, fresh glacial water running over rocks and through steep meadows, the sun glisten on the morning dew, the tranquil lushness of a quiet summer twilight, joy and laughter and sadness of rural revelry around the bonfire, wisps of legends and fairytales and the faint, half-imagined sound of trolls and hidden folk working deep beneath the earth - but there is a smoldering fire running through this picturesque music as well, in addition to the superbly realized colorful, moods and atmospheres. And in addition Tveitt's sure grasp of form and counterpoint is never in doubt either, and the level of invention and inventive formal and textural touches in these miniatures is never less than breathtaking.

There are several motivic connections between the various colorful movements of the first suite, and the whole selection comes across as something of an ingeniously constructed set of variations. The fourth, the `Wedding suite' (or `Nuptials') has something of the character of a symphonic poem; throughout the at various times dreamlike melancholy and joyful (sometimes drunk) chattering between participants of the wedding party there is a fine and subtle motivic thread building up to something akin to a symphonic culmination.

The performances by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Bjarte Engeset are truly marvelous; colorful, dramatic and brilliant, bringing out the vitality and variegated characteristics of the various numbers (maybe, to a certain extent, at the expense of the almost other-worldly haunting enchantment of the Ruud versions on BIS). The sound quality is fabulous as well, and all in all this set is urgently recommended.

Tveitt. A great composer, pianist and a political extremist.

Like many Norwegian composers and writers of his time, he was attracted to the Nazi installed Quisling regime.

But who cares? One day, his beloved farm -a farm that his family held for 300 years- burnt to the ground. And it was, in its way, a horrible holocaust. However, he probably didn't know of the Holocaust designed and put into operation by his admired Nazis about 25 years earlier. He lived on his isolate homestead.

What about his music? It is ravishing, beguiling and plumbs the almost medieval sounds of Western Norwegian folk music. These Hardanger Tunes not only expose his deep connection to the core of Western Norwegian folk music tradition, they give us a feeling for a way of life and a culture that has passed away.

If you attentively listen, you will hear something of what he still connected to...and that is now gone. Those farms and peasant communities have disappeared.

Though Norway possesses great 20th century visual artists, the medieval vision that Tveitt expresses in these Hardanger Tunes is emotionally related to the paintings of Breugal (father and son) and Bosch.

The peasant scenes painted by the above masters depict almost all of the emotions, behaviors and symbolic world of these folk. And they show us those things that are now missing from our lives (at least in the heavily urbanized nations).

The paintings unashamedly display the apparent "crudeness" and "primitiveness" of this vanished culture as does Tveitt. That is part of the reason I believe that the listener is enchanted and seduced by this music. We are beguiled as is the cobra to the chanting pipe.

Each time you listen to Tveitt's Hardanger Tunes, let the playful and haunting sounds of lost folk societies seep into the repressed parts of your soul...the soul created by your peasant forebearers that lived for thousands of years.

And they are rapidly leaving us; what are we replacing their world with? I believe that is the question that Tveitt asked and he could only answer it by believing in a form of political extremism most of us, today, cannot comprehend.

Last, none of the other reviewers seem to name the master and teacher that helped open Tveitt to both an authentic feeling for the mysteries of natural grandeur, and to the inner-life of his people's folk culture. Who am I writing about? Of course, Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Like Tveitt, Villa-Lobos willingly served an autocrat (though Vargas was much more humane than Hitler). But he also explored the music of tribal people, street musicians and peasant farmers. I think Villa-Lobos not only opened Tveitt up to this rapidly dying world, but he also sparked in Tveitt the same fluency, love of orchestral color and texture and creative abundance Villa-Lobos possessed.

If you love the authentic and honest musical world that Tveitt creates (especially as represented by this NAXOS recording of the Handanger Tunes), you must eventually visit the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos.

Although Tveitt lived in the 20th century, his music sometimes feels like it could have come from the end of the 19th. His "Hundred Hardanger Tunes" often reminded me of Mussorgsky's "Pictures from an Exhibition" in that the piece is full of short tunes invoking national flavor and a wide variety of moods and pictorial scenes. His sense of orchestration is superb and is in a style all his own, and it's obvious that he treated the tunes he collected with a great deal of love.

I like to try out previously unheard of composers. This CD is essentially a song cycle, though completely instrumental.

Even the "wedding suite" strikes me as a series of short compositions. Mostly has a light feel to it, but not at all sappy. Strong compostions throughout.