Here are five piano trios, spanning 111 years, written by four high-profile Danish composers. Imagine Hindemith’s pan-tonal harmonic world reinterpreted in starker, bolder terms, and you’ll get an inkling of the declamatory rigor and genuine substance that holds your attention throughout Vagn Holmboe’s Op. 64. However, the composer’s later Nuigen is more original in form and content. Its three main movements are akin to looking at the same rugged landscape at different times of the day. The first two movements are followed by delicate intermezzos that make haunting use of muted strings and unison melodies in octaves.
Per Norgård’s Spell is built from repeated figures that independently and unpredictably weave in and out of the texture at different tempos, creating a phase shifting effect you might associate with early Steve Reich or Terry Riley’s In C, although the harmonic language is anything but “minimal”. This remarkable piece seems much shorter than its 16-and-a-half-minute duration. By contrast, Anders Nordentoft’s Doruntine, at eight minutes, crawls in slow, long-lined motion. The 18-year-old Carl Nielsen’s trio sounds like fake Haydn (and good fake Haydn!), hardly hinting at the composer’s original style to come. The Ondine Trio presents stylish, compelling cases for each work, and all are superbly recorded. You can take issue with violinist Erik Heide’s occasionally wobbly vibrato, but that’s nitpicking. Recommended, especially for the Holmboe and Norgård.
