Alde

Alde, meaning ‘swell’ in English, perfectly sums up the feel of this debut solo album from Hardanger fiddle player Benedicte Maurseth. Maurseth’s playing has been likened to early and Baroque music and it’s easy to see why. While evoking a very pure style of folk, she also manages to capture something of the spirit of early music in tracks like ‘Gamle Gunnar’ and ‘Alida’. With a wonderful sense of pace and phrasing, Alde flows with ease and grace from track to track. All the tunes on the album were composed by Maurseth herself, and many were originally written to accompany the Norwegian Theatre’s production of Wakefulness by playwright Jon Fosse. Exploring the dynamics of Fosse’s language, Maurseth paints pictures in sound that ebb and flow. ‘Bon’ opens the album and is immediately demanding of attention, a potency that’s sutained throughout. Particularly noteworthy is the poignant tune ‘Til Knut’, which cleverly and with great subtlety intertwines the voice with the fiddle so that you’re unsure where one begins and the other ends.

The title-track encapsulates the entire album in its eerie use of harmonics and silence: it is ethereal, progressive, reflective. Fosse describes Hardanger fiddle music as music that takes care of the dead and with the undeniable haunting qualities so prevalent on Alde, it is hard to disagree.