Slåttepiano II

Ingfrid Breie Nyhus grew up in a family where Norwegian folk music was all around. It may be in her DNA, but it’s her own imagination, painstaking research and passion that has fashioned this music into something that’s new yet also anchored in tradition. It’s difficult to pull off folk music convincingly on a piano but Nyhus possesses that rare skill. Her tone, her purity of sound, her ravishing ornamentation alone makes this album exceptional, but it really stands out for me because she never loses the essential earthiness, the honesty of traditional tunes.

I can imagine that if Charles Ives (American composer, master of polytonality) had walked in the Setesdal valley this is what he might have written, betwitched by Hardanger fiddle tunes coming at him from different directions, those compelling, hypnotic motifs played over and over again. The extended track ‘Rammepiano III’ is like a journey into a misty fjord, high crags looming above, dripping with rain, and then the sun appears magically from behind dark clouds and the earth-bound harmonies reach upwards. This is music born of the soil with a vision beyond the horizons.