Recording of the Month – May 2016
The title of Swedish clarinettist Martin Fröst’s Sony Classical debut says it all while implying so much more. Growing out of a live music project Fröst was already working on in Stockholm, Roots is an entirely organic listening experience, resembling (not so much contemplating) an ancient, solitary tree but strolling through a fragrant garden where a profusion of different plants brings forth flowers and fruits in eclectic abundance.
Apart from Crusell’s famous Introduction and Variations on a Swedish Air and specially commissioned works by Anders Hillborg, the rest of the music here has undergone multiple metamorphoses, whether through transcription, arrangement, variation, improvisation or a new setting. Unfolding chronologically through time and space, the programme seamlessly connects each work by avoiding spaces between tracks; implicit is the invitation to find further connections in a shared heritage of dance and song, sacred ritual and secular entertainment, as well as folk and art music.
Roots opens gently with Hildegard of Bingen, Fröst’s solo clarinet gliding between declamation and song before choir and orchestra enter almost surreptitiously; the following presto from a Telemann concerto originally for recorder and flute thus feels like a rude but not unwelcome wrenching back down to the garden of earthlier delights.
Thus is the binary pattern of a contrasting between reverie and revelry set, though with a frequent blending of the two, as in the very next track, a sedately introduced yet eventually raucous Klezmer dance from Göran Fröst.
There are haunting arrangements of psalms by Hans Ek and Manuel de Falla’s Nana (No 7 from the Canciones Populares Espanolas), radiant in its simplicity, as well as a slow Hungarian Dance No 14 from Brahms and a yearning Langsam from Schumann. Anders Hillborg’s Hymn of Echoes combines long-breathed tones with pointillistic figures, while Georgs Pele¯cis’ luxuriant All in the Past ends as we began. But not before Schumann, Bartók, Piazzolla et al. revel in the spirit of dance, folk, blues, tango or otherwise.
It will come as no surprise to those familiar with Fröst’s artistry in more standard repertoire that his playing here is as technically immaculate, his tone as mellifluous, as ever; what is different here is the improvisatory freedom, the experimenting with self-accompanying techniques such as vocalisations and percussion and the spiritual intensity with which he invests passages introverted and ecstatic alike. The equally superb contributions by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and The Adolf Fredrik’s Girls Choir are the icing on the cake. Oh, and Sony’s sumptuous recorded sound.
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