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Written in fRoots issue 287, 2007
 

STRING SISTERS
Live!
Heilo HCD 7200 (2007)

SUSANNE LUNDENG
Nattevåk
Kirkelig Kulturverksted FXCD 310 (2006)

For Celtic Connections festival in 2001 Shetland fiddler Catriona Macdonald assembled a band of top female fiddlers from Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia and the USA. It was a great success and they played again at the 2002 festival, but since then they’ve only been able to re-gather a couple of times: for this year’s Celtic Connections and for a tour of Norway in 2005.
      This CD is a live recording, on the Norwegian label Heilo, from that tour. (There’s a DVD of the same show, too; it wasn’t sent for review with the CD, but there’s a YouTube clip at www.stringsisters.com).
      The fiddle line-up is Altan’s Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Emma Härdelin of Swedish band Garmarna, Norwegian Annbjørg Lien on hardingfele, US-Irish fiddlers Liz Carroll and Liz Knowles, and Catriona herself. They’re joined by Norwegian guitarist Tore Bruvoll and from Scotland pianist David Milligan, drummer James Mackintosh, and Conrad Ivitsky on plucked and bowed double bass.
      From less inspired and collaborative musicians one might expect some kind of big fiddling jam, but the reality is a proper album, a wonderfully varied set of material, songs as well as tunes, from a well arranged orchestra with a sound of remarkable and satisfying richness in gorgeous slow material and exuberant, huge-sounding but always pin-sharp high-energy numbers. The fiddlers take harmonising and counterpoint lines, and the band blend in to form a ten-piece orchestral unit; the guys don’t just provide backing but rise through the fiddles to add further tone colours and take solos. In the classical world it would have a conductor, but no need for that here; spot-on timing is what great fiddlers are used to doing, and drummer Mackintosh and bassist Ivitsky provides any time cues necessary.
      All contribute material, both traditional and composed, for example a warmly lyrical treatment of a Macdonald contribution, Da Trowie Burn, flowing into the hypnotically pulsing reiterative phrases of Liz Carroll’s Scottish-sounding The Fly And Dodger, or Annbjørg’s atmospheric hardingfele leading into veiled, mysterious, treatment of a Swedish chorale from the islands off Estonia, Saviour of the World, sung by Emma, segueing into a Gaelic song, Gabha Molta Bride from Mairéad.
      Whereas collaborative projects can be less than the sum of their parts, this one is more, much more. Magnificent.

      Seen all too rarely over here in the UK, but a few years back playing at Celtic Connections, and touring with Folkworks’ "Fiddle Fever", and this year involved in the Sage’s April "Fiddles on Fire" event, is Susanne Lundeng, a fiddler of great individuality and transfixing onstage energy who lives on one of the tiniest of Norway’s Lofoten Islands. Some years ago she, Catriona Macdonald and Annbjørg Lien were briefly a trio, and they have a kinship in excellence of playing, tone, creativity and the making of albums that are much more than mere strings of fiddle tunes.
      On her sixth album Nattevåk all the tunes bar one are her own compositions, and they’re as strong and memorable as the melodies of the tradition which she continues and enhances. Not that, apart from the fiddle, there’s anything in the approach, arrangement or instrumentation that would be considered traditional in a kappleik competition. Arnfinn Bergrabb’s drums and subtle electronics pat, thud and clatter in an open, responsive un-hidebound way in conjunction with Trond-Viggo Solås’s double bass and arranger Håvar Bendiksen’s guitar, mandolin and accordion; the band doesn’t pin down with chords or straitjacketing rhythms the free flight of Lundeng’s fiddle. The fiddle generally leads, but for Da Før Var Nu she subordinates it to ethereal vocals blending as an instrument with Bendiksen’s liquid electric guitar and Solås’s velvety double bass.
      Lundeng’s is beautiful, varied and very personal music that, by the way, gives the lie to any assumption that Nordic fiddle musics are a close relative of the Celtic corpus; while of course there are some shared sensibilities and increasing interpersonal connections, most of this is very far from mandola-strummed 6/8 or 4/4.
      www.grappa.no, www.kkv.no


© 2007 Andrew Cronshaw



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