Aros Guitar Duo: In Time
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Visit Aarhus, one of Denmark's oldest cities, and you'll no doubt hear “In vernalis temporis,” the theme written more than 500 years ago by Morten Børup, intoning from its city hall bell tower when the clock strikes the hour, just as it's done since 1948. For classical guitarists Simon Wildau and Mikkel Egelund, who named themselves Aros Guitar Duo (Aros being the old norse name for Aarhus) after their hometown, the melody is so familiar it's now for them, like other residents, the sound of the city. Even more pointedly, it became the catalyst for the six works that were written for the duo between 2018 and 2021 and make up their Aros Guitar Duo debut release. Wildau and Egelund have played together for fifteen years, and it shows in the precision and poise of the album performances. The way they artfully embroider their instruments and the fluidity of their playing impress throughout. Their histories also overlap: both studied at The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus as students of Frederik Munk Larsen, and the two made their chamber music debut in the soloist class at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen as Aros Guitar Duo.

It's fitting that In Time opens with Asger Agerskov Buur's I foråret (In the spring) as it was this composition that prompted the writing of the other five. After Aros Guitar Duo premiered the piece in 2018, the idea for an entire concert programme built around works featuring Børup's theme came to the duo and facilitated the project's development. Adding to the concept's appeal, the melody is handled differently from one work to the next: in some, it's quoted directly, in others it's alluded to in fragments and played backwards and forwards. Needless to say, the project holds extra meaning for the composers when they, like the guitar duo, have personal ties to Aarhus. The material Buur, Martin Lohse, Peter Bruun, Rasmus Zwicki, John Frandsen, and Wayne Siegel created for the duo constitutes a fascinating aural portrait of the city and attests to its diversity of creative expression.

I foråret (In the spring) introduces the album with a gently lilting pulse, repeating patterns, and melodic gestures that unfold with patient deliberation and reference the Børup theme audibly. In this twelve-minute exploration, single-note accents suggest the “tick-tock” of a timepiece, while the clock melody emerges in a series of variations, some starkly arranged and others elaborate and densely woven. Moments of delicate stillness alternate with propulsive episodes in a folk-classical tapestry that commands the attention. The entrancing ebb-and-flow of Lohse's Ver pulls the listener into its lyrical world immediately and proves a wonderful showcase for the duo's precise fretwork. Again the Børup melody emerges but here embedded within a swoon-inducing setting whose rhythms, guitar techniques, and stylistic gestures present the music in a constant state of evolution. Bruun's Dark is November instantly distances itself from the others in beginning with bluesy slide figures that gradually morph into a dramatic, side-long voicing of the Børup theme. Aggressive strums also push the material into a rock direction to amplify the separation even more.

At the outset of Zwicki's In Time, the guitars form a dense blur that slowly separates into overlapping fingerpicking, with fragments of the Børup melody emerging intermittently within the playing. As the guitarists return to the material with changes in tempo, dynamics, and counterpoint, the feeling's created of seasons relentlessly passing and the years slip-sliding away. The generous twelve-minute running-time enables Zwicki's poetic reverie to slow almost imperceptibly until it reaches a stage where it seems ready to expire. Frandsen's Rollercoaster is aptly titled for the energy with which it unfolds. Animated by an ever-steady pulse and with the melody occasionally sneaking into the performance, it impresses as a showcase for the virtuosity of the guitarists (and don't miss the rapid to-and-fro that brings the work to its climactic close). Siegel's rousing Vernalis' Breakdown couples the retired professor's fascination with five-string banjo and classical guitar. Don't be caught off-guard, then, when it switches from a graceful classical part to a hoedown powered by American bluegrass licks—not a bad way to end the recording either.

May 2024