Eldbjørg Hemsing: Arctic
Sony Classical

While Norwegian violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing has performed around the world, never has she sounded more at home than on her Sony debut album Arctic, a stirring musical travelogue she recorded with the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Christian Kluxen in Bodø, a Norwegian town within the Arctic Circle. Aside from The Arctic Suite, Jacob Shea's six-part, twenty-minute opener, the nine other selections are compact, stand-alone pieces lasting two to four minutes at a time, their sometimes plaintive character offset by the folk-inflected irreverence of Frode Fjellheim's The Return of the Sun. The project succeeds in celebrating the breathtaking beauty of the locale; it also acknowledges the threat of climate change on the land's fragile ecosystem. Hemsing knows the area well: she grew up in a small town about 1000 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, which covers an area of approximately 7.7 million square miles—more than twice the size of Australia. As the violinist clarifies in liner notes, the Arctic is misrepresented as stark and uninhabitable when, in fact, it teems with life.

If the album at times plays like a film score (she refers to it as “a soundtrack for a journey in your mind”), it's by design. That Arctic includes material by Shea and Fjellheim, the two separately associated with music created for The Blue Planet and Frozen, merely confirms that notion. Complementing their pieces are works by Ola Gjeillo, James Newton Howard, Selim Palmgren, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Henning Sommerro, Ole Bull, and Edvard Grieg. Shea's suite begins with “Frozen World,” Hemsing immediately making her presence felt with forlorn expressions of ravishing beauty. The orchestra's lustrous playing adds to the splendour of the performance without displacing attention from the soloist, whose riveting voice soars majestically. Whereas “Aurora” teems with susurrations of piano, woodwinds, strings, and, of course, Hemsing's violin, which glides ever so serenely across the delicate base, “A Rush of Life” quickly swells into a dynamic affirmation that despite its brevity leaves no doubt as to the soloist's incredible technical command of her instrument. That aforementioned environmental theme emerges in the suite's closing part, “Sea Ice Melting,” which revisits the opening movement's material but now refashions it as a poignant lament.

February 2023