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...