by Robert Leeper
Last Thursday at (le) Poisson Rouge, the excellent American Contemporary Ensemble presented music by Danish composers. Titled “Nordic Noir,” the three pieces on the short program evoked expansive landscapes and shards of memory or sound. Behind the quartet, two large video monitors gave visual representation to the music – hypnagogic images of rain spattering a window, or a giant blinking eye.
Carsten Bo Eriksen’s five movement Memory Pieces consisted of works written in 2014 and 2016 re-contextualized to be movements of a single piece. The work calls to mind a quilt of fragmented stories and barely remembered histories, beginning with dissonant tones in the piano unfolding over a string motif that increased with a gentle insistence. The beguiling harmonies and descending chord progressions were beautiful. The recorded sounds of wind, presumably whipping across Danish landscapes, created a distinctive atmosphere.
In Frans Bak’s Music of the North, the ACME string quartet was awash in electronic manipulations creating a unique, richly textured atmosphere. Dense chords and swiftly flowing melodies were presented as re-imagined themes from his work as composer for the TV crime dramas The Killing and Doctor Foster.
Ejnar Kanding’s Sensitive Shades was a patchwork of noises, cries and ululations from the strings, interwoven with dark electronic bass lines. At times it was more lyrical, with plaintive, folk-tinged lines stretched over somber, spare accompaniments. ACME ably traversed a spectrum of emotions, from languid introspection to fevered intensity, with gorgeous tone and an intensity that brought the concert to an exciting end.