Helga is the Norwegian Hardanger fiddler-vocalist Helga Myhr who works in the field of folk music and contemporary and experimental music. Tanja is the fellow Norwegian cellist-musicologist-educator-compose Tanja Orning who is active primarily in the fields of contemporary and experimental music. Klangkorpus is their debut album as a duo, after collaborating before in larger ensembles like Sigurd Hole’s Roraima.

Myhr and Orning create on Klangkorpus one sonic entity, as the title of the album suggests, using multiple extended bowing techniques in their free improvised pieces to push the sonic palettes of the traditional Hardanger fiddle and the cello to their most extreme terrains. Often it is impossible to know who is doing what and in which bowing technique. The music sounds otherworldly and untimely, often quite abstract and sometimes even industrial-like, but flows in a deep organic manner. As the enigmatic pieces of Klangkorpus progress, its atmosphere shifts from the more experimental and sound-oriented pole toward the more introspective, lyrical and even melodic textures and drones.

The deep listening dynamics and the obvious affinity of such imaginative and fearless sonic explorers create tangible soundscapes where strings intertwine like a shared climbing plant, forming sonic sculptures that can be heard, seen, smelled, and felt. A sound corpus, as Audun Vinger called it in his liner notes. You may feel that words can not express the full captivating sonic experience of Klangkorpus and it may be better described by using the mysterious, intelligible poetic titles of pieces like «Arpeggiåså» or «Trilltrall».

The cover artwork is the painting «Maler1» by the Norwegian contemporary painter Mari Slaattelid. Myhr and Orning played at the re-opening of the exhibition Stamp (the exhibition was opened during the Covid-19 pandemic) by Slaattelid at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo.

Eyal Hareuveni

Helga Myhr (Hardanger fiddle), Tanja Orning (cello)