DaCapo's
Recycled is an ambitious and highly interesting project; 10 contemporary Danish composers were commissioned by the Danish Refugee Council to produce pieces based on familiar Western literature for the
Ensemble Nordlys, an expert chamber group with an instrument identical to that used by
Olivier Messiaen for his Quartet for the End of Time. The standout work is Niels Marthinsen's zany, oddball take on Johann Strauss II's Perpetuum mobile; it reminds one of a cross between
Spike Jones' and Carl Stalling's rewrites on standard classical themes. It is highly entertaining and features some hair-raising clarinet playing by Jolson Oshiro of the
Ensemble Nordlys. Some of the others are notable, too, such as Ole Buck 's asymmetrical recasting of Nikolai-Rimsky Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble-Bee; the heritage of tango music is also referred to in Bent Lorentzen's Czardas (after Monti) and Sven Erik Werner's Vilja-Parafrase, which takes its example from a tune in
Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow. About the best-known composer here is
Per Nørgård, who elects to take a gently nocturnal stroll through Franz Schubert's song "Nacht und Träume," which is only mildly deconstructionist and barely departs from the mood of the original piece. While not all of the music featured on DaCapo's
Recycled is great, the project deserves some measure of recognition for its variety of handling in regard to the various pieces from which the derivations are made, as a showcase for the extraordinary talent of
Ensemble Nordlys and the usefulness of this release in illustrating different aspects of the distinctly twenty-first century conceit of modeling.