Esbjerg Ensemble Displays a Virtuosic Danish Voice

One proven virtue of the UC Santa Barbara annual New Music Festival over the last decade has been the window it opens on rarely heard contemporary music of other cultures. Intriguing sounds from Mexico, Asia, Britain and even from the rich world of film music have, thankfully, passed through these hallowed halls.

In the ninth annual festival, which opened this week under the direction of UCSB-based composer William Kraft, we get an illuminating look at Danish music-making, courtesy of the portable, self-contained Esbjerg Ensemble.

In concerts Wednesday and Thursday at Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall, the flexible group of a dozen players displayed virtuosity, a casual precision, and, not incidentally, measured musical poetry.

Chalking up the ensemble’s fluency to the nurturing, venerable European musical environment would sell short this particular group’s voice. It’s a quietly stunning one, especially on Danish musical turf, such as the work of the festival’s formidable composer-in-residence, Bent Sorensen.

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A finely tuned sense of timbre and color was the prevailing theme Wednesday, opening with Susanne Giraud’s alluring trio “Episode en forme d’oubi.” Nigel Osborne, like Giraud, has worked within the electro-digital realm, and brings a certain analytical scrutiny to timbre in his “Zone,” working with hushed, coiled energies.

In Rolf Wallin’s “Solve et Coagula,” ephemeral waves of activity breeze across the ranks, as if blown by a fickle wind, and Henri Dutilleux’s “Citations” relies on painterly deployment of ensemble color and balance.

Thursday’s concert opened on tamer, more abidingly tonal notes, with Carl Nielsen’s pleasant yet not-trifling Wind Quintet, and Vagn Holmbe’s String Quintet, Opus 165, a 1986 work, commissioned by the ensemble, that deftly mixes contemporary and neo-classical notions.

Music of younger Danish composers Anders Nordentoft and Per Norgaard also impressed, conveying, in respective ways, an essential muscularity and dreaminess within their abstract designs. Yet the works that dazzled most and touched deepest were Sorensen’s. Wednesday’s performance of his wind quintet “Maddelin” evinced a memorable, striking palette.

On Thursday, his “Lady and the Lark” showcased violist Michel Camille’s sweet, plaintive lines against a poignant and playful sound canvas (including woozy slide whistle). Five movements unfold in barely more than five minutes: Brevity becomes it.

Sorensen’s “Desert Churchyards” is another small wonder, impressionistic on its own terms, and beholden to no particular school. Skittering piano/vibraphone lines brush past smeary washes of string and winds, to a somehow pictorial end. Music like this, played with such cool bravura, is enough to make one a fan of Danish way.

* The UCSB New Music Festival concludes tonight, with scenes from William Kraft’s opera-in-progress, “Red Azalea,” 8 p.m., Lotte Lehmann Hall, UCSB, $10. (805) 893-3535.