Auf der Alm(a)

Alma: what does it mean? The soul. It may also make you think of 'Alm', the German word for an alpine pasture or hut. And, of course, of Alma Mahler, and the world of yesterday.

So writes René Freund in his introduction to Nativa, the first album by Alma, a brilliant, original Austrian Volksmusik band. Folk is not my ken, as regular readers well know. Though in writing about Schubert, Brahms, Mahler, and many in between, I have become increasingly familiar with the folk traditions on which my chosen composers drew. Yet they are not traditions that just feed the Classical world, but they continue to thrive, evolve and, ultimately, seize back the music, sometimes with Classical tropes.

Certainly Alma – made up of Julia Lacherstorfer, Evelyn Mair, Matteo Haitzmann, Marie-Theres Stickler and Marlene Lacherstorfer – draw on a variety of sources. Their album, which has recently won the German Record Critics' Prize, flaunts an extraordinary range, from snatches of Reger's Abendlied to Bart Howard's 'Fly Me to the Moon'. Such tracks appear alongside yodels written on napkins in pubs in Upper Austria, Bourbon bourrées and Paris in Spring, all delivered with typical Viennese flair.

Defying my expectations of 'folk', Nativa really is a wonderful album, a psychogeographic trip through the Austrian countryside, its extensive musical traditions and beyond. There is, of course, a sort of ripe crudeness about some of the numbers, bringing the pungency of the meadows to your speakers, yet the playing is always top-notch, with Bachian poise one minute and jam-like abandon the next. This is truly one of the most original soundworlds I've encountered of late. Click here to order a copy.

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