"Not to say that sound itself is relegated in favor of the theoretical. Knut Vaage’s “Svev,” which translates to something like “levitate,” produced an exact feeling of suspension. The Valen Trio’s instruments sounded like the tightly-wound objects they are—an objectivity corroborated by percussive taps on the instrument’s bodies. A kind of high-tension power line inhabited the music, producing a vertigo I sometimes feel looking out of plane windows at the ground below during take-off, while emphasizing the instruments’ physical properties, their delicate settings and position within the room. But it was when the trio started playing conventionally again, when the impossible texture of sound gave way to the old language of tonality, that the spell was cast—the deconstructed violin, cello, and piano became themselves again in a new light. Through the deconstruction of their constituent elements, their bodies and their strings, Vaage illustrated the grammar of their construction. (I don’t know whether that was his aim or not.) In this respect, the music remained the important element, the language both deconstructed and built up again…"

Zack Ferriday, 15. mars 2018