By some strange piece of magic, it works: Dancing Queen from Asya Fateyeva & Lautten Compagney Berlin mixes Rameau with the songs of ABBA

Dancing Queen: Rameau meets ABBA; Asya Faeyeva, Lautten Compagney Berlin; Deustsche Harmonia Mundi
Reviewed 12 November 2024

An unlikely marriage of saxophone, period instrument ensemble, Rameau and the songs of supergroup ABBA turns in gold in this entrancing and intriguing disc

In 2023, whilst in Dresden for the Dresden Music Festival’s production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, I caught a concert by saxophone player Asya Fateyeva and the period instrument ensemble Lautten Compagney Berlin. Now, I have to admit that my selection was based on eagerness to hear the period instrument ensemble Lautten Compagney Berlin in a programme of Purcell. It was only later I realised that the soloist wasn’t a soprano, but a saxophone player and that the evening mixed Purcell with Lennon & McCartney. The result was entrancing. [see my review]

Now they are back with another mix. Dancing Queen on deutsche harmonia mundi/Sony Classical features Asya Fateyeva (saxophones) and Lautten Compagney Berlin, musical director Wolfgang Kaschner, in the somewhat unlikely mix of ABBA and Rameau. There are ten of ABBA’s best known numbers, written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson, arranged for baroque ensemble and saxophone by Bo Wiget (Lauteen Compagney’s cellist) alongside dances from Rameau’s Les Boréades, Nais, Les Indes Galantes, Hippolyte et Aricie, Les Fêtes d’Hébé, and Pièces de clavecin en concerts: Cinquième Concert, with Fatayeva playing alongside the ensemble in the Rameau.

The ensemble features string quartet and double bass, two oboes, recorder, percussion, triple harp, harpsichord/organ, chitarrone, Baroque guitar and archlute. So, no surprises there. The programme alternates ABBA and Rameau, beginning with Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus’ Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) followed by Contredanse en rondeau from Rameau’s Les Boréades and ends with a mash-up of Andersson and Ulvaeus’ Money, Money, Money and the Tambourin from Rameau’s Les Fêtes d’Hébé.

In his booklet note, Stefan Schickhaus starts by making a case for why the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau and that of ABBA is a perfect match. But then after a convincing paragraph, he admits that the disc actually came about because “our arranger and cellist Bo Wiget wanted to do ABBA songs, and then I suggested Rameau, because in such instances it is always important to have something of a strong intrinsic value alongside pop music, and that is absolutely the case with Rameau.”

And by some strange piece of magic, it works.

It helps that Bo Wiget’s arrangement of ABBA’s songs are imaginative and do not attempt to emulate the sound that the group made. This is most definitely ABBA played by a period instrument ensemble, and Wiget delights in the array of plucking instruments available to him and creates a very detailed textural sound. 

In a couple of the arrangements, Wiget seems to enjoy holding back on us, keeping the ‘big tune’ until later and in most of them it is about the music rather than simply having Fatayeva belting out unimaginative renditions of well-known songs. It helps that Andersson and Ulvaeus (sometimes with Anderson) wrote damn good songs that are worth investing in. Speeds are sometimes a touch slower than you might expect, the musicians transposing into the new environment instead of slavishly following the original, a good transcription in other words.

It also helps that Asa Fatayeva plays with a lovely straight, classical tone. As I found from my experience of them live, she fits with the group very well and this is very much the saxophone as primus inter pares rather than overly spotlit. 

In all the music, ABBA and Rameau, the musicians are nimble on their feet, creating engaging and entrancing moments. None of the tracks is long, at most a little over three minutes, so that we have a 70 minute collage of 22 tracks, with ABBA and Rameau tumbling over themselves and then, at the end, mixing things up together.

I have to admit that I put this disc on curious and a little trepidatious. But I needn’t have been, the results are completely entrancing, they intrigue and engage in just the right way. The musicians are clearly invested in the Rameau as much as they are having fun in the ABBA, and this comes over in every note of the disc.

I think, however, that his might be something of a Marmite disc. Do sample before you try. I loved it, and it will definitely be one of my discs of the year, but when D. heard Bo Wiget’s arrangement of Andersson, Ulvaeus and Anderson’s Waterloo (surely the prime ABBA number), D. asked me what on earth I was listening to!

Dancing Queen – songs by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson, music by Rameau
Asya Fateyeva (saxophone)
Lautten Compagney Berlin
Wolfgang Kaschner
Recorded 16-18 August 2024, B Sharp Studios, Berlin
deutsche harmonia mundi 1CD [72:34]