Month: August 2010

Gavin Bryars: Vita Nova (ECM New Series 1533)

| Tyran Grillo

Gavin Bryars
Vita Nova

David James countertenor
Annemarie Dreyer violin
Ulrike Lachner viola
Rebecca Firth cello
The Hilliard Ensemble
Gavin Bryars Ensemble
Recorded September 1993 at Propstei St. Gerold and CTS Studios (London)
Engineers: Peter Laenger and Chris Ekers
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Nomina sunt consequentia rerum.
(Names are the consequences of things.)
–Dante

The music of Gavin Bryars has always been a revelation in my life, and it all began with this 1994 album. In my opinion still one of ECM’s finest New Series releases, Vita Nova is the perfect introduction to the composer’s heartfelt musical cosmos.

Incipit Vita Nova (1989), for male alto and string trio, sets the short Latin phrases that appear in Dante’s otherwise Italian La Vita Nuova. The title means “A new life is beginning” and the piece was written to celebrate the birth of a child, aptly named Vita, to his close friends. That this “new life” was the inspiration for a piece on that very subject imbues the music with the mystery of creation. Its etherealness cannot be overstated, and anyone who adores the voice of David James may find no better showcase for it. The piece swells into audible existence, bobbing like a petal on water that stays in place as waves roll beneath it. From these languid beginnings James ravels into his own life as the strings apply a more pronounced rhythm, each weaving through the others with the deftness of divine messengers. James negotiates the text with a practiced throat, though every instrument has its moment, the cello navigating the words “Omnis vita est immortalis” (All life is immortal) like a thread through a needle. There is an airy pause before the opening motif returns, this time in descending half steps, forging microtonal harmonies between voice and violin.

Glorious Hill (1988) was the result of a Hilliard Ensemble commission. The text is from Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man and imagines a dialogue between God and Adam. Here, Adam is graced rather than cursed with self-awareness—the sacred gift of personal re-creation given to no other creatures in God’s domain, where free will becomes the determinant of human nature. It is a breathtaking piece, and one in which James also figures vividly at the center of a veritable tapestry of choral sounds. But where in Incipit the strings supplemented James with “vocal” gestures, here those gestures are explicitly taken up by the human body, which renders notes with even more fragility. James spreads the text over this choral backdrop in a veneer of supplication as the tenors weave a central drone. Voice-pairs and solos emerge in turns, shifting weight with richly varied effects. Consequently, each section of text seems to be treated as its own full composition. Some are antiphonal, while others are densely polyphonic. The beautiful call of “O Adam” goes straight to the heart, upon which the tenors launch into sustained undulations, even as James charts the most inspiring regions of his unparalleled craft. Gordon Jones provides a few glorious moments of his own. This masterful piece is by far one of Bryars’s finest and ends in shining resolution, folding ever inward into solemnity.

Four Elements (1990) redirects our attention with a larger instrumental ensemble. Scored as incidental music for a ballet by Lucinda Childs, the piece characterizes Water, Earth, Air, and Fire through a variety of tonal and rhythmic combinations (one has to take such pieces with a grain of salt, for the ways in which one views primary elements differs with subjective experience). “Water” opens with an ominous thud and is dominated by bass clarinet and bells, making for a nocturnal, oceanic sound that betrays only the slightest indications of coastline through the fog. Swells of marimba and piano plow the darkness of “Earth.” The pace accelerates in “Air” with a healthy dose of brass, of which alto sax provides much of the melodic thrust before fading into the fluegelhorn-led “Fire,” ending with a slow reverberant finish as James intones a delicate flame.

Sub Rosa (1986) is another ensemble piece, if of a far more intimate persuasion. Dedicated to Bill Frisell, whose track “Throughout” from the ECM album In Line Bryars has re-imagined here, the piece is otherworldly. The central presence of a recorder lends it an antiquated flair and further enhances its enigmatic title. This is perhaps the most pensive piece on the album and speaks of a mind that is spiritually in tune with its own goals and means of achieving them. Beautifully ascendant passages from the violin are overlaid with alluring swaths of recorder, at times struggling against the most delicate of dissonances. The piano marks its path steadily and slowly with triadic arpeggios. Intriguing doublings and an ascendant chord progression make Sub Rosa all the more transitory in its beauty. It skirts the line between waking and dreaming, placing careful steps in a realm where the spirit speaks more fluently than the lips.

Anyone who finds fulfillment in the music of such ECM-represented composers as Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, and Alexander Knaifel should feel rather comfortable being surrounded by this most august music. Bryars is a discovery to be cherished. Listen and be moved.

<< Peter Erskine Trio: Time Being (ECM 1532)
>> John Surman Quartet: Stranger Than Fiction (ECM 1534)

Bach: The French Suites – Jarrett (ECM New Series 1513/14)

| Tyran Grillo

J. S. Bach
The French Suites

Keith Jarrett harpsichord
Recorded September 1991, Cavelight Studio, New Jersey
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Johann Sebastian Bach composed his so-called French Suites between 1722 and 1725 while still Kappelmeister to Prince Leopold. Although the title was a later addition and has nothing to do with its content (it is, if anything, Italian in form and convention), it does lend the collection a certain categorical charm. The first three suites are in minor keys, while the latter three are in major, leaving an invisible division to be drawn at their center. This does, in effect, create an open circle toward which one may bend an attentive ear at any point and still feel immersed in the suites’ totality.

As with his other Bach recordings for ECM, Keith Jarrett shows himself to be more than comfortable at the harpsichord, threading as he does a distinctive legato pacing into that instrument’s penchant for separation. In Jarrett’s hands, the music generally hovers in mid-tempo. He arpeggiates chords beautifully (note, for example, the Courante of Suite No. 1), approaches the more courtly dances (Allemande of Suite No. 2) with explicit grace, and puts plenty of meat on the bones of his trills (Gigue of Suite No. 1, Menuet of Suite No. 3). He also elicits a strikingly rich tone from the instrument’s middle range (Allemandes of Suite Nos. 2 and 3; Polonaise of Suite No. 6), and in others cultivates a gorgeously voluminous sound (Courante of Suite No. 2). Not surprisingly, Jarrett excels in the faster movements, and nowhere more so than in the Gigues (especially those of Suites Nos. 2, 3, and 4), yet the slower movements also convey a great humility. This isn’t merely because of his astounding virtuosity, but also because of his ability to expand the space in which he operates and because ECM highlights this expansion accordingly through attentive recording. Suite No. 4, with its touching Sarabande and luscious Air, provides some of the most varied atmospheres within any one suite. Suite No. 5 is another rich bouquet, its Allemande perhaps the most exquisite moment of the entire set. The Courante is wonderfully syncopated, while the Gavotte delights with its circuitous melody. The Gigue here is one of the album’s brightest highlights, combining a range of techniques in a spirited display of Shepard scale-like denouement. The Courante of Suite No. 6 flies off Jarrett’s fingers with ease, and the stately Gigue of the same brings everything to a masterfully contrapuntal conclusion.

On the whole, Jarrett performs splendidly. His technique is consistent, impassioned, and stripped to its essentials. These works may abound with courtly flair, but they also break from any of the restrictions that the circumstances of their composition might imply into moments of sheer enchantment. These suites are emotional endeavors through and through, and though they may not always be as consistently enthralling as some of Bach’s “heavier” works for keyboard, they duly remind us that it is never simply the artist’s responsibility to render such music captivating, but also ours as listeners to realize that not all music has to be in order to work its way into our hearts.

<< William Byrd: Motets and Mass for four voices (ECM 1512 NS)
>> Garbarek/Brahem/Hussain: Madar (ECM 1515)

Arvo Pärt: Te Deum (ECM New Series 1505)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1505

Arvo Pärt
Te Deum

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Tõnu Kaljuste conductor
Recorded January 1993 at Lohjan Kirkko, Finland
Engineers: Peter Laenger and Andreas Neubronner
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I too repented deeply and sorrowed much that I had grieved God,
And that peace and love were lost on earth because of my sin.
My tears ran down my face.
My breast was wet with my tears, and the earth under my feet;
And the desert heard the sound of my moaning.
–Staretz Silouan

It was a balmy evening on the 30th of October, 1995, as I and a throng of eager listeners filed into the Trinity College Chapel in Hartford, Connecticut. On the program: the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. It is an experience not even a lobotomy could erase from my memory. Bathed in the Chapel’s cascading acoustics, the musicians sounded nothing short of revelatory. Being in their presence after only recently having discovered the music of Arvo Pärt allowed me to appreciate at an even more visceral level the utter dedication represented by their combined forces. Whatever was in the air was beyond magic. The stillness of our hearts was surely palpable. That these brilliant singers and instrumentalists had traveled so far, carrying with them a most glorious music and message, was a miracle to me. I doubt that a single soul in that space felt anything less than all-consuming gratitude for the opportunity afforded to them.

Pärt’s Te Deum was the centerpiece of a program that also included works by Veljo Tormis, Einojuhani Rautavaara, J. S. Bach, and more from Pärt himself. While one can hardly compare the live experience to the recorded one, by no means is this album a lesser organism. The piece’s emergence hinges on a prerecorded wind harp, tuned to notes D and A, providing a constant drone that flirts with our awareness. (During the concert, I noted a few in the audience craning their necks to see where the sound was coming from, leading me to believe they were hearing it for the first time. I can only imagine what it must have been like to have one’s inaugural experience of the Te Deum in such a context, and I like to think it only added to the mystery of it all, as if hallucinating an indefinable voice from the very rock beneath their feet.) After the main “theme” is laid out, the strings climb to life from low to high registers, almost like a death throe in reverse—a resurrection, if you will. As Pärt himself explains, he felt it necessary to “draw this music gently out of silence and emptiness.” And so do we encounter hushed moments that are never entirely removed from their backdrop. To these subtle orchestral energies, Pärt adds three choirs and a prepared piano. The non-vocal instruments are like the gospel writer—or, in Pärt’s case, the composer—weaving new patterns from tattered post-Messianic threads. Text and music work in tandem, at times uniting in exultant crescendos (what theologian Frank Church Brown calls “radical transcendence”), while at others circling the central line of tintinnabular consciousness like a prophet’s quill. The piece ends with reiterations of “Sanctus” in triplicate over a sustained chord on strings, underscoring the holiness of the musical act therein. I was in tears by the end of the 1995 performance, so moved was I by the intensity of the living, breathing entity that sang through every fiber of my physical and psycho-spiritual being. I found myself floating, holding on to my earthly existence by the thinnest of tethers. At the same time, I could not deny my own gravidity, looking deep as I was into the self and finding solace in the delicate balance that is mortality. Anything that I had ever lost in life had been either regained or forgotten at that moment in favor of less tangible possessions. Neither could I help but be overwhelmed by the fact that, after chancing upon this music through the airwaves, I should be able to witness it physically, experiencing its sheer volume in the blessing of real time. The Te Deum is a statement on statement, a quantification of the utterance via the merest particle of its articulation. In reading so humbly into his sources, Pärt has rendered inspiration palatable through his own sense of hymnal adoration. One is hard-pressed to reconstruct the Te Deum for those who have yet to peer through its many windows. And though no review, however voluminous, does it a modicum of justice, I can only hope these words at least begin to express its potential effect.

Next on the album is Silouans Song, an especially moving piece for string orchestra and another I had the great fortune of hearing during the same concert. The piece is dedicated to Archimandrite Sophrony, a disciple of Staretz Silouan (1866-1938), who led a monastic life in the Russian Monastery of St. Panteleimon on Mount Athos starting in 1892. Staretz is a title given to a monk “whose God-given wisdom and insight enable him to serve as a spiritual guide for others.” And what better way to express such a life than through his musical equivalent? The melodies are drawn directly from Silouan’s psalmnodic writings, and their basis in the written word engenders a sacred sort of engagement with the listener. As one of Pärt’s most unflinching statements of faith, Silouans Song rings true as a profession of the spiritual life.

And then there is the Magnificat, an achievement that is beyond words precisely because words are its alpha and omega. The depth of Pärt’s pacing and his attention to breath and pause all forge a most distinct path toward a consciousness in which one need no longer carry the burden of self-aggrandizement. There is a stunning climax in which the tenor rises above the rest at the end of the line “Suscepit Israel puerum suum” (He hath received Israel his servant). During the choir’s performance of this piece, Kaljuste lifted his trembling hand to draw that very note forth with even greater urgency. It is an image I always carry with me when listening to it.

Closing out this vibrant album is the Berliner Messe, a profound statement of Pärt’s liturgical persuasion. Originally for SATB soloists and organ, and later (as recorded here) for mixed chorus and strings, it interpolates into the standard mass text two stunning Alleluias and a Veni Sancte Spiritus, the latter being a Pentacostal text that welcomes the redeeming qualities of the Holy Spirit. The axial Credo molds a shape not unlike his earlier Summa, while the final Agnus Dei withers like a flower in slow motion into static resolution.

Te Deum stands as one of ECM’s most enduring testaments to the powerful symbiosis between sound and silence. With this recording, label and composer transformed the aural landscape of this one faithful listener. It is unique in my life for so many reasons, from the banal (it is the only ECM recording I ever owned first on cassette) to the sacred (its sounds reformed my worldview in a way no other music has). This is a recording to change lives and one that will forever stand the test of time, for it is time incarnate.

<< The Hilliard Ensemble: Codex Speciálník (ECM 1504 NS)
>> Kim Kashkashian: Lachrymae (ECM 1506 NS)

Byrd: Motets and Mass for four voices (ECM New Series 1512)

| Tyran Grillo

William Byrd
Motets and Mass for four voices

The Theatre of Voices
Judith Nelson soprano
Drew Minter countertenor
Paul Elliot tenor
Paul Hillier baritone, artistic director
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent organ
Recorded February 1992, The Cathedral of the Transfiguration, Toronto
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Paul Hillier

William Byrd (1543-1623) has been called the greatest English composer, an arbiter of the sublime and master of his craft. And while discerning early music listeners have a fair number of recordings to choose from in order to put any stake into this claim, this offering from ECM is as sensitive an introduction as any into all things Byrd.

Among the selection of motets that inaugurates the album, Byrd’s gradual “Oculi ominum” stands out for its elegance. Yet it is the Mass for Four Voices that kneels so humbly at the album’s center. Composed in 1592, a time when Catholic services were deemed illegal under the banner of the Reformation, the Mass was never performed in a proper church until the nineteenth century. This backstory lends a clandestine sweetness to the work’s appearance. Its plaintive Kyrie and Gloria journey into the stunning tapestry that is its Credo, while the Sanctus and Benedictus lean back in a delicate arch of praise and humility toward an alluring, if not cryptic, Agus Dei. The notes are generally low- to mid-range, with peaks used only sparingly. As it is programmed here, the Mass is interleaved with introspective keyboard works (played here on organ) and the motet O sacrum convivium. Such a fragmentary approach emphasizes its permeability, its invisibility (the work was believed lost from 1822 to 1888).

Not to be overshadowed, however, is the handful of contemporaneous works that rounds out the program. These no-less-powerful statements from Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, Richard Edwards, and John Sheppard throw Byrd’s place in musical history into further relief. Tallis’s O Ye Tender Babes is especially poignant, harkening back to a time when musical freedom was relatively unbounded.

The Theatre of Voices has a sound that is quite distinct from the Hilliard Ensemble, ECM’s a cappella mainstay. Their vocal lines are crystal clear, allowing us to parse every moment of Byrd’s glorious grammar. The music is elegiac, even as it falls inward, charting a highly individual spiritual territory that is all the more enriched by Byrd’s attention to textual colors, transcending form as it does by unhinging the cages of his own vocabulary. There is always an audible axle around which his music revolves. Every note engenders a new spin of the wheel, and with it an unrequited aspiration. This process is ever bolstered by the constant wind of human breath, every inhalation and exhalation of which marks the music’s trajectory with the utmost craftsmanship. This is neither the alchemy of a Guillaume de Machaut nor the dense weave of a Robert Fayrfax, but rather its own foray into unraveled grace.

<< John Abercrombie Trio: Speak Of The Devil (ECM 1511)
>> Bach: The French Suites (ECM 1513/14 NS)

Jens-Peter Ostendorf: String Quartet (ECM New Series 1479)

| Tyran Grillo

Jens-Peter Ostendorf
String Quartet

Parnasso Quartet
Ingrid Göltl, Hans Georg Deneke violins
Thomas Oepen viola
Michael Katzenmaier cello
Recorded December 1989 at Chamaeleon Studio, Hamburg
Engineer: Jan Kirchner
Produced by Manfred Eicher

One can only hope this album will serve to heighten our awareness of Jens-Peter Ostendorf (1944-2006), a German composer whose music might otherwise be relegated to digital oblivion. Ostendorf was born in Hamburg, where he studied music and became a freelance composer. He worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen, scored films, and served a stint at IRCAM. All of these experiences deeply inform his richly varied corpus, of which the string quartets are the heart. On this disc we are treated to an all-too-rare and superbly rendered performance of his Second String Quartet. It remains a well-aged example of the anti-formula, the vow of silence lurking behind the full-blown sermon. Over three long movements, the instruments work as a whole, with only the rarest bursts of tension. The notes are light and airy and galactic in reach.

Those wary of modern classical music should find themselves on relatively safe ground here. Unlike some of Ostendorf’s orchestral and ensemble pieces, this quartet is fragile and unassuming, strangely melodic and transcendent, and wrapped in a sound that is sparse yet hauntingly detailed. If anywhere, its challenge lies in its extended pathos and seeming lack of development. The effect is anything but cumulative, if only because such an approach would spoil the delicate balance it so deftly maintains. Ostendorf’s is a music of broken circuits, a cosmos made all the more beautiful for being out of order. Fans of Stockhausen should feel at home, as might anyone with an open ear.

<< John Surman/John Warren: The Brass Project (ECM 1478)
>> Heiner Goebbels: SHADOW/Landscape With Argonauts (ECM 1480)

Kim Kashkashian: Lachrymae (ECM New Series 1506)

| Tyran Grillo

Lachrymae

Kim Kashkashian viola
Stuttgarter Kammerorchester
Dennis Russell Davies conductor
Recorded December 1992
Engineer: Peter Laenger

Lachrymae was my second exposure to the brilliance of violist Kim Kashkashian, after her ECM recording of Paul Hindemith’s viola sonatas. It has long been one of my favorites of hers, as its emotional and tonal complexities are high points of the New Series catalog. The program here is modest—consisting of only three pieces—but heavy. The opening strains of Hindemith’s Trauermusik paint a grave and darkening picture. Composed in a six-hour stretch of creative fervor in the afternoon following the death of King George V in 1936, the piece mourns the fall of the monarchical figurehead by describing a musical effigy in his place. Hindemith gave the premier performance that very evening in a special BBC live broadcast. And indeed, the music has that very quality: a lost message somehow regained and spread across the airwaves in a time of great sorrow.

The album’s title work comes from Benjamin Britten and is performed here in its glorious 1975 orchestrated version (for the earlier viola/piano version, check out Kashkashian’s Elegies, also on ECM). Britten has subtitled the work “Reflections on a Song of John Dowland,” thereby lending it a rather bold intertextual potency. And while it goes without saying that Kashkashian’s soloing is first rate here, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra casts an even more enchanting spell as it binds each motivic cell with fluid grace.

Which brings us to Krzysztof Penderecki’s Konzert für Viola und Kammerorchester. The result of a 1983 commission from the Venezuelan government in honor of freedom fighter Simón Bolívar, the concerto marks a distinct shift in the composer’s aesthetic of virtuosity. Much in contrast to the density of his earlier concertos, here Penderecki cultivates a more intimate sound palette. Yet none of the color his work is known for is lost. We still get a meticulously constructed object adorned with all manner of timbres and percussive details.

In my opinion, Lachrymae showcases some of the most powerful music written for the viola. And who better than Kashkashian to wring out every last tear from this trio of captivating scores? This music is wrought in sadness and refined through a nurturing touch from its composers and musicians alike. It is not the spirit made manifest, but the manifest made spirit.

<< Arvo Pärt: Te Deum (ECM 1505 NS)
>> Wadada Leo Smith: Kulture Jazz (ECM 1507)

Paul Giger: Schattenwelt (ECM New Series 1487)

| Tyran Grillo

1487

Paul Giger
Schattenwelt

Paul Giger violin
Recorded May 1992, Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The Greek myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth lies at the heart of Schattenwelt (Shadow-world), the Swiss violinist Paul Giger’s third album for ECM and one of the label’s most enduring solo programs. The underlying narrative begins with Minos, son of Zeus and ruler of Crete, who wishes to sacrifice a bull in honor of Poseidon but cannot bring himself to do it once he beholds the glorious white creature given to him for that purpose. He decides to keep it, much to the consternation of his omniscient father, who as punishment imbues the bull with a power so dangerous that only Hercules is able to tame it. Minos’s wife Pasiphae is also struck (though not without an enraged Poseidon’s influence) by the bull’s uncanny beauty and couples with it, thus producing the bull-headed/man-bodied Minotaur. In a fit of jealousy and outrage, Minos imprisons this abomination in the labyrinth of Knossos, where the Minotaur is eventually slain by Theseus, son of Poseidon.

Giger approaches these events from the top down in his Seven Scenes from Labyrinthos, starting in the cosmos and ending in the underworld, effectively traveling in the opposite direction indicated by a rather different labyrinth in his ECM debut, Chartres. The architecture of “Dancing With The Stars” indicates a coalescence of matter out of nothingness. “Crane,” however, pulls us from its meditation into penetrating light. Notes ululate and waver like that titular bird, long associated with ancient labyrinths such as the one at Knossos. Thus do we get “Creating The Labyrinth,” a procession of rising sirens delineating an impossible path. “Birth Of The Bull” and “Fourteen Virgins” form a balanced pair. Where one is a celebration of life, the other represents the novennial sacrifice made to the Minotaur. “Death” is a chain of brooding arpeggios that beats faster toward a harmonic resolution before bleeding over into “Dancing In The World Of Shadows,” forging a seamless connection between consciousness and unconsciousness in a whirlwind of scraping stick-to-string contact.

Two refractions of the same light, Bay and Bombay (Good Night), circumscribe the program’s darkness like a compass. Where the first is airborne, its bow drawing out inner life from strings like human breath until it is but a rasp in the throat of Time, the latter expands that unseen dimension into spiritual quest. Across them all, Giger draws a careful brush.

The music of Schattenwelt possesses the kind of harmony one associates with an old stone sanctuary, its glassless windows allowing every word sung or spoken full disclosure into the world(s) beyond. His technique is outstanding yet subtle, as in a beautiful passage of Bombay during which he sustains a lead melodic line on one string while bouncing his bow for a rhythmic accompaniment on another. The result is a self-contained universe that is constantly looking in on itself, for it knows no other way. After all, what is a shadow-world but a realm in which individuals have sacrificed the light in favor of blameless creation?

<< Stephan Micus: To The Evening Child (ECM 1486)
>> Bley/Peacock/Oxley/Surman: In The Evenings Out There (ECM 1488)