Florian Weber
Imaginary Cycle

Florian Weber piano, composition
Anna-Lena Schnabel flute
Michel Godard tuba, serpent
Quatuor Opus 333
Corentin Morvan euphonium
Jean Daufresne euphonium
Patrick Wibart euphonium
Vianney Desplantes euphonium
Lisa Stick trombone
Sonja Beeh trombone
Victoria Rose Davey trombone
Maxine Troglauer bass trombone
Recorded July 2022 at Sendesaal, Bremen
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Mixed March 2023
by Manfred Eicher, Florian Weber, and Michael Hinreiner (engineer)
at Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich
Project coordinator: Thomas Herr
Cover photo: Fotini Potamia
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 13, 2024

Florian Weber returns to ECM with something transcendent in Imaginary Cycle. This suite for piano, brass ensemble and flute began with conversations between the German pianist and producer Manfred Eicher, whose shared pictorial imagination lit a fire that continues to burn long after the listening experience is through. Thus, the title precisely expresses where the music lives, breathes, and congregates. Divided into four main parts—“Opening,” “Word,” “Sacrifice,” and “Blessing”—themselves consisting of four subsections, and bookended by a Prelude and Epilogue, the result is one of the most heartfelt creations to grace the label in years.

With its somewhat abstract and fleeting atmosphere, the decidedly pianistic intro is the dust from which the Adam and Eve of what transpires are fashioned. As he plays, Weber sings softly in counterpoint (channeling Keith Jarrett at his most tender) before shifting into an arpeggiated architecture. From here, he imagines a liturgical structure in what Friedrich Kunzmann in his liner notes calls “a transfigured Mass, stripped of its dogmatic structure and expanded with the improvisational language of more modern designs” and further echoed by the call and response of piano and brass.

The same path of development repeats itself, the sonic equivalent of italics for emphasis, as the horns arise once again from beneath the floorboards. Tense chromatic strains bleed through the shroud of time as if in search of a chalice in which to be collected and held high. Meanwhile, stepwise gestures in the piano trace the contours of prayer.

With the addition of flutist Anna-Lena Schnabel, we encounter echoes of Heinz Holliger (especially his Scardanelli-Zyklus). Like a shakuhachi mimicking a crane, her instrument steps carefully in the water, trying not to disturb its own reflection. Here is also where tuba player Michel Godard brings inner voices to the fore, while the others wail in slow motion. These transubstantiations culminate in “Sacrifice,” which reaches for that unarticulable line where cloud and firmament kiss each other. The rarely heard brass instrument known as the serpent (also played by Godard) slithers into view, cradled by its more attuned offspring. Its contrast with the flute evokes the glint of moonlight on a tepid pond. Both rely on the surface tension between them, culminating in two profound duets with Weber.

Schnabel and Godard (now on tuba) start the final benediction as a duo, laying the foundation for runs across a weathered keyboard. There is a brightness here that sings. The sounds of wind through noteless brass follow, leading to a jazzy burst of joy in Weber’s solo. With heavy emotion but a light touch, he sets up the ending as a new beginning.

As idiosyncratic as it is non-idiomatic, Imaginary Cycle is undeniably special and belongs at the right hand of classics like Officium, which Weber cites as a key inspiration (along with composers Carlo Gesualdo and Orlando di Lasso). What we have, then, is the mind of a translator turned into a Book of Hours, marking our passage from life to death and back again. Would that such restorations were not so often silenced in today’s world.