Author: Tyran Grillo

Anna Gourari: Visions fugitives (ECM New Series 2384)

| Tyran Grillo

Visions fugitives

Anna Gourari
Visions fugitives

Anna Gourari piano
Recorded October 2013, Historischer Reitstadel, Neumarkt
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I do not know wisdom—leave that to others—
I only turn fugitive visions into verse.
In each fugitive vision I see worlds,
Full of the changing play of rainbows.
Don’t curse me, you wise ones. What are you to me?
The fact is I’m only a cloudlet, full of fire.
The fact is I’m only a cloudlet. Look: I’m floating.
–Konstantin Balmont, 1903

In 2012, pianist Anna Gourari made her ECM debut with Canto Oscuro, a diurnal recital of such imagination that it begged a sequel. Only Visions fugitives is, despite its modern vintage, more of a prequel, for it opens more of her heart than ever to the listener’s privilege. The title composition by Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) is his opus 22 and marks a sensitive turning point in the prolific Russian composer’s oeuvre. Written between 1915 and 1917, the clarity of its 20 miniatures is in full evidence. But as David Nice observes in his biography of Prokofiev, the Visions fugitives also reveals “a new and more disturbing vein of the dynamic malice found in the early piano pieces as well as a more elusive sadness,” and these Gourari elicits with her detailed touch.

Prokofiev seems never to have intended the Visions as a set (the composer himself played no more than a handful in one sitting), but in listening to them as such, one cannot help but notice what Paul Griffiths in his liner text rightly calls their “family resemblances.” And while the title connotes fleeting things, there is something unusually indelible about their impressions. Closer to linked verse than haiku, the suite coheres by virtue of its consistent intimacy. It is, of sorts, an anti-sonata endowed with illustrative prowess, each movement so perfectly flavored that it needs no side dishes: a veritable tapas tasting of thematic subjects, of which only two exceed the two-minute mark. The opening dichotomy sets a tone of blissful regret that, like a pile of shorn wool, is pulled and spun into workable thread. Internal variations work in such a way that each piece, marked only by its tempo, seems a reflection of the one that precedes and a predictor of the one that follows. You may find yourself drawing connections to other composers (No. 8, for example, marked “Comodo,” feels a bit like Satie), but the phenomenological presence of Prokofiev’s score is such that one need hardly reach far to find purchase in between the lines. Some, like Nos. 7 (Pittoresco) and 18 (Con una dolce lentezza), may be incredibly pretty, but resist the plunge into full-on impressionism. Others, like No. 4, 5, 9, 15, and 19 are virtuosic standouts, but speak in tongues of escape over flourish. And in the twentieth Gourari finds a contemplative doorway waiting for her.

AG

At two minutes and forty-six seconds, the Fairy Tale in f minor by Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) may look like filler material in theory, but in practice it acts as a vibrant ligament at the program’s center. Composed in 1912 as part of Medtner’s opus 26, it is a prime example of his skazki, or “tales,” a genre of his own making. One may project any number of scenes onto its imaginary folk setting, but these ears detect a forest of seasons: the wind combing through trees in spring, the fragrant foliage of summer, the decay of autumn, and the whisper of snowfall in winter. With these transformations in mind, we turn lastly to Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) and his opus 58 Sonata No. 3 in b minor of 1844. In the opening Allegro and subsequent Scherzo, Gourari is an artful dodger, the adept inhabitant of an otherwise empty castle. She walks through walls and transcends chambers as simply closing the eyes. She pushes through memories of pomp and circumstance, emerging from them trailing a single thread of transcendence, by which she stitches virtuosity to its shadow. The formidable Largo is a more brooding affair with a funereal quality but sheltering a hope realized in the triumphant Finale before burrowing into the reset of hibernation. Declamation, not proclamation.

Returning to Griffiths, who notes, “In integrating, however, Chopin also disintegrates,” we might lay the same claim about Gourari’s selections. This recital is a step inward, a dissolution of self into pure music that, once unleashed, takes on a life…and death…of its own.

(To hear samples of Visions fugitives, click here.)

Pablo Márquez: El Cuchi Bien Temperado (ECM New Series 2380)

| Tyran Grillo

El Cuchi Bien Temperado

Pablo Márquez
El Cuchi Bien Temperado

Pablo Márquez guitar
Recorded May 2012, Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Even if The Well-Tempered Pig sounds far more appetizing in Spanish than it does in English, Pablo Márquez’s second album for ECM is an extraordinary achievement. The titular “Cuchi” (an ancient Quechua word meaning “pig”) was the sobriquet of one Gustavo Leguizamón (1917-2000), a composer, musician, lawyer, and pedagogue from the northwestern Argentine city of Salta. Salta is renowned for its musical heritage and is named for the same province that gave us Dino Saluzzi, who followed in Cuchi’s footsteps. Márquez describes Cuchi’s zambas (folk dances) as quintessential markers of Salta’s culture. Having grown up singing so many of them (they are, he explains, always accompanied by poems), Márquez was ideally suited to arrange them in a spectrum of 24 keys akin to, and inspired by, Bach’s monumental Well-Tempered Clavier. Although this album’s press makes further allusion to Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, the listener would do well to absorb this music without intervention of a comparative filter.

PM

Although Cuchi’s zambas take up the lion’s share of the program, the songlike vidalas, few as they are, reveal his truest heart. Opener “Coplas des Tata Dios” is a shimmering vidala-baguala, tinged with folkish hues and broken by the occasional tambora (rhythmic tapping at the base of the guitar strings). It seems to emerge from the fog of obscurity into the lucid here and now, and like so many of the pieces assembled here is intensely evocative. A single strum can reveal a shy glance through an open window, and the ghosts of a love that has yet to pass beyond it. Other instances of this form include “Chaya de la albahaca,” which plays with dissonant clusters and scraping of fingernails, and “Canción del que no hace nada,” which ends the album. But before we reach that bittersweet farewell, we are treated to an audible banquet like no other. Less represented dance forms such as the courting bailecito and exuberant carnavalito yield cavorting motifs and elastic strumming, while the three more compactly syncopated chacareras sprinkle the path with technically brilliant puzzles.

All of these aspects and more permeate the masterful zambas, which at Márquez’s touch serve as benchmarks of their form. In cinematic terms, they range from interior shot (“Zamba del carnival”) and soft-focus dream sequence (“Zamba de Lozano”) to flashback (“La cantor de Yala”) and close-up (“Zamba para la Viuda”). Also like an effective film, the music’s character development strengthens over a soundly engineered narrative arc and saves the best for later in “Zamba soltera” (this would be the love scene), “Zamba del pañuelo” (its enervating afterglow), the starkly realized “Maturana,” and “Chilena del solterón.” The latter is indicative of the entire set, pausing for breath and gathering new inspiration before rejoining the waves.

If Márquez were a painter, he would of course have his way with a brush, but would be especially skilled with a palette knife. With rigid elements he is able to render softness and structure in equal measure. As he recalls for an interview printed in this album’s booklet, Cuchi was fond of saying that “the ultimate accolade for an artist is that people think his work is anonymous.” But we can be thankful that, thanks to the efforts of guitarist, engineer, and producer, such anonymity may be harder to come by and will only enhance the wonders therein.

(To hear samples of Ei Cuchi Bien Temperado, click here.)

Anja Lechner/François Couturier: Moderato cantabile (ECM New Series 2367)

| Tyran Grillo

Moderato cantabile

Moderato cantabile

Anja Lechner cello
François Couturier piano
Recorded November 2013, Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After honing their simpatico relationship at the core of the Tarkovsky Quartet and as part of Maria Pia De Vito’s Pergolesi Project, cellist Anja Lechner and pianist François Couturier step naturally as a duo into a temple of wonders on Moderato cantabile. Over the years, ECM has carved an unparalleled subgenre of cello-piano recordings, notably the collaborations of Ketil Bjørnstad/David Darling and Vassilis Tsabropoulos/Lechner, and it’s impossible to imagine this album having ever come about without those predecessors. Fans of especially the latter project, which shares Lechner’s mellifluous bow, will encounter fascinations galore in Couturier’s deeper impulses. This album takes the very best of those projects and spins it into a world all its own, one in which we are seated as honored guests at the head of the table. Distinguishing the current duo’s music from the rest are the organicity of its approach and blossoming sense of development. The result is no less meditative, but adds to its contemplations the temperance of flame.

Lechner Couturier

Although not arranged in the following way, one may treat the program concentrically, moving from outward from Komitas, one of three composers named on the album’s cover, which neglects to mention Couturier’s own contributions (in keeping, one imagines, with the classical billing as a New Series release). The Armenian priest’s Chinar es has about it a dervish quality, calligraphing hypnotism in the twirl of receptive bodies. Its combination of piano arpeggios and seamless cello threading indicates an aesthetic mind-meld between the two musicians, who are responsible for all of the arrangements heard here.

While the cello is so often thought to be the most vocal of the symphonic strings, making it sing in the way Lechner does is no small task. She is resolute in her approach to the melodies of Greek-Armenian philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff, famously transcribed by way of oral transmission to begin with. Cellist and pianist use their complementary masteries to pair hymns and dances in a tessellation of leaves and sky. Gurdjieff awakens like the sun lifting its eyelid over the horizon and extends his spirit-seeking ways through a magnifying glass. There is, too, the Night procession, in which the cello seems to emerge from the piano itself, whispering of charcoal before there is fire. Gurdjieff’s No. 11 dovetails into Catalan composer Federico Mompou’s Fêtes lointaines no. 3, thus creating a chromatic masterpiece in a realm of shadow so deep that it can only speak in light.

Subsequent Mompou selections feel as much like poetry as song, each with a sense of joy and belonging. Tracing parabolic arcs into dance, the strength of Lechner’s technique brings out the songlike heart of this music as well beneath Couturier’s low-flying melodizing. Whether gracing the streets of the Música Callada or scenes of Mompou’s first published work, the Impresiones intimas, theirs is an ocean of churning memory in which the buoys of experience are many and reliable.

Couturier’s own pieces are as beautiful as they are surprising. Soleil rouge surveys a pointillist field of ideas, switching masks over rhythmic double stops from cello, while the duo scales its highest evocative cliff in Papillons, for which they consolidate their artistic toolkit in service of the image. Voyage finds the composer spinning a helix of chords beneath Lechner’s floating crosshatch before they detour through individual veins of rumination. Lechner’s pizzicati blot out stars one by one, until only the moon is left to dance.

The connections of these musicians are special not only with each other, but also with ECM. The love and appreciation that went into this album’s production is discernible at any given moment, and those fortunate enough to bask in its rewards will not be disappointed.

(To hear samples of Moderato cantabile, you may watch the EPK above or click here.)

Stefano Bollani: Joy In Spite Of Everything (ECM 2360)

| Tyran Grillo

Joy In Spite Of Everything

Stefano Bollani
Joy In Spite Of Everything

Mark Turner tenor saxophone
Bill Frisell guitar
Stefano Bollani piano
Jesper Bodilsen double bass
Morten Lund drums
Recorded June 2013 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Mixed March 2014 in Lugano by Manfred Eicher, Stefano Bollani and Stefano Amerio (engineer)
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“You just go and you see what happens.” This is how pianist Stefano Bollani describes jazz in its purest form. And because so much happens on Joy In Spite Of Everything, his latest for ECM, you’ll want to return to it time and again to puzzle through its many twists and turns. The band is accordingly something of an ad hoc congregation. The album documents the first time that saxophonist Mark Turner, guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Jesper Bodilsen, drummer Morten Lund, have ever been in the same room, and with their charismatic leader armed at the helm with nine original tunes, the results are spectacular.

Bollani band

Bollani never ceases to impress with the underlying consistency of execution he brings to even the most disparate music. His ballads glow by virtue of an inner fire, while his up-tempo numbers breeze coolly on by. But the new sound of “Easy Healing” may be something of a surprise. One half-aware listen, and you might swear it was an outtake from Charles Lloyd’s Voice In The Night. The instrumental combination—and within it Frisell’s John Abercrombie-esque picking, Bollani’s kaleidoscopic solo, and Bodilsen’s brief unpacking—in tandem with the closely miked engineering puts you in the center of it all.

Slow dances are hard to come by this round, but find a worthy ambassador in Turner, who graces two of the album’s most reflective sides: “Les Hortensias” and “Vale.” His soulful unpacking of the first, a gorgeous rubato picture brushed as finely as the drums, is by far the album’s highlight, while the second weaves its solos through a gnarled forest. Turner is, of course, just as comfortable on the hot plate, leaving his wheels on the runway of “No Pope No Party” with no intention of ever coming down. And as Lund balances power and sensitivity, Frisell walks a tightrope of his own between melodic defiance and evolution. The guitarist further shares moonlight with Bollani throughout “Ismene,” which would seem to evoke a fairy frolicking along the cusp of a leaf-cupped pool but which might just as well be a love song.

A sprinkling of other tunes rounds out the set. Bollani’s nimble fingers clutch the spotlight of “Alobar E Kudra.” Its angular groove is most representative of the album’s name. “Teddy” is a happy-go-lucky duet for guitar and piano that might seem out of place were it not so brilliantly executed. And the title track is the fleetest of them all, throwing the circle back on Lund, who shuffles the deck at every turn of this trio excursion.

I was delighted to encounter “Tales From The Time Loop,” which names a 2003 book by David Icke. Having read and listened to almost everything ever written by the world’s most controversial author, I couldn’t help but smile to see him referenced on an ECM record. Of the many theories put forth by Icke, his vision of a holographic universe is one of the more intriguing, and finds a musical equivalent in these smooth travels (this album’s title further echoes his message of infinite love). Every cell of the rhythm section’s bustling interactions suggests infinitely more within, setting up a chain of arresting illusions. Bollani’s very presence reminds us of why we arrived in the first place: to go and see what happens.

(To hear samples of Joy In Spite Of Everything, you may watch the EPK above or click here.)

Tre Voci: Takemitsu/Debussy/Gubaidulina (ECM New Series 2345)

| Tyran Grillo

Tre Voci

Tre Voci

Marina Piccinini flute
Kim Kashkashian viola
Sivan Magen harp
Recorded April 2013, Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

When is it really over? What is the true end? All borders are as if with a stick of wood or with the heel of a shoe driven into the earth. Until then…here is the border. All that is artificial. Tomorrow we’ll play another game.
–Francisco Tanzer, trans. J. Bradford Robinson

Tre Voci are violist Kim Kashkashian, flutist Marina Piccinini, and harpist Sivan Magen. Following a 2010 debut at the Marlboro Music Festival, the trio solidified its identity as such and came to ECM with this program of three works. Although disparate in geographical origin, each connects to the others by instrumentation and, above all, integrity of spirit. More than the unique combination, however, it is the supreme, interlocking level of ability in each musician that makes this disc such a pleasure to behold.

TV

The program opens with the reflection of a reflection: And then I knew ’twas Wind by Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996). The Japanese composer’s illustrative genius is in full effect in this garden of painterly delights, from its opening sprinkle of raindrops to its closing fractals of coincidence. Although the instruments are inseparable partners in the worlding of this piece, and must be equally attuned to what Jürg Stenzl in his liner notes calls the “almost calligraphic precision” of Takemitsu’s score, the harpist must be especially aware of the palette at hand. Magen articulates a veritable ecosystem of harmonics, glissandi (produced by sliding a fingernail along a string), and timbral variations. One can almost feel the quiver of leaves shedding the weight of raindrops in the afterglow of a storm. From this scene, flute and viola emerge not like the fauna of stereotypical impressionism, but rather like the flora drinking in all the nourishment. The viola becomes, then, a natural navigational instrument, a magnetized sliver in a forested compass. Despite sounding sometimes like a single player, for the most part Kashkashian and Piccinini walk their solitary paths. Like some bucolic dream gone dark, however, not all is sunshine and roses, as emphasized by the distinctive pathos of their interpretation. Here is the leaf magnified, revealing infinite others within.

Given Takemitsu’s admiration for Claude Debussy (1862-1918), the latter’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp makes for a most suitable companion. As Debussy’s penultimate composition (succeeded only by the Sonata for violin and piano) before he succumbed to cancer, it shows both maturity and vulnerability. Over the course of three distinct yet interconnected parts, it develops with such tactile beauty that one is hard-pressed to find a hook of any size from which to hang an ornament of criticism. Part I opens in a river’s flow such as only Debussy can devise. With their unpretentious, relaxed treatment thereof, Tre Voci quickly overturn the notion that impressionism equals lack of clarity. The flute blends into the viola, and together they empty into a vivid ocean. Part II is recognizable by its cyclical motifs. If the first was an awakening, this is nature in the raw. Part III rests on a fulcrum of harp, teetering atop some of the trio’s subtlest descriptions, and the tipping point of its sportive, declamatory ending would be echoed 11 years later (1926) in Manuel de Falla’s Concerto for harpsichord, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin and cello. If anything, this sonata is about physics, as is the piece that follows.

Sofia Gubaidulina’s Garten von Freuden und Traurigkeiten (Garden of Joys and Sorrows) is this album’s crowning achievement. The progression of its introductions quivers with sobering anxiety until the trio’s dynamic range is nearly exhausted. The viola tends toward harmonic whispers, while harp and flute take more direct routes toward their melodic destinations. This is not to say that the piece is a goal-oriented one. Rather, it thrives on the value of distortion. Much like Gubaidulina’s quartets it favors skeleton over muscle, and through the creaking of its joints seeks harmony in ashen reveries and broken things. It ends with a recitation, in German, of a poem by Francisco Tanzer: not the universe in a raindrop, but a raindrop in the universe.

(To hear samples of Tre Voci, click here.)

Ketil Bjørnstad: Sunrise (ECM 2336)

| Tyran Grillo

Sunrise

Ketil Bjørnstad
Sunrise

Kari Bremnes vocal
Aage Kvalbein cello
Matias Bjørnstad alto saxophone
Bjørn Kjellemyr double bass
Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen percussion
Ketil Bjørnstad piano
Oslo Chamber Choir
Egil Fossum conductor
Recorded April 2012 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
An ECM Production

A bird of prey is trapped
deep inside me. Its talons
have ripped into my
heart, its beak has
driven itself into my chest,
and the beating of its wings
has darkened my sanity.

Norwegian pianist-composer Ketil Bjørnstad seems to be in one of the most creative phases of his career. Increasingly, he has turned to the human voice as an expressive outlet for his ever-songlike writing, and it was only a matter of time that those forces should reach the level of a choir, a medium for which he was asked to write music in commemoration of the Nordstrand Musikkselskap Choir’s 70th anniversary in 2011. Having already engaged with the life of Edvard Munch in his 1993 literary biography Historien om Edvard Munch and set the painter’s neglected words to music on the album Løsrivelse, he naturally returned to those same texts for Sunrise. Yet Bjørnstad’s self-styled cantata is more than the portrait of an artist. It is an affirmation of light.

Munch wrote flashes of prose in preparation for many of his paintings. Bjørnstad characterizes the texts chosen for this monumental work as dealing unanimously with existentialist dilemmas. In addition to Munch’s paratextual writings, Bjørnstad was intimately acquainted with his 1909 mural The Sun, under which the young pianist saw many greats play at Oslo’s University auditorium, the Aula, where it hung. In that painting, notes the composer, “one can clearly discern the degree to which Munch struggled with and against the forces of life, and how deeply and endlessly he yearned for enlightenment and reconciliation.” The same holds true for the music he has written into its aura.

The Sun

Most attractive about Sunrise is its breadth of idiomatic conviction, which is most vividly clarified in the four songs written for singer Kari Bremnes, with whom Bjørnstad worked on the aforementioned Munch cycle. She is joined by Bjørnstad at the keyboard, alto saxophonist Matias Bjørnstad (no relation, it seems), and bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr on “Moren” (The Mother), which depicts the haunting scene of a young boy who holds his mother’s hand in anticipation of going outside but is blinded by the light of spring once they open the door. Bremnes’s oaken alto lends heart to every word it envelops. In the montuno-flavored “Stupet” (The Cliff), for instance, she evokes a jagged cliff and the dangerous ocean churning below like a death wish. The naturalness of her shading lends intuitive dimensionality to the near-pop groove of “De fineste nerver er rammet” (The Most Delicate Nerves are Affected) and a lover’s wicked thoughts in “Åpent vindu” (Open Window), for which cellist Aage Kvalbein provides the lamplight and Bjørnstad a certain temptation beneath the floorboards.

Turning to the sections for choir gets us into some potentially divisive territory. Bjørnstad is clearly not a choral writer, as attested by the fact that the vocal arrangements were done by Egil Fossum, who also conducts the present recording. Certain sections are more memorable than others, such as “En rovfugl har satt seg fast i mitt indre” (A Bird of Prey is Clinging to My Inner Being), which opens the entire cantata with the unlikely ante of a steel drum, courtesy of percussionist Hans-Kristian Kjos Sørensen. Like a warped church carillon as heard through the screen of memory, it breeds a prayerful cello to greet the dawn. The choir opens its lips to greet the titular bird, which traps itself in the chest but which by the grace of song is placated by God’s azure stare. Subsequent moods and images range from the apocalyptic [“Alfa og Omega” (Alpha and Omega)] to the frivolous [“Livets dans” (The Dance of Life)]. Other elements feel more derivative, such as the hints of Samuel Barber’s famous Adagio in “Adskillelsen” (The Separation).

More interesting to consider are Munch’s sentiments, revealing as they do a conflicted mind desirous of peace, splashing color across the human psyche as if it were the truest canvas. In “Intet er lite” (Nothing is Small) is nestled his meta-statement: Nothing is small, nothing is large. / We carry worlds inside us. Words to live by for both the painter and his thoughtful composer. Wordless singing beneath the cello’s commentary accentuates an underlying yearning. Even the jazzier inflections of “Joden elskede luften” (The Earth Loved the Air) enhance the starkness of Munch’s inner world, a place where trees uproot themselves and turn into human beings: Everything is alive and in motion. / Even at the center of the Earth / there are sparks of life. This leaves us to bask in the promised “Soloppgang” (Sunrise), which unites musicians and singers in an optimistic flourish that is hard to come by in Bjørnstad’s work.

Overall, there is a rustic, hymnal quality to the choruses, which suits the material well enough. More exciting, however, are the three “Recitatives” and “Intermezzos” signposting the program. The former elicit some of Bjørnstad’s most unchained playing on record in bursts of cathartic free improvisation, while the latter weave the piano into melodic shadows of cello or saxophone, each a thread gathered from an open wound and spun into new flesh. Like the protagonists of “Som i en kirke” (As if They Were in a Church), they reveal a gravid awareness of mortality, seeing creation as a church unto itself, and nature as God’s tabernacle.

(To hear samples of Sunrise, click here.)

Galina Ustvolskaya (ECM New Series 2329)

| Tyran Grillo

2329 X

Galina Ustvolskaya

Patricia Kopatchinskaja violin
Markus Hinterhäuser piano
Reto Bieri clarinet
Recorded March 2013, Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) may not be a household name, but the Russian composer’s work speaks with a truth that is rare in modern music. As the favorite student of her famous teacher, Dmitri Shostakovich, she was destined for greatness. However, personal politics seem to have gotten in the way of her ascent to prominence. Shostakovich was quite taken with Ustvolskaya, twice proposing marriage. Her lack of reciprocation seems to have embittered him, and as a result her work was scarcely published or performed. According to her book, Shostakovich in Dialogue, however, author Judith Kuhn cautions against buying into Ustvolskaya’s personal mythology, as her claims of creative independence (“There is no link whatsoever between my music and that of any other composer, livind or dead”) might have been just as reactionary, and allusions to Shostakovich inevitably creep up in her work.

But life and art do not imitate one another in her music, which like the cover photograph of this ECM New Series album dedicated to it speaks to the broken pieces as much as those intact, for they also have songs to sing. Because it was she who said, “All who truly love my music should refrain from theoretical analysis of it” (though even this might have been a defensive statement), we do better to approach it not as an excuse for analytical thinking, but as a spiritual experience that demands undivided regard in return for its outpouring.

The beating heart of all three works featured here is Moldovan-Austrian violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, whose rendering of the Sonata for violin and piano (1952) alongside Markus Hinterhäuser is alone worth the acquaintance. The violin begins on a teetering, pianistic bridge in which just enough slats remain to grant full passage. On the other side, Kopatchinskaja must hold the music’s fabric together, frayed as it is. This requires an unusually pristine tone, and this she possesses, along with a variety of extended configurations. She can darken or brighten, be rough or smooth, and moves through the body of this music like creation itself. Notes devoid of vibrato stand out for their clarity and help temper the piano’s inclinations to dance. What emerges from all of this is an internal clock, marking not time but space. Its pulse is not mechanical, but shifts with every blush of mood. Kopatchinskaja takes up that pulse at the end as she raps the body of her instrument with a knuckle.

PK

The 1949 Trio adds clarinetist Reto Bieri to the duo for a tripartite work of artful design. Bieri’s own purity of tone enhances Kopatchinskaja’s, and vice versa, while Hinterhäuser stretches every filament into even consistency. The violin writing is more insistent and razor-like this time around, cutting the obvious relationships within the trio in favor of the implied. The second movement is a lullaby in shadow, walking a tightrope into a warped deconstruction of a Bach-like motif in the third. Here the jagged and the linear become a third, metaphysical category: a blueprint of a blueprint, in which the piano barely hangs on to life.

In his cultural history of St. Petersburg, Solomon Volkov writes, “Ustvolskaya’s chamber works are as monumental as a symphony, and her symphonies are as translucent as chamber music,” though I find it hard to believe that many would hold such an opinion had the composer not put it forth herself. We may see this dynamic operative in the 1952 Sonata, but the Duet for violin and piano, written in 1964, is an intimate cartography of resistance. The distinction between Sonata and Duet more rightly speaks to the composer’s defiance of the chamber music category. The violin’s unassuming introduction turns to flint as flashes ring out. Dissonant, romping scales in the piano, combined with the violin’s half-step faints and distant alarm calls, prime us for the expectorations to come. Yet within each crashing wave curls an invisible grammar, to which pizzicato periods dot arco exclamations. And in a ghostly finish, the violin scrims the line between Heaven and Hell, blending until there is no difference between the two.

And so, rather than simply compare these chamber works to symphonies, it would be more accurate to emphasize their repurposing of scale. It’s not that Ustvolskaya’s sound-world is so big as to engulf us, but that we shrink to such a size that what was once microscopic now seems cosmic. Biographical apocrypha aside, her work is vital for its staunchness of both vision and blindness to the listener. This is not to say we are ignored, but neither are we patronized. We must reckon the music as it is.

(To hear samples of Galina Ulstvolskaya, click here.)

Ketil Bjørnstad: La notte (ECM 2300)

| Tyran Grillo

La notte

Ketil Bjørnstad
La notte

Ketil Bjørnstad piano
Andy Sheppard tenor and soprano saxophones
Eivind Aarset guitars, electronics
Anja Lechner violoncello
Arild Andersen double bass
Marilyn Mazur percussion
Recorded live July 21, 2010 at Molde International Jazz Festival
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Mixed March 2012 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo by Jan Erik Kongshaug, Ketil Bjørnstad, and Manfred Eicher
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Ketil Bjørnstad has been a formative presence on a wide variety of ECM releases. Since 1993’s Water Stories, his recognizable pianism and compositional voice have left indelible marks on the label’s catalogue. Age has fortified the intimacy of his melodic formations, whether in his darkly alluring collaborations with cellist David Darling or in projects with singers. La notte, however, represents a return to form, while also taking his craft in unexpected new directions. The result of a Molde International Jazz Festival commission and recorded live in 2010, Bjørnstad’s eight-part suite is a self-styled “soundtrack to an inner film.” It’s also his most sublime creation to date.

KB

Bjørnstad has always been literary in his music, just as he has always been musical in his literature, but cinema has also been an integral influence. Here he pays natural homage to Michelangelo Antonioni, citing the Italian director’s “slow, rhythmic authority” as an early source of musical inspiration. To bring that moving vision to life, he has assembled a powerhouse band of saxophonist Andy Sheppard, guitarist Eivind Aarset, cellist Anja Lechner, bassist Arild Andersen, and percussionist Marilyn Mazur. Together, they create a musique verité of raw forces.

Harnessing such forces requires no small amount of finesse and patience, as demonstrated in the slow progression from Parts I to II. Between the low, arco bass and electronic hum, there is little to grab hold of in the beginning. Even as Lechner’s cello and Bjørnstad’s piano engage in proper dance, Mazur’s tracery is still far away. Only when Sheppard lights up the sky with his tenor does the band’s full gravity take effect. Into that shift from liquid to solid, we might read the robustness of Antonioni’s characters and the fleetingness of their environments, if not the other way around.

Mazur and Sheppard are, in fact, the stars of this performance, although, duly invigorated as they are by Bjørnstad’s finely grained writing and flexible architecture. The saxophonist opts for soprano in Parts III, V, and VII, taking off with un-caged melodies. Having learned from Icarus’s example, his wings are impervious to the sun, which he proves to be a reflection anyway when he leaps into the sky as if it were an upside down pond, sending ripples toward every horizon. Mazur, for her part, accentuates the jazzier shades of this spectrum, acting as a buffer zone for Andersen’s bold cartography. With Bjørnstad, the latter two become a most formidable trio, the central nervous system to Aarset’s coronal guitar and Sheppard’s ecstatic flailing.

Mazur and Sheppard are, in fact, the stars of this performance, although, duly invigorated as they are by Bjørnstad’s finely grained writing and flexible architecture. The saxophonist opts for soprano in Parts III, V, and VII, taking off with un-caged melodies. Having learned from Icarus’s example, his wings are impervious to the sun, which he proves to be a reflection anyway when he leaps into the sky as if it were an upside down pond, sending ripples toward every horizon. Mazur, for her part, accentuates the jazzier shades of this spectrum, acting as a buffer zone for Andersen’s bold cartography. With Bjørnstad, the latter two become a most formidable trio, the central nervous system to Aarset’s coronal guitar and Sheppard’s ecstatic flailing. The presence of these bandmates rubs off on Bjørnstad, whose solo in Part IV magnifies the suite’s red thread with a fullness of expression such as he has rarely elicited before. When Lechner joins him, it feels more than logical. Their relationship is this music’s very foundation, prefiguring Parts VI and VIII as well and making broken images whole again by the glue of remembrance.

This is a must-have for fans of any of anyone involved, but especially of Bjørnstad, who on this stage reaches new heights, and depths, spreading his energies across the toast of inspiration into a brighter tomorrow.

(To hear samples of La notte, click here.)

Sounds and Silence: Travels with Manfred Eicher

| Tyran Grillo

Sounds and Silence

If every film has a soundtrack, does it not stand to reason that every soundtrack has a film? This would seem to be the guiding question behind Sounds and Silence. In this unprecedented DVD release, documentarians Peter Guyer and Norbert Wiedmer set out to capture ECM Records as a living entity in which human labor and ingenuity are the dual heart of musical life. Although billed as a “road movie” and patterned by footage of label founder and producer Manfred Eicher in various states of transport, it is equally concerned with the non-literal paths that have led to the creation, sustenance, and influence of the German imprint and its ongoing permutations. They keyword here is “ongoing,” because Eicher and his trust have only intensified their productivity since 1969, when it all began, to the point of releasing, on average, an album per week.

It is almost inevitable that the film’s opening montage and credit sequence should be accompanied by a recording of Keith Jarrett. The pianist is one of ECM’s brightest stars, but is also committed to the power of simplicity, as demonstrated in his rendition of Georges I. Gurdjieff’s “Reading of Sacred Books.” It is an apt description of the filmmakers’ and their process, tasked as they are with interpreting an archive of such magnitude that not even a collective documentary on each album could hope to articulate it. Rather, they must choose to concentrate on specific times, places, and moods in the hope of tapping into something essential to them all. That being said, when Eicher talks of seeking the luminosity of music, which like a comet’s tail leaves behind a pure trace of its being, and philosophizes that music “has no fixed abode,” we begin to realize that such technology of capture as the camera is forever limited in its relationship to the audio realm. For while images suggest associations by their very existence, sounds thrive on the nourishment of our wildest interpretations. Consequently, this film is not so much a behind-the-scenes manifesto of artistic creation as it is a gentle visualization of ECM’s inner heart and its ripple effect across oceans.

Pärt and Eicher
(Manfred Eicher and Arvo Pärt)

Rehearsals with Estonian composer and New Series darling Arvo Pärt at St. Nicholas’ Church in Tallinn yield the documentary’s first proper footage and serve as touchstones for its narrative arc. They offer a strangely profound glimpse into the countless intangibles that go into any ECM recording, but particularly those in which the composer is present, at once presiding over and deferential to the equally intangible magic of a committed performance. Pärt is every bit the contemplative human being one might expect. He feels music with every fiber of his being, and it’s a gift to witness, if only briefly, his childlike sagacity. His face is a veritable gallery of expressions, each attuned to a change in the score and the possibility of making it grow even further toward an unattainable perfection.

Pärt
(Pärt listens intently as conductor Tõnu Kaljuste’s right hand threads the proverbial needle)

During one such scene, a most touching development occurs when, in mutual happiness, Pärt engages Eicher in a dance. This single gesture reveals something perhaps unexpected in both men: in the composer a feeling of bliss that many of us lose in the name of adulthood, in the producer a love for the simple pleasure of forces aligning in exactly the way he wants. Eicher is indeed a guide of uncompromising integrity, and his smile reveals far more about why he does what he does than the iconic and relatively frequent photos of him hunched over yet another mixing board. True dedication to one’s craft, these images suggest, requires not only a seriousness of heart but also a frivolity of spirit.

Dance
(Eicher and Pärt share a dance to the tune of the latter’s Estonian Lullaby)

Between these signposts, we encounter a train of faces and voices, many perhaps for the first time. Interviews with Pärt and his delightfully honest wife Nora, Greek composer Eleni Karaindrou, Tunisian oudist and composer Anouar Brahem, Italian multi-reedist Gianluigi Trovesi and accordionist Gianni Coscia, Argentine bandoneón master Dino Saluzzi, and Eicher himself help us better understand the inconceivable alignments of fate that sometimes must occur just to bring the right people together, much less allow them the space to create whatever they will create. The bellows of Saluzzi’s lungs, for example, prove just as eloquent as those between his fingers when he shares his history as a musician who shunned the academy in favor of raw expression. In him is revealed an educator’s heart, one that seeks to learn as much as enhance learning in others. Brahem is likewise an articulate soul possessed of a subtle wit. His sensitivity toward political matters only serves to enhance appreciation of his sonic endeavors, which in light of his worldview take on new valences of awareness and pacifism. It’s a joy to watch him alone in his home studio, building his tunes, element by element.

Trees
(Only light may part shadow)

As we navigate environmental flashes of Eicher’s travels, we follow the producer to Athens for a monumental performance of Karaindrou’s music (of which he shadows a rehearsal with saxophonist Jan Garbarek and violist Kim Kashkashian), a recording session at Studios La Buissonne in southeastern France with Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin (and the intuition needed to bring out just one muted string hit in post-production), another at Copenhagen’s Sun Studio with Marilyn Mazur, a concert featuring Brahem with pianist François Couturier and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier at the Prinzregententheater in Munich, and mixing Trovesi’s explosive reconstructions of operatic favorites in Bergamo, Italy. Other highlights include footage of said concerts, a brief sojourn to Argentina with Saluzzi and Lechner, some candid moments with the ever-animated Trovesi and his confederate Coscia, and even a peek into ECM’s Munich headquarters, where we see everyday logistics in action, including the meticulous process of selecting album covers.

Cover selection
(Reading between the covers)

In the same way that Eicher seeks to put the listener inside the music, so do the filmmakers try to put us in ECM’s world, and in that spirit we end where we began: with Pärt. Experiencing the consummation of every above-mentioned force is one of the most gratifying passages of the film. The music is the message, because the message exists to be sung.

Pärt rehearsal
(Icons before icons)

ECM’s music has always approached the level of cinema, and so it was only natural that it should be honored in moving pictures. And yet, the end result seems more like the realization of a fantasy than a picture of reality. Throughout the 87-minute duration, the filmmakers make as much as they can out of what little they have. Case in point: Saluzzi and Lechner’s Argentine sojourn. Aside from a hint of social awkwardness, the footage overlaps with another film by co-director Wiedmer (see El Encuentro, also released on an ECM-edition DVD) and is perhaps better saved for that portrait. Its inclusion here feels like recycling and not in the documentary’s best interest.

Another dividing point may be the lack of attention paid to certain other production aspects. Early on in the film, Pärt speaks sagaciously of the recording session as an organism, of which musicians, engineers, and producers are vital organs. And yet, what of those unsung engineers? While of course ECM has none under its employ (they are independent artists working for independent studios), Martin Wieland, Jan Erik Kongshaug, Stephan Schellmann, Peter Laenger, James A. Farber, and, more recently, Stefano Amerio, among others, have all been of vital importance in shaping the label’s distinctive identity. The reality, of course, is that such a film, regardless of maker, can at best only be supplementary and will be of far more interest to the ECM fan than to someone unfamiliar with the label. Nothing can replace the listener. And is that not what Eicher is, above all? Why else would we first encounter him on screen as a man alone with his thoughts, as if listening to the world?

Seated Eicher

And so, it is in the name of listening that I direct your regard to the film’s soundtrack.

ECM_2250_CD

A cover that brings to mind Iro Haarla’s Vespers situates us in a cloud-break with only a snatch of landscape below to indicate the separation of worlds. The composition is emblematic of a label that has always charted indefinable borders between civilization and emptiness, and in so doing has made music seemingly aware of its own mortality. Keith Jarrett’s “Reading of Sacred Books,” written by Georges I. Gurdjieff, asserts nothing but its own lack of assertion. It is instead an expression of transcendence, a confirmation of the energies all around and within us, by which we are able to produce this wonder called music in the first place.

If anything can be said to define ECM’s output, it is memory. Charting that which has already passed in order to open our eyes to that which has yet to come, these musicians have all primed us for the opening of newer doors. This is the spirit of the label: to take the musical moment and craft it into self. Few tracks on this compilation embody this spirit more creatively than “Modul 42” from Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin. After gaining access to the recording process in the film, it’s wonderful to encounter the music on its own terms, to look deep into its eyes and know it’s looking back at (and through) us. The sparkling middle passage ushers us into a world hitherto unknown yet undeniably familiar. Anouar Brahem’s “Sur Le Fleuve” is another slice of magic. Featuring the same trio combination of piano, accordion, and oud as recorded in the film, its marriage of instrumental signatures is nothing short of breathtaking. We can take great comfort in this music, for it is our partner.

Dino Saluzzi’s “Tango a mi padre” played as close to breathing as possible by him and Anja Lechner, speaks to another facet of that fascination with memory, which in this piece is so alive that it weeps for itself. We might, then, hear Vicente Greco’s “Ojos Negros” at the same duo’s hands with renewed sense of purpose. That these two bodies traveling through space and time have found themselves somehow joined at the soul, sharing with one another the details of their upbringing and the unknowns of their future, is a miracle. Also miraculous are two selections from Eleni Karaindrou, whose compositional fabric is spun from her “Farewell Theme,” which floats Jan Garbarek’s soulful tone across an ocean’s wave of strings, as Kim Kashkashian’s aquatic tail leaves its marks in the water, and “To Vals Tou Gamou,” in which piano, accordion, and violin dance like pens across paper. We may listen to this music either poignantly or through the lens of a joy that remains somehow clear in the mists of its origin.

The “Arpeggiata addio” by Giovanni G. Kapsberger, as heard on Rolf Lislevan’s Nuove musiche, likewise speaks of the past in the present. In it we can feel the propulsion of life experience by the power of desire. A voice carries us across the threshold of then and now, cradled in hands chapped like old parchment. Fresher inkwells spill their contents across Marilyn Mazur’s whimsical “Creature Walk,” a piece which as we know from the documentary brings a smile even to her face, and Gianluigi Trovesi’s blistering take on “Così, Tosca” by Giacomo Puccini. Although lit by a canonical match, Trovesi’s candle burns like an instrument of restless beauty in the macabre waltz funneling around him.

Arvo Pärt is also represented twice. His Für Lennart in memoriam is an undeniably dense molecule of emotional transfixion, while the postludinal Da Pacem Domine, after a reprise of Jarrett’s Gurjdieff “Reading,” carries us on its feathered back to the edges of sunset, where awaits the discovery of discovery.

How does one sum up ECM Records? Thankfully this is the purpose of neither the documentary nor its soundtrack. Rather, they exist to give us glimpses into the ever-shifting structure of the label’s skeleton. Following Manfred Eicher on these journeys, whether through eyes or ears, you might just find yourself wondering how so much external architecture could arise from music that is immaterial, only to realize that it’s the other way around.

(To hear samples of the soundtrack, click here.)