Author: Tyran Grillo

Paul Bley: Play Blue – Oslo Concert (ECM 2373)

| Tyran Grillo

Play Blue

Paul Bley
Play Blue – Oslo Concert

Paul Bley piano
Recorded live August 2008 at Kulturkirken Jakob, Oslo Jazz Festival
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Mixed October 2013 at Rainbow Studio by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Since appearing as bandleader on ECM’s third release in 1970, Canadian pianist Paul Bley has been a formative presence for the label. Yet despite the classic combos with Evan Parker, Barre Phillips, Gary Peacock, Paul Motian, and other legends, Bley has been at his own most legendary when alone at the keyboard. Open, to love was just the beginning of a highly intermittent journey that continued with Solo in Mondsee, both now achieving trilogy status with the addition of Play Blue.

It’s practically impossible, of course, to discuss ECM’s catalogue of solo piano improvisations without touching on Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea, to say little of younger additions Craig Taborn and Aaron Parks. And while it’s easy to lose oneself in the enchantments of these continents, perhaps none is so abundant as Bley’s. As the album’s anagrammatic title suggests, the illocutionary need to perform is in this very DNA. He has such command of his freedom at the keyboard, where he expresses such freedom in his command.

Bley

(Photo credit: Carol Goss)

Traversing five tracks averaging 11 minutes each, Bley’s program, recorded live at 2008’s Oslo Jazz Festival, is as hefty as his toolkit, from which he seems to draw on the entire history of jazz to make every invention shine. At just over 17 minutes, “Far North” might make for a top-heavy introduction were it not so intricately pocked by tunnels of play, exploration, and living for its own sake. There is, for lack of a more effective word, an unthreatened quality to this music, as if it were some final refuge of wilderness where fauna thrive by the safety of mutual trust. As with nearly everything Bley touches, the climate is constantly changing: now lush with foliage, now crisp like the tundra. There is sweeping grandeur and gnarled microscopy in equal measure. Like morning and evening, each is a reflection of the other.

From the far north, Bley shifts to the “Way Down South Suite.” Although ultimately more playful and chromatic, it sprouts a much knottier pine before expanding its reach to distant planets. With an open stance Bley navigates these changes as if he has known them before, despite their utter lack of repetition. Earth awaits us with open arms in “Flame.” With classically balladic contours, this intimate journey bears that characteristic Bley edge, which keeps us at full attention by never privileging a single mood over others. Even denser, but also bittersweet, is “Longer,” which leaves “Pent-Up House” to finish things off. This tune by Sonny Rollins, in whose band Bley played in the early 1960s, emerges from the rubble of its original structure. Bley rebuilds it cell by cell, until its compact circle becomes a period at the end of an epic tale.

With this masterful addition to his discography, Bley has proven that not only is he open to love, but also a style of beauty that comes only with age. Let this not be the end.

(To hear samples of Play Blue, please click here.)

Vijay Iyer: Mutations (ECM 2372)

| Tyran Grillo

Mutations

Vijay Iyer
Mutations

Vijay Iyer piano, electronics
Miranda Cuckson violin
Michi Wiancko violin
Kyle Armbrust viola
Kivie Cahn-Lipman violoncello
Recorded September 2013 at Avatar Studios, New York
Engineer: James A. Farber
Assistant: Tim Marchiafava
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In a brief liner note, MacArthur-winning pianist and composer Vijay Iyer defines the title of his ECM debut as “the noise in our genes.” The eponymous decalogue for piano, string quartet and electronics puts this theory into sonic practice with such organicity that fans and newcomers alike will find this laboratory to be a fascinating place in which to marvel at every biological compound. Having studied violin for 15 years, Iyer is anything but a stranger to the sounds of the string quartet, and so inclusion of that reduced orchestra is as timely as the gestures encoded into his score. Although one might read any number of influences into the piece (Terry Riley comes immediately to mind in the introductory movement, “Air,” and in the third, “Canon”), Iyer’s sound-world is very much its own ecosystem, where the randomness of sprouting leaves is just as vital as, and exists as an expression of, the roots that feed them. Subtitles thus reflect more the physical than emotional structure of individual movements. Some are more overt. “Rise,” for instance, consists of a rising tone that falls in on itself at the insistence of sirens and has its partner in the penultimate “Descent,” while small bursts of mechanical activity throughout “Automata” identify its clockwork soul behind the tasteful electronic appliqué. This is the key tone of the emerging landscape, drawn in the hue of dusk. Other portions are less obvious, such as “Chain,” which creates a feeling of linkage by the notes not played. Three distinct forces—the click track, piano, and strings—achieve remarkable unity here. From the concentrated (“Kernel”) to the frenetic (“Clade”), and even to the docked-boat knocking of “Time,” which closes out, the feeling is always one of fractals: the closer you get, the more detail is revealed. This might very well serve to describe Iyer’s entire output so far.

At the periphery of this program the listener will find three solo piano works that are anything but peripheral. Spellbound and Sacrosanct, Cowrie Shells and the Shimmering Sea, as the initiatory phase of both the album and a hopefully longstanding relationship with ECM, speaks with Iyer’s characteristic attention to detail. Contrasting pedaled sustains and shallower drops, he displays an unusual awareness of the piano’s timbral capabilities. In other words, he infuses the piano with a deeper knowledge of itself. He achieves this with no small effort of restraint, lest his territories become too ephemeral to grasp. The final two pieces factor electronics into the equation. Vuln, Part 2 emerges from an astutely urban palette. Augmented by a muffled bass beat, like that of trunk-mounted subwoofers as heard from a neighboring street, serves not as a rhythmic guide but as a reminder of the regularity and therefore fallibility of abstraction. Iyer illustrates that even the most fleeting movements of body and mind are driven by impulses that, when seen from far enough away, become regular and may even disappear. The piano’s beauties, then, exist only to be sworn to secrecy. When We’re Gone is the coda, and as such is trained to open two doors for each one closed. In its starker expansion of time, reflections of mortality tremble like icicles desirous of melting. So do we end as we began: at that indefinable edge between formation and destruction.

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

Kremerata Baltica: Mieczysław Weinberg (ECM New Series 2368/69)

| Tyran Grillo

Mieczysław Weinberg

Mieczysław Weinberg

Gidon Kremer violin
Daniil Grishin viola
Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė violoncello
Daniil Trifonov piano
Kremerata Baltica
Recorded November 2012 and July 2013 in Neuhardenberg (opp. 42, 48, and 98) and Lockenhaus (opp. 46, 126)
Engineers: Peter Laenger and Stephan Schellmann
Album produced by Manfred Eicher

The name Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) may not be as well known as that of his dear friend Dmitri Shostakovich, but the music he penned is at last receiving overdue attention. As Wolfgang Sandner suggests in his liner notes for this ECM conspectus, the Polish-born, Russia-based composer’s obscurity has perhaps less to do with his toeing of the party line (as the great Soviet composers were wont to do) and more to do with his optimism. Although this risks painting Shostakovich with a pessimistic brush, it makes a salient point on the marketing potential of the tormented soul. Whatever the reasons for Weinberg’s lesser reputation, we can marvel at this recording’s confirmation of his compositional acumen.

No piece could be more indicative of Weinberg’s gifts than the Sonata No. 3 for violin solo. Written in 1979, his Opus 126 is a masterpiece that, despite sounding more like Bartók or Hindemith, belongs right alongside Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for the same instrument. Declamatory without being exclamatory and ideally suited to violinist Gidon Kremer’s style, it sings, full-throated, through a checkering of rustic and urban climates and achieves its cohesion by way of staggered exposition. Each section of the larger structure lends insight into the composer’s mind, corners of which may be quiet and melodic, while others may revel in an idyllic folk dance or two, and all of it leading to the ladder of harmonics, pizzicati, and whispers with which the piece closes.

The String Trio, Op. 48 of 1950, is an intriguing follow-up, not least for its relatively academic Andante, which is sandwiched by two far more mature reckonings. Yet musicians—Kremer, along with violist Daniil Grishin and cellist Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė—make spirited work of even the occasional pedantic bar, so that any playfulness beneath the seriousness of this early work is fully present by way of an intensely lyrical core. If anything, Weinberg’s youth in this instance is sometimes betrayed by a lack of subtlety, although its historical significance outweighs any such paltry concerns. On the other hand, Kremer and pianist Daniil Trifonov give vibrant account of the 1949 Sonatina, Op. 46. This far more distinctive triptych opens with a warped dance (the light steps of which are beautifully emphasized by the duo), moves on to an organic Lento (which, compared to the aforementioned Andante, allows the instruments to breathe), and finishes with an interpolated Allegro.

Two larger-scale works complete this two-disc program. The 1948 Concertino for Violin and String Orchestra, Op. 42 is another early example, but is eminently alluring for its romantic inclinations and modernist drive. The steeliness of the opening movement melts from Kremer’s bow, as his Kremerata Baltica provides the cyclical underpinnings of every line. The Lento that follows morphs from cadenza-like solo into shadowy dance, as if obscured by leaves and time. The concluding Allegro begins with muted strings before opening into a pizzicato-led flurry of activity and razor-thin interactions. Yet these delights bow to the program’s pièce de résistance, the Symphony No. 10, Op. 98. What makes this symphony so glorious is its scale: not in terms of vastness but intimacy. Over its five-movement course, we are led through a Neo-Baroque fantasy of exquisite construction. The clearest parallels are to Vivaldi, whose own string symphonies might very well have been on Weinberg’s mind, yet whose final Allegro of the Concerto No. 8 in A minor, RV 522 from L’estro armonico is a particularly vivid reference in the second half of the first movement. The central movements are achingly introspective and feature Kremer in a meta-narrative role throughout. The string writing is just as moving in the buoyant fourth movement, while the mounting consonance of the finale unleashes some percussive playing of instrument bodies and a threnody-like conclusion.

Integral to Weinberg’s music is its integrity, to which the Kremerata Baltica and charismatic leader attend with unflagging dedication. Not only do we feel the chasm of history yielding these forgotten treasures; we also understand the value of their latent exposure. This recording is a gift, and it deserves to be accordingly unwrapped.

Jacob Young: Forever Young (ECM 2366)

| Tyran Grillo

Forever Young

Jacob Young
Forever Young

Jacob Young guitars
Trygve Seim tenor and soprano saxophones
Marcin Wasilewski piano
Slawomir Kurkiewicz double bass
Michal Miskiewicz drums
Recorded August 2013 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Forever Young is all Young. Jacob Young, that is. The Norwegian-American guitarist made his ECM debut with 2004’s Evening Falls, on which he joined a group of label regulars for a nuanced and strangely familiar encounter. Now for his third round (incidentally the title of a Manu Katché album on which he also appeared), Young enlists the help of saxophonist Trygve Seim and the Marcin Wasilewski Trio for an all-original set with all the evocative precision admirers will have come to expect.

Young band

Young’s experiences in Katche’s band seem to have rubbed off on two tunes. The mid-tempo groove of “Bounce” is luscious and slick as rain, and sports a solo from Young’s electric that lights up the night with its pale fire. “Sofia’s Dance,” for its part, is an acoustic-led excursion driven by drummer Michal Miskiewicz. Young sets a duly environmental precedent with his harp-strung picking, which is then fleshed out by Wasilewski toward some awesome group unity.

This dichotomy between instruments continues throughout the album, of which the acoustic tracks are marked by relaxed conversations. In this vein, Young and Seim share a musical relationship that reveals depth of friendship. The saxophonist often picks up the guitarist’s lunar phases and carries them toward new moon. In “Therese’s Gate,” for one, Seim emotes with the bareness of an experienced singer. This allows Young all the more room to stretch his fingers in that same vein of sincere expressiveness. Wasilewski’s pianism is notable for its beauty, as also in the track of the same name. “Beauty” finds Young in a strumming mood, thereby throwing more spotlight on the pianist and his wondrous rhythm section (hat tip to bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz). The album’s opener, “I Lost My Heart To You,” brings all of these elements together and more. A stellar intro from the keyboard drops a starlit curtain, from behind which Young’s foundations begin a winning melodic combination, even as Miskiewicz’s cymbals leave shining breadcrumbs toward sunrise. It’s an ideal place to start for the way it frames Young’s guitar as one element in a fair trade system. Like the arcs of a group of ice skaters on a forest pond, the musicians’ collective tracery implies many infinities.

The plugged-in tracks are smoother. Young’s virtuosity is on full display in “We Were Dancing” but, true to form, constructs with sensitivity intact and leaves space for Kurkiewicz’s light unpacking. “1970” names the year of Young’s birth, and is brimming with flower power. The gymnastic soloing adds to its charm. “Time Changes” is another summery piece of nostalgia, which behind its upbeat veneer cradles a strangely meditative soul. Young takes us to school with unpretentious grace, as Wasilewski’s trio measures every detail around him. The album ends on a reflective note with “My Brother.” And what better place to leave us than in the spirit of family? For we, too, are welcomed to share in the love, forever young and impervious to the critic’s words.

(To hear samples of Forever Young, click here.)

Muthspiel/Grenadier/Blade: Driftwood (ECM 2349)

| Tyran Grillo

Driftwood

Driftwood

Wolfgang Muthspiel guitar
Larry Grenadier double bass
Brian Blade drums
Recorded May 2013 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After making his ECM debut in the company of Ralph Towner and Slava Grigoryan on 2013’s Travel Guide, Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel takes on his first leader date for the label. And with good cause, because its sounds have been an important part of his evolution as an artist, not least of all through his studies with the great Mick Goodrick. With such a background to go on, it should be no surprise that Muthspiel is a suitable fit for, while also expanding the exploratory mission of, ECM. And in the fine company of bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade, his star shines even more brightly.

Muthspiel and friends

Excepting the regenerating spiral of the instantaneously composed title track, all tunes are from Muthspiel’s pen, artfully shuffled between electric and acoustic leads. The former bookend the set, starting with the tracery of “Joseph”—in the center of which Muthspiel exploits a range of effects, from grunge to echoing parabolas in single turns of phrase—and ending with “Bossa for Michael Brecker,” an appropriately marbled tribute to the late, great saxophonist. Its opening gestures paint the dotted center line down a road that continues even after the album nominally ends. Muthspiel sails across its pavement toward a classic unity. The electric guitar glows with subconscious hues in the pastel-colored “Highline,” in which its overdubbed ghost keens distantly as the rhythm section gathers momentum for a runway jam that seems about to lift off at any moment but is content in dancing with the anticipation of doing so. And in “Lichtzelle” (Light cell), that same guitar joins drums in a duet of seeking points and lines.

“Uptown” starts off the acoustic selections in groovier territory and, from the underlying pulse and slightly dissonant borders, reveals a touch of Towner. Between the delicious syncopation and a nimble solo from Grenadier, it turns out to be one of the most unforgettable tracks to come from ECM in a long time. “Cambiata” is a uniform, laid-back piece of cinematic beauty, while “Madame Vonn” is the album’s consummate ballad. As the ponderous shadow of “Uptown,” it has a classic—if also melancholic—skin.

Driftwood may be a study in contrasts, but is ultimately one of enmeshment. It shows a musician not at the top of his game, but embodying the game itself, working his fingers into the strings with meticulous freedom until each scores a quiet, melodic goal without the need for fanfare.

(To hear samples of Driftwood, click here.)

Jean-Louis Matinier & Marco Ambrosini: Inventio (ECM 2348)

| Tyran Grillo

Inventio

Inventio

Jean-Louis Matinier accordion
Marco Ambrosini nyckelharpa
Recorded April 2013, Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Lara Persia
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Although French accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier and Marco Ambrosini, Italian virtuoso of the nyckelharpa (a Swedish traditional instrument that is something of a cross between hurdy-gurdy and vielle), have existed as a duo since 2008, it took a period of refinement and an invitation to record for ECM Records in 2013 before their music at last saw the digital light of day. Anyone who has followed the career of Anouar Brahem in the 21st century will have encountered Matinier alongside the Tunisian oudist on 2002’s Le pas du chat noir and 2006’s Le Voyage de Sahar. Ambrosini is recognized as a leading proponent of the nyckelharpa and has carried that instrument in fresh directions across a varied terrain of recordings. Matinier has elsewhere characterized his musical relationship with Ambrosini as “a total dialogue,” and the description could hardly be more appropriate. They complete each other’s sentences.

Inventio Duo

The first strains of “Wiosna,” among the lion’s share of tracks penned by Matinier, immediately recall another duo: Argentine bandoneonista Dino Saluzzi and German cellist Anja Lechner. Both partnerships are savvy in terms of rhythm and atmosphere, morphing from tears into triumph at a moment’s notice. And yet, if Saluzzi and Lechner could be said to treat the listener like a canvas, Matinier and Ambrosini treat the listener like a movie screen on which to project moving images. This analogic difference comes about through both a distinct timbral palette and an unprecedented program. It is virtuosic and gorgeous all the same, but in its own way indivisible.

Matinier’s writing comprises a folk music all its own. Whether in the cartographic flybys of “Hommage” and “Kochanie Moje” or in the briefer passages of “Taïga” and “Balinese,” an underlying pulse finds consummation in the musicians’ synergy, which is so seamless that it’s sometimes difficult to tell where one instrument ends and the other begins. Even in Matinier’s two solo tracks, the nyckelharpa’s droning spirit lingers. Of those solos, “Szybko” is particularly moving and brings to mind the flute playing of Guo Yue. Like the “Siciliènne” (by accordionist-composer André Astier) that closes the album, his are fleeting portraits of places out of time. Also out of time are Ambrosini’s own compositions, through which the nyckelharpa’s sympathetic strings resonate like a life force. His “Basse Dance” best exploits the duo’s interlocking sound and might just as well have been lifted from a Renaissance manuscript. In this context the nyckelharpa sounds like a viola da gamba and signals the titular dance with a locomotive pulse. His “Tasteggiata” and “Tasteggiata 2” are likewise steam-driven, chugging through a full spectrum of color.

The album’s circle rounds out with segments plucked from a tangle of Baroque repertoire by Giovanni Pergolesi, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, and Johann Sebastian Bach. A “Presto” from the latter’s g-minor sonata for solo violin is reborn at Ambrosini’s fingertips, which imbue this familiar piece with an ancient air, while the “Inventio 4” from Bach’s Two- and Three-part Inventions yields not only the album’s title but also its most luminescent notecraft. Folk touches from Ambrosini again pull this music into a deeper origin myth. Such integrations make the Baroque selections something much more than obligatory nods to an established canon. Their placement stirs the waters with a certain depth of interpretation that links them to a chain across borders.

(See this review as it originally appeared in RootsWorld online magazine and listen to samples here.)

Colin Vallon Trio: Le Vent (ECM 2347)

| Tyran Grillo

Le Vent

Colin Vallon Trio
Le Vent

Colin Vallon piano
Patrice Moret double bass
Julian Sartorius drums
Recorded April 2013 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Rruga marked the ECM debut of a peerless piano trio, and with that release opened new doors for the format. Pianist Colin Vallon again joins bassist Patrice Moret, and together with new drummer Julian Sartorius they unhinge those doors in absence of need. With an even more refined geometry, one that borders on white magic, these three young men quietly draft an unforgettable statement for the 21st century. Aside from being a master class in texture and atmosphere, Le Vent mines the element of surprise as if it were ore in rock. As the trio builds its quarry, it reveals itself as a creature of ritual. If Tord Gustavsen’s trio is the x axis (marking time) and Bobo Stenson’s is the y (marking distance), then Vallon’s selfless band is the z, by which we might gauge jazz’s inter-dimensional potential.

Vallon Trio

Moret’s sole compositional offering is also the album’s most significant. “Juuichi” opens the set with pulsing, unified chords. The title is an intriguing one, being Japanese for the number 11, and could refer to many things (I’m inclined to think of it as related to the stumbling time signature that shadows its every move). Growing in brightness and presence, it builds toward quiet reflection, spawning a tide of minnows. One immediately notices the care with which the trio builds its sonic worlds, each an ode to the value of patience. These musicians prove that, while indeed the best things come to those who wait, one must make music of the waiting for art to be born.

Skipping to the album’s end lands us in two freely improvised tracks: “Styx” and “Coriolis.” Both highlight Sartorius’s delicacy with brush and wand as he un-knots planks of wood until the album’s vessel resigns itself to a beautiful sinking. In these final statements are whispers of many others to come.

Between these two shores churns an ocean of Vallon originals, of which the title track further emphasizes Sartorius’s climatic tendencies. Here the melody from the composer’s fingers crystallizes like an icicle, but not before it traces a heart on a fogged train window. Though closed, that window allows a breath of current to make its briny notes known, a scent fecund with origins. Yet each time the trio switches tracks, it sets the tundra aflame with poetry.

Moret is a thrumming force, here and throughout, providing anchorage in “Immobile” and tactility to the soft-hued flames of “Cendre.” Elsewhere, he gives validity to every state, be it the protracted undulation of “Fade,” the bittersweet “Goodbye,” or even a clouded hint of “Rouge.” He also sets off evocative interactions between piano and cymbals, which in “Pixels” are light and glass.

Like grief, Vallon and his bandmates do not deny the immovable wedge of melancholy but grow larger to contain it. They are young in body but possess old souls, each with a space for the others in the name of living.

The Hilliard Ensemble: Il Cor Tristo (ECM New Series 2346)

| Tyran Grillo

2346 X

The Hilliard Ensemble
Il Cor Tristo

David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Steven Harrold tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Recorded November 2012, Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Throughout a four decades-long career, the Hilliard Ensemble has astonished with a vocal style so fluid yet so clearly textured that sometimes the inhales tell as much of the story as the exhales. There is, in no uncertain terms, something topographic about the Hilliards’ singing, which arcs and swivels like the mapmaker’s oldest instruments. Tenors Rogers Covey-Crump and Steven Harrold are particularly noteworthy as a core thread of the present recording, although it is baritone Gordon Jones who anchors Roger Marsh’s settings of Cantos 32 and 33 from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno with the added weight of guttural, chant-like singing. Written for the ensemble in 2008, Marsh’s title work (meaning “Misery of the heart”) is a masterful addition to the repertoire. Although it shares certain affinities with the rest of the program, one may ignore any marketing attempts to characterize its juxtaposition with the Renaissance works featured herein works as “seamless.” It is, rather fascinatingly, distinct for its organic irregularities. With a more stream-of-consciousness, recitational style, Marsh calls upon the voices to dig into Dante as if he were the very soil, until the Florentine poet’s underworld widens before us, where heads of betrayers lodged a frozen lake become tripping stones to his narrative other. Marsh’s remarkably astute writing and the Hilliards’ embodied diction make for a dramatic experience. In an explanatory liner note, the composer bids the listener to listen to these Cantos not merely for their harmony, but also for their poetry. Consequently, this release begs ownership of a physical copy. How else, then, might one appreciate Dante’s disturbing conversation of the disembodied, or the delicacy with which he and those tuneful tenors have “passed onward” into the next circle?

Francesco Petrarca, otherwise known as Petrarch, is the textual subject of interest for Bernardo Pisano (1490-1548) and Jacques Arcadelt (c. 1507-1568). The poems now focus on a rather different misery of the heart, calling on the powers that be more often to extinguish its yearnings than to chase them away by fire. Pisano’s settings are headlong excursions. Between the swift resolutions of Or vedi, Amor (Now you see, Love) and the ponderous circularities of Che debb’io far? (What must I do?), the Hilliards lead a deluge of probing sentiments. The freshness of their performance enhances Pisano’s sly arranging, which runs the gamut from lively and swinging to flowing and evenhanded. And the singers’ dynamic mastery is nowhere so beautifully tested than in Ne la stagion (At the moment), a trio of self-deprecating stanzas on the art of solitude.

Solitude further reigns over Arcadelt’s own settings, which yield some of the album’s fairest skies. The robustness of Solo e pensoso (Alone and thoughtful) sits self-interestedly on the shore of L’aere gravato (The heavy air). The latter is an ideal vehicle for David James, whose voice brings tidings of pulchritude wherever it may tread. Tutto ’l dí piango (All day I weep) likewise spotlights the countertenor and boasts some of the most pristine ensemble singing of the Hillards’ ECM tenure. And like Petrarch, who in that last verse is grieved by the failings of others more than his own, they seem to embrace the listener as an extension of their giving selves, trading fortune for a candle doused by the breath of a turning face.

(To hear samples of Il Cor Tristo, click here.)

Momo Kodama: La vallée des cloches (ECM New Series 2343)

| Tyran Grillo

La valée des cloches

Momo Kodama
La vallée des cloches

Momo Kodama piano
Recorded September 2012, Historischer Reitstadel, Neumarkt
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

As of late, ECM’s New Series imprint seems to be on a mission to prove that impressionism in classical music is, if anything, an exercise in clarity. This has been the message behind such releases as Tre Voci and Alexei Lubimov’s account of the Debussy Préludes. Joining these debunkers is distinguished pianist Momo Kodama, whose first solo recital for the label is sublime as crystal.

The title (which translates to “The valley of the bells”) of her characteristic program comes from Maurice Ravel’s Miroirs. This five-part gallery of expressionist vignettes wants for nothing in environmental fidelity. Each is an embodiment of its image, and then some. The first two pieces, “Noctuelles” (Night moths) and “Oiseaux tristes” (Sorrowful birds), are together a study in contrasts, juxtaposing the former’s dreamlike wing-beats, which by slightest touch of pond’s surface scatter minnows in sunbursts of activity, and the latter’s methodical gravidity, which transgresses memory like a cigarette through silk. Already obvious at this point is Kodama’s meticulous pressure, her balancing of strength and fragility. She adds leagues to “Une barque sur l’océan” (A boat on the ocean). Like a ballerina dissolving one cell at a time, it pirouettes into a dream of wind and sail, as if one were the inverse of the other. “Alborada del gracioso” (Mornign song of the jester), on the other hand, has a Spanish flavor, made all the more vibrant for its dissonances and reflective detours, while the final bells make for some strangely provocative reflections.

Momo Kodama

At the other end of the album’s spectrum is Olivier Messiaen, a composer close to Kodama’s heart and whose La fauvette des jardins is a wonder. Something of an extension of the Catalogue d’oiseaux, a recording of which Kodama released to great acclaim on the Triton label in 2011, it presents formidable challenges to the musician by way of its affective variety. An ashen foundation in the piano’s lower register contrasts and diffuses the upward motions that follow, lighting the way with the breath of a thousand torches. Its paroxysms are decidedly spiritual. Through them salvation sings with the notecraft of insects. A restlessness of servitude pervades. It speaks through contact of flesh and bone, not tongue and breath. The piece’s negotiation of the progressive and the regressive is ideally suited to Kodama, who transforms its turbulence into an opportunity for reflection, such that its consonances feel exhausting in their orthodoxy.

Considering that Tōru Takemitsu was such a great admirer of both Debussy and Messiaen, his Rain Tree Sketch makes for effortless company. Occupying as it does the center of the program, one might feel tempted to read it as filler or segue from one French master to the other. In Kodama’s practice, however, it holds its own as a robust work of art. Takemitsu was, of course, a prolific film composer in his native Japan, and his experiences in that capacity seems to have carried over into his later works, of which this is but one evocative example. The illustrative strengths explored in the work introduce another relationship of balance into Kodama’s toolkit—this between circular and linear forms—and does so with meditative attention paid to the underlying touch of things. Like the musician herself, Takemitsu’s idea of a sketch is full enough to be called consummate.