Ralph Towner classical guitar Recorded February 2022, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano Engineer: Stefano Amerio Cover photo: Caterina Di Perri Produced by Manfred Eicher Release date: March 31, 2023
Guitarist Ralph Towner may just be the longest-standing recording artist on ECM records. With a discography spanning over half a century, he has left indelible marks on the catalog with a sound that is as instantly recognizable as it is in a constant state of change. No matter his age (this album was recorded just shy of his 82nd birthday), he always seems to be searching for something, happy to stop and share a conversation with listeners at every bend of the road.
Making good on that characterization, “Flow” and “Strait” recapture some of his finest recordings, including 1980’s Solo Concert, with their stop-and-start cadences, underlying continuity, and Stravinsky-esque harmonies. Other nods to the past—both his own and of bygone eras—include the bright and upbeat “Guitarra Picante” (harking to his Oregon days) and show tunes by Hoagy Carmichael (“Little Old Lady”) and Jule Styne (“Make Someone Happy”). The latter was a favorite of one of Towner’s early influences, pianist Bill Evans, and finds itself geometrically rearranged in the guitarist’s signature style. With masterfully articulated exuberance, it pirouettes, sashays, and leaps without losing sight of home.
Whether passing us by in the evocative vignette of “Argentinian Nights” or languishing in the title track, Towner reacts instantly even when taking it slow. “Ubi Sunt” (a Latin “where-are” construction often used in poetry to express regret over something that has faded with time) is an especially brilliant piece in this regard. Like a basket woven in real time, it takes shape before our very ears, making full use of the classical guitar’s dynamic breadth and exploring much of its range. His interpretation of the traditional “Danny Boy” is another wonder. Just when you think this song has been unraveled and restitched more than it is worth, it reveals even deeper shades of meaning. “Fat Foot” is a kindred highlight for its airy chords and domestic charm.
The last piece is “Empty Stage,” which feels like it might have been the first recorded for this session. Yet, it is appropriately placed as a distillation of everything that precedes.
Anna Gourari piano Orchestra della Svizzera italiana Markus Poschner conductor Recorded December 2021, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano Engineer: Wolfgang Müller (RSI) Mixed January 2023 by Wolfgang Müller and Manfred Eicher Cover photo: Fotini Potamia Produced by Manfred Eicher Release date: June 14, 2024
Since making her ECM debut with Canto Oscuroin 2012, Tatarstan-born pianist Anna Gourari has tread a distinct path. On that and two subsequent solo recitals, the breadth of her vision as a musician is matched only by her choice of repertoire, spanning the gamut from Bach and Chopin to Medtner and Kancheli. For the present program, she gives deference to two beacons whose light has often shined at her fingertips.
The Composers
In this program notes, Roman Brotbeck describes Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) as a listener above all. As “one of the most idiosyncratic and enigmatic composers of the 20th century,” he was a resolute soul who didn’t so much search for sounds that were new but rather expressive of a higher power. In addition to his symphonies, choral works, and various configurations for orchestras and soloists, he wrote prolifically for film, seesawing throughout his life between his German roots and Russian upbringing, all the while examining a deepening Orthodox faith. As well versed in idioms as he was in subverting them, he operated like a linguist parsing morphemes to explore how they might be connected across seemingly insurmountable barriers of genre, style, and historicity. From his early days at the Moscow Conservatory to his later years in Hamburg, Germany, he was as much a polyglot as a polystylist who organically defied categorization.
“The reactions music evokes are not feelings, but they are the images, memories of feelings.” So wrote Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) in his 1952 collection of lectures, A Composer’s World. Like Schnittke, music was a field where he planted two sacred ideas for every secular. He was also a concert violinist/violist, an author, and a committed teacher. His composing was as much a reflection of extroversion as his daily life was of privacy. After studying at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, he served in the Imperial German Army, diving headlong into composing upon his return to civilian life. Fleeing the scourge of Nazism, he founded the Ankara State Conservatory at the behest of the Turkish government, thereafter arriving in America in 1940, where he taught at Yale and Cornell, among other institutions of higher learning, before living out the rest of his life in Switzerland and his native Germany. Throughout his steadfast career, he explored the tonal landscape with fortitude and creative boldness. He also greatly influenced the young Schnittke, whose side of the Venn diagram overlaps Hindemith’s by 29 years.
The Music
Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and Strings (1979) has a special place in my heart. As a teenager, I discovered his music through the BIS recording label. This piece was featured on my favorite of the series (CD-377), where it was paired with the Concerto Grosso I of 1977 and the Concerto for Oboe, Harp, and String Orchestra of 1971. It wasn’t long before I learned of his death via my local classical radio station.
The opening piano of this gargantuan piece is an exercise not in contrasts but in constructs; the gentle stirrings morphing into giant broken triads and the ethereal entrance of strings are as cohesive as they are episodic. Over 23 minutes, this mashup of, in the composer’s words, “surrealistic shreds of sunrise from orthodox church music” and “a false burst of Prokofievian energy and a blues nightmare” succeeds with an uncanny beauty. As the orchestra attempts to engulf the piano in an almost Purcell-like wave of drama, the struggle feels as real as rain. In the end, the B-A-C-H motif emerges like a blush of red across bare skin, a comet frozen in time, a scar where the light of God shows through.
During the second half of his composing career, Hindemith became firmly entrenched in robust harmonic structures that overshadowed the expressionism of his youth even as they drew from it. In response to Hitler’s growing shadow, he wrote his opera, Mathis der Maler, in which the titular protagonist, Renaissance painter Matthias Grünewald, sought refuge in his art from the German Peasants’ War of 1524-25. During that period, Grünewald painted the Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar, and it was this Hindemith expressed in musical form in this symphonic distillation from 1934. First is the “Angel Concert,” which takes the medieval song “Es sungen drei Engel” (Three angels were singing”) as its central motif. Its tripartite structure is just one echo of the Trinity. Like Schnittke’s own angelic concert, the music is richly varied yet utterly cohesive, if more accessible to lay ears. Next is the “Grablegung” (Entombment), which depicts the mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the apostle John mourning the death of their Savior. But that darkness is short-lived as the glory of Christ’s resurrection crashes into the foreground. Lastly, the “Versuchung des heiligen Antonius” (Temptation of Saint Anthony) nestles the patron saint from Padua (and contemporary of St. Francis) in a gaggle of monstrous creatures. Dissonance makes itself known, rendering the marching valiance of its unfolding all the more powerful. Brotbeck notes the significance of this movement’s subtitle (“Where were you, good Jesus, where were you? Why were you not there to heal my wounds?”) as painted into Grünewald’s portrait of Antonius: “Hindemith’s reference to this exclamation shows the autobiographical aspect of the symphony, as Antonius, who withdraws from society and is exposed to satanic temptations as a desert hermit, also reflects Hindemith’s personal situation in Nazi Germany.” Said temptations play out with churning drama.
After fleeing to the US, Hindemith came to write his ballet score, The Four Temperaments, in 1940 for George Balanchine. However, this theme and variations for piano and string orchestra never received its intended premiere, as the sinking of the Hood of Britain by the Bismarck of Germany cast a pall over composers of the latter persuasion. Nevertheless, we find another space in which politics seems even farther away. Here, we encounter a more metaphysical realm. Whereas the first variation flirts with melancholy and the fourth with jagged relief, the constellations between them blend concerto-like impulses with sonata-esque spirit. Duos, trios, and other combinations abound, each reaching for something familiar.
The Performers
Gourari approaches Schnittke with incredible drive and reflection. In a particularly dramatic middle section, she digs into the piano’s most nutrient-rich dirt, finding equilibrium even amid the drunken sway of violins struggling to maintain their own. She treats the instrument as an extension of herself, ever searching for a means to speak through its many intermediary mechanisms. From jazzy slurs to neoclassical aphorisms, medieval chants to postmodern geographies, she navigates it all with a compass that adapts to every shift of current.
The Orchestra della Svizzera italiana and conductor Markus Poschner work through the fleshly struggles of Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler with appropriate tension. They take stock of flesh and spirit equally, treating them as substances to render the compositional impulse as clay in the potter’s hands. There is a sense of having been somewhere tragic, carrying fragments of some tattered book or relic on the way to a church down to its last candle.
The Four Temperaments combines all of the above. In the second movement (first variation), Robert Kowalski’s solo violin lends a sense of mournful whimsy. Gourari is deeply in character throughout. The orchestra doesn’t act as a massive unit for which the piano is a mere decoration or accompaniment. Rather, it serves as a wellspring of material inspirations from which every key may be gathered.
Gidon Kremer violin Vida Miknevičiūtė soprano Magdalena Ceple violoncello Andrei Pushkarev vibraphone Kremerata Baltica Weinberg/Kuprevičius Recorded July 2019 Plokštelių studija, Vilnius Engineers: Vilius Keras and Aleksandra Kerienė Šerkšnytė/Jančevskis Concert recording July 2022 Pfarrkirche, Lockenhaus Engineer: Peter Laenger Cover photo: Thomas Wunsch Album produced by Manfred Eicher Release date: January 19, 2024
The word fate comes from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to speak, tell, say.” In its Latinate forms, it took on the nuance of that which was spoken by the divine. Both senses give us doorways into the present disc, in which Gidom Kremer leads his Kremerata Baltica through the works of Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) by way of living composers from the Baltic states. “This program,” Kremer notes, not coincidentally, “is meant to speak to everybody, reminding us of tragic fates along the way and that we each have a ‘voice’ that deserves to be heard and listened to.” In his brilliant liner notes, Wolfgang Sandner speaks of Kremer as an artist of multiple voices, having a “Jewish first name, German surname, Swedish ancestors, Latvian birthplace, three mother tongues, a love of Russian culture, and an imposed Soviet socialization.” And yet, these categories, he observes, dissolve the moment we utter them, for they are creatively inferior to the music that constantly defines (and redefines) the violinist and conductor’s sense of self.
For the past decade, Kremer has been a fervent champion for Weinberg via ECM (see, most recently, his traversal of the solo violin sonatas). Now, he reveals more obscure works by the Polish composer whose fragmentary yet coherent identity mirrors the interpreter’s own. From the dream-laden Nocturne (1948/49), arranged by Andrei Pushkarev for violin and string orchestra, to the dancing Kujawiak (1952) for violin and orchestra, a tapestry of sounds and textures blesses the ears. Between them are the tempered joys of Aria, op. 9 (1942), for string quartet, and three selections from Jewish Songs, op. 13 (1943), for soprano and string orchestra, on Yiddish poems by Yitskhok Leybush Peretz. The latter, originally published as Children’s Songs to avoid Soviet detection during the war, constitute a moving picture of thought, life, and action translated through the weakness of the flesh. Soprano Vida Miknevičiūtė navigates their pathways—by turns folkish and dramatic—as a needle in the dark.
Giedrius Kuprevičius (*1944) yields an equally substantial sequence bookended by two movements from his chamber symphony, The Star of David. The Postlude thereof is a duet between Miknevičiūtė and Kremer, in which David’s mourning for Saul and Jonathan funnels itself into introspection, connecting and gathering the soul. Between them are two refractions of the Kaddish, or Jewish prayer for the dead. In both, the mood implodes even as the heart struggles to contain every last molecule of sadness.
Before all this, we begin with the tremors of This too shall pass (2021) for violin, violoncello, vibraphone and string orchestra by Raminta Šerkšnytė (*1975). In listening (and we mustlisten) to Kremer’s lone voice emerging from an expanse that threatens to swallow us whole, we find cellist Magdalena Ceple joining not as an ally or hero but as a fellow questioner, one who throws kindling of doubt into the fireplace of mortality. Vibraphonist Andrei Pushkarev speaks of snow at first but soon reveals the language to be that of ice, thin and prone to breaking should one dare to overstep. By the time the orchestra shines its light, Kremer’s recitative has already laid bare the foundations of a story dislocated by memory. The world tries desperately to lock it into place, but it refuses—not through violent resistance but through the peace that comes from knowing who one is.
Concluding this fiercely intimate mosaic is Lignum (2017) by Jēkabs Jančevskis (*1992). Scored for string orchestra, svilpaunieki (ocarinas), chimes and wind chimes, it bids us to listen again, no longer to the instruments themselves but to the materials of which they are made. The violin’s dissonant entrance is the friction of leaves in an orchestral forest. Much like Erkki-Sven Tüür’s architectonics, Jančevskis looks to nature as a source of internal dialogue. As chimes grace our periphery just beyond the treeline, he reminds us that every word lost to the wind has a place to return to.
Seb Rochford composition, drums Kit Downes piano Recorded at Waverley, Aberdeen Recording engineer: Alex Bonney Mixed by Manfred Eicher Michael Hinreiner, engineer Cover photo: Clare Rochford Album produced by Sebastian Rochford and Manfred Eicher Release date: January 20, 2023
In 2019, Sebastian Rochford, who previously intersected with ECM on Andy Sheppard’s Trio Libero(2012), Surrounded By Sea (2015), and Romaria(2018), lost his father, Aberdeen poet Gerard Rochford. While mourning, the drummer found himself unable to staunch the melodies welling up from within. Recorded in collaboration with pianist Kit Downes at his childhood home in Scotland, A Short Diary reapproaches that music in dedication to his family and the man whose absence left an unfillable chasm. He then approached producer Manfred Eicher, who mixed and brought the album to fruition.
Despite the heartache that permeates “This Tune Your Ears Will Never Hear,” it opens with bursts of light as if to fight off the darkness of death. This feeling continues throughout, even in titles one might not expect, such as “Night Of Quiet.” Rather than slumbering away peacefully, it sits lucidly awake, opening the curtain of memory to reveal the sunlit scenes of “Love You Grampa,” wherein a tender nostalgia takes over, expressed in interlocking pianism and sewn by needle (snare) and threads (cymbals). Downes opens one photo album after another, discovering as much as Rochford about his history. “Silver Light” is the most poignant, its underlying pulse brushing past as an elusive reflection in the window.
In those asides where Downes is alone (namely, “Communal Decisions” and “Our Time Is Still”), the walls of the room close in. Like a mobile turning above a crib by the force of a baby’s breath, he moves in concert with life itself. This feeling is most foregrounded in “Ten Of Us” (a reference to Rochford and his nine siblings). Its slightly dissonant staircase leads us into the attic, drawn to the histories buried in its chests of toys, boxes of old books, and piles of clothes. Trying his best not to unsettle the dust with his footfalls, Rochford builds a gentle yet mountingly declarative hymn of survival.
Everything funnels into “Even Now I Think Of Her.” Rochford explains: “It’s a tune my dad had sung into his phone and sent me. I forwarded this to Kit. He listened, and then we started.” This swing hangs from a tree, overlooking a windswept field as the last remnant of green after cataclysm. It weeps, closing hands around nothing notions of what could have been. Thus baptized by mortality, lowered into a font of stillness, it gives up the ghost and shreds the present into countless pieces.
Throughout A Short Diary, each note births the possibility of others waiting to be heard. As one of the most touching recordings to come out on ECM this century, it is pure, sonic humanity. Despite (if not because of) being so personal, I dare say you could pull on any thread sticking out from it and find one in your own heart that matches.
Anja Lechner violoncello Recorded May 2023, Himmelfahrtskirche, Munich Engineer: Peter Laenger Cover photo: Sam Harfouche Produced by Manfred Eicher Release date: October 18, 2024
A solo program is never a solitary endeavor. While it may nominally include a lone performer—in this case, cellist Anja Lechner, in her first such recording—it is ultimately a conversation with the music, engineer, producer, and oneself. And in the trifecta of composers assembled here, we are included in that conversation. Throughout the opening swoon of A Question, one among a handful from former Scottish mercenary Tobias Hume (c. 1579-1645), and its companion piece, An Answer, the beginning and the ending become indistinguishable. (I also like to think that the answer comes unintentionally in the snatch of bird song heard at the end of the latter track.) Harke, Harke features pizzicato colorations and bow tapping—and may, in fact, be the first score to feature a col legno instruction—for delectable contrast. These pieces are from Hume’s 1605 collection of dances and miniatures, “The First Part of Ayres,” welcoming us into a sound-world that begs uninterrupted listening.
German pre-Classicalist Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787), another viol master who returned to the form a century and a half later, yields two vignettes in d minor. Where his Arpeggio is an enchantment, shining across the strings in refracted sunrise, the Adagio is a piece of paper blown down a cobbled street by the wind of an oncoming storm.
Against this backdrop, the Cello Suite No. 1 of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is a piece of a fallen star. In the Prélude, there is enough shadow to remind us that even the most joyful discoveries depend on sorrows, rendering their contours all the more pleasurable to behold. Lechner wields her bow as the weaver does a shuttle. From where she sits, the frays of the tapestry’s backside are within reach, while from our perspective, it is richly and coherently patterned. As the Allemande shapes the clouds and sky, the Courante and Sarabande populate the valley below with equal measures of vibrance and infirmity. In the Menuet, we encounter the tinge of old age, where eyes still sparkle with the naivety of youth even as they are tempered by the cataracts of regret. The final Gigue frees the soul from its cage.
Given how heartfully Lechner renders all of this, moment by precious moment, how can one not reflect upon her spirit of exploration and improvisation through a career as varied as her repertoire? We are all the more blessed by her ability to pull life from her instrument as one draws water from a well. Like the composer himself, even when repeating the same format in the Cello Suite No. 2, she holds the power of variation incarnate. This Prélude is a drop of ink preserved in water, holding its color and identity no matter how much the Allemande may jostle it. Lechner maintains a level voice, holding firm to the horizon so that the occasional flight toward the sun or dive toward the ocean floor feels all the more novel. In that sense, the Courante is as vivacious as the Sarabande is funereal, each a stage setter for the final footwork.
Further aphorisms from Hume, each addressing a different facet of the human condition, conclude the recital. By turns playful and sensual, they delight with such titles as Hit It In The Middle and Touch Me Lightly. The strongest musculature is reserved for A Polish Ayre, which reminds us of just how physical the cello can be. Throughout these interpretations, Lechner is ever the shaft of light to its prism, splitting a spectrum of mastery that can only flourish behind closed eyes. The result is an act of great intimacy built over years of trust with ECM and its listeners, giving her soil to plant a variegated garden of nourishment. She has the dirt under her nails to prove it. Let the water of our high regard be its rain.
Evgueni Galperine electronics, sampling Sergei Nakariakov trumpet Sébastien Hurtaud violoncello Maria Vasyukova voice Recorded 2021/21, Studio EGP, Paris Engineer: Aymeric Létoquart Mixed November 2021, Les Studios de la Seine, Paris by Evgueni Galperine, Manfred Eicher, and Aymeric Létoquart Cover painting: Lorenzo Recio Album produced by Manfred Eicher Release date: October 21, 2022
If a composer is an author, then Evgueni Galperine is one who allows characters, actions, and places to speak themselves into logical corners, then breaks those corners to let the vacuum of space have a say. Based in Paris since 1990, the Russian/Ukrainian composer cites the language of cinema as his creative crucible. His first project in that regard was Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, a soundtrack he wrote sight unseen. (ECM listeners may remember another Zvyagintsev film, The Return, and its music by Andrey Dergatchev.) In the present program, Galperine tears his mise-en-scène from the pages of life itself. Whether reworking prerecorded material or responding to instruments in the moment, this “augmented reality of acoustic instruments” connects events of importance in his life. Aided by the contributions of Sergei Nakariakov (trumpet), Sébastien Hurtaud (cello), and Maria Vasyukova (voice), he breaks the electro-acoustic mold as he defines it, careful not to step on any shards left by the process to regard the partial reflections they offer.
Much of the work is personal, giving us glimpses into the experiences that have shaped his movements in the world. The most poignant is “This Town Will Burn Before Dawn,” for which Galperine imagined himself combing through the rubble of a destroyed futuristic city. “This simple idea took on a whole new meaning with the invasion of Ukraine,” he says, “the land of my father and of my childhood.” And while hope is found, it is unreachable. A cello stretches its arms but finds no contact in return, only an imagining of light amid ringing bells. Like “Soudain, le vide” later in the album, it is a requiem as much for the living as the dead. The flesh, it seems to whisper, is inseparable from shadow. “Oumuamua, Space Wanderings” is a more ambitious but no less intimate self-examination. Inspired by the oblong asteroid that enchanted the world with possibilities of interstellar contact in 2017, it writes its origin story with a Jon Hassell-esque morphology, nestled in an overlay of bright digital signatures and a seeking spirit.
With other influences ranging from Claude Debussy and Dmitri Shostakovich to György Ligeti and Arvo Pärt, a listening mind is clearly at work. Having such a list at hand prompts me to seek other paths of connection. The bellowing of low horns in “Cold Front” evokes the dawn-kissed expanse of Hans Zimmer, while the trumpet of “After The Storm” exhales like the foggy tropes of Ingram Marshall. To be sure, the high strings and beautiful dreams of “La lettre d’un disparu” make for an easy parallel with Pärt’s Tabula rasa. But they also bring me back to my first encounter with Three Pieces in the Olden Style by Henryk Górecki. If anything, my deep kinship with the Polish composer’s broad oeuvre rings truest for me throughout Theory of Becoming. I feel it in the translucent veil of “Kaddish” and the unrelenting textures of “The Wheel Has Come Full Circle”—not simply in terms of structure but in Galperine’s sense of time. It’s like he stretched out Old Polish Music thin enough to see the sun through without letting it rip, giving us a diffuse lens through which to regard the precariousness of our existence.
Even when the inspirations are of a more imaginative persuasion, they feel no less real. A childlike wonder reigns supreme in “Don’t Tell.” This melange of whistling, percussive clicks, trembling strings, and celesta is a record spinning backward. It cradles a flute like a newborn sibling, ending in a unified song of well-being. Lastly, “Loplop im Wald” refers to the magical bird solely capable of traversing Max Ernst’s mysterious painted forests. Tenser and moonlit, its Morse code trails ever outward into a calling of escape, hoping nature won’t come crashing down on itself before the journey can be completed.
With such a profoundly familiar sense of imagination to regard, we are left with only ourselves as companions, conversing until we implode as sound itself.
If I were to dump out a puzzle from its box and ask you to put it together, you’d likely start with the edge pieces, as we’ve all been taught to do. Recently, however, while watching my seven-year-old assemble one of his own, I realized this isn’t necessarily the best strategy. The puzzle he was working on was circular, and the circumference was uniformly white, surrounding a clear design in the center. From his perspective, it only made sense to start with what was fully articulated and work outward from there.
Arvo Pärt had the same effect on me.
Before encountering his Te Deum decades ago, I used to approach listening from the periphery, tracing the container from without before diving into the matter within. That blending of voices and strings, anchored by piano and wind harp, did not make its skin immediately obvious. Rather, it offered its heart front and center before veins, bones, and garments emerged through years of regard.
And now, Joonas Sildre’s Between Two Sounds: Arvo Pärt’s Journey to His Musical Languagedoes the same for the Estonian composer who didn’t so much redefine modernism as turn it inside out to remind us of where it originates.
I recently spoke with Sildre, who had the following to say when I asked him about the genesis of this project:
“During the early 2000s, I became a huge fan and admirer of Pärt’s music through a friend who had gifted me a CD ‘mixtape’ of his music. At the time, I was also on a spiritual journey in the early phases of Christianity. This certainly heightened my admiration of this music, which became the soundtrack of that journey. I was never very interested in Pärt as a person because I had learned that if you like someone’s music, their personality (or the availability of that information) does not add much to it. In 2005, it became apparent that this was the opposite in the case of Pärt: There was a 15-part radio show on Estonian Classical radio about his life (made by Immo Mihkelson). Listening to it and him talking about life, art, and spirituality, I recognized these topics to be dear to my heart, but rarely did I hear anyone expressing these things in union. At the time, in the early 2000s, I was looking for a story to tell in graphic novel format—when hearing Pärt’s radio interview, things clicked for me. There was no question of a different format.”
Immersed in the result of that journey, I am reminded of my own spiritual awakening, for which Pärt’s music was always a leitmotif, a call (at times clarion, at others whispered) that inspired sympathetic resonance into my very core. It’s only natural, then, that Sildre’s book should proceed in a musical manner.
As a visual composition, Between Two Sounds proceeds like something Pärt himself might have constructed (and how can I not smile at the similarity with my blog’s title?). We meet the composer in the dark, walking a line from eternity to eternity, his musings floating almost unrealistically in space. It takes effort to admit that the words have meaning and are not tricks of draft and debris across the unswept floor of time.
Golgotha, a place of the skull, the hill where death for one offered life to all, reminds us of the dark well from which God draws light. Directing the gaze and ears thusward seeds a relationship between flesh and spirit that can only be articulated through art.
Beyond these introspections, which stipple the larger narrative with resounding grace, we leap through Pärt’s chronological development. From his birth in Paide and early childhood in Rakvere to his confrontations with Soviet censorship and flourishing under the tutelage of Heino Eller at the Tallinn Conservatory, we are gifted a dynamic biography that seems to leap from the page, if not sometimes also sink into it. While that story is astonishing in and of itself (a particularly tense scene finds Pärt nearly losing his scores and tapes on the verge of his emigration to Europe), key moments speak across the years and geographical borders to my heart.
In doing his research for the biographical angle of the book, I wonder how it changed Sildre’s perception of the man himself as they came to know each other from acquaintances to friends:
“Pärt talks of another level where the music comes from. I’d like to think that connections and friendships also happen on that level, and there, we were friends even before I met him personally. During the years the work took, of course, I learned much more about him as a person, his life, music, and spirituality. I saw Pärt as a regular human, yet he always remained ‘not regular’ to me. He could be very simple and very deep at the same time (or at different times)—I guess this is almost a scientific definition of a genius. What surprised me is that Pärt, whom I had seen and learned from his music and his words, was actually himself, not some projection as it usually happens to be among public personas. Like he says (paraphrasing): In order to put Tintinnabuli music to paper, he actually had to change as a human being.”
That change develops through listening in Pärt’s early years. As a boy who learned on a broken piano, he comes to seek an upright language in a fallen world:
The line between “public” and “private” disappears in these moments of abandon, much to the humor of those around him. And yet, he reveres the notes on their terms, allowing their credo to suffice for what passes as communication in his immediate environment. The more he hears, the more he and everything around him pass into silhouette, not so much under the loudspeaker as a part of it.
The graphic novel is filled with novel graphics. Most remarkable among them is Sildre’s explicit visualization of notes.
Despite the apparent aggressiveness of their passage through the air, theirs is not so much a spirit of confrontation as of enlightenment. With the premiere of each new work, those fortunate enough to have been present are shaken to the core by a thrum to which they had, until then, turned a muffled ear:
“I did not want to use notes as they are a specific language for musicians; regular people cannot read and understand them. If I used them, even in a decorative way, the average readers would always feel that maybe they were missing something. So, I needed to step away from that language, but not too far. I ended up with the ‘dot and line’ method that I developed throughout the book. The look of these symbols would hint at the emotion and content of any given musical piece. With dots, I could use many design language tricks: size, placement, quantity, light and dark value, and context. Lines would symbolize the time but also the emotion: jagged lines versus smooth lines. A circle had an extra feature. It could also be used as a speech bubble or thought. So, overall, this small invention became very handy for telling that story. It became an intuitively understandable visual language.”
Sildre creates a tapestry with blank patches that can only be filled through hearing. Perhaps the longest thread running through this tapestry is one of religion, as Pärt’s conversion to the Greek Orthodox faith unfolds in a chain of snow and spring. His composition Sarah Was Ninety Years Old is a recurring stitch, beginning with his first exposure to his grandmother’s Bible and continuing throughout his life. The drums are the rhythm of salvation, the rapping of Christ’s knuckles on the heart’s splintered door.
And so, we are invited to close our eyes, open our ears, and release ourselves from the bondage of our sins. Although everything we think and do is imperfect, Pärt seems to say, we should never stop reaching for perfection. Because there is One who is perfect, and every song we sing must fill the footprints He left behind.
Sildre echoes this sentiment:
“Upon meeting Pärt, I had a feeling that he had so much old cultural heritage in him; he felt almost like he was from the ancient world. I had never met a person who would have so many ties to the old. At the same time, as time passed, I was pondering that the mentality and love Pärt expresses must be the future of humankind. So, he is from the past and future at the same time! It may sound strange, but this is still my strong feeling about him as a person.”
All of which connects to his aspiration for the book:
“I hope that the people who have not heard Pärt’s music will find it. And I hope that people who know his music will learn that there is a miraculous story behind the miraculous music.”
If there is any miracle to be found here, it is in knowing that human beings are capable of glimpsing the divine, however temporarily, all the while knowing that eternity is the only altar on which our humility can be laid with blessed assurance.
Claudia Barainsky soprano Adrian Pinzaru violin Andreas Moscho violin Lara Albesano viola Hendrik Blumenroth violoncello Mikhail Timoshenko baritone Matthias Lingenfelder second viola Andreas Arndt second violoncello Recorded October 2021, Abtei Marienmünster, Konzertsaal Engineer: Friedrich Wilhelm Rödding Cover photo: Woong Chul An Album produced by Guido Gorna Release date: June 21, 2024
Im wachen Traume tells an old story in new terms. The title (“In a waking dream”) references Frauenliebe und Leben, op. 42, by Robert Schumann (1810-1856), whose eight-part song cycle serves as the program’s centerpiece. This setting of eight poems by Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838) about a woman’s tragic fate is arranged for soprano and string quartet by late composer Aribert Reimann (1936-2024) for those performing it here—another clue to the album’s name. In 2018, while drifting off to sleep, Reimann heard the song cycle in his head with a string quartet instead of a piano. Unable to relinquish the idea, he completed the present version in under two months.
In his liner notes, violinist Andreas Moscho describes a dual theme of love and death. “None of the works selected here,” he observes, “were originally conceived for string quartet. In all of them, however, the string quartet seems to return home.” Reimann enhances the score with careful yet natural adornments, rendered telepathically by the Delian Quartett and soprano Claudia Barainsky. “Helft mir, ihr Schwestern” (Help me, my sisters) and “Süßer Freund, du blickest” (Sweet friend, you look) lend themselves so organically to the format that one can hardly imagine them any other way. Highlights include the chordal exchanges and trembling cello of “Er, der Herrlichste von allen” (He, the most wonderful of all), the pizzicato accents of “Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben” (I cannot grasp it, believe it), and the glassy harmonics of “An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust” (On my heart, at my breast). Barainsky emotes with a seasoned charm that feels utterly genuine. She is an embodied vocalist who understands that texts must be first spoken to be sung.
The one poem not included by Schumann is Chamisso’s ninth, “Traum der eignen Tage” (Dream of my own days), in which the wisdom of old age is offered as a gift to one whose life still lies ahead. Perhaps no more fitting connection could be made to the works by William Byrd (c. 1543-1623) and Henry Purcell (1659-1695) pillowing this Schumannic gem. While these luminaries of Renaissance and Baroque eras might seem unlikely companions, one can hardly deny that the Venn diagram of their shared interest in worldly things makes their spiritual complements stand out all the more.
As the music of Byrd, in arrangements by Stefano Pierini, demonstrates, this dichotomy is crucial. Diametric vignettes like “Sing joyfully” and “Ave verum corpus” are proof positive of the Delians’ uncanny sympathy, while “Jhon come kisse me now” (a bawdy lyric reconstructed from Byrd’s own harpsichord variations) drips with honey from Barainsky’s lips. Meanwhile, the latter’s rendering of “Out of the orient, crystal skies” shines in its telling of the nativity, while the strings evoke the humility of the manger. In the tender “Lullaby, my sweet little baby,” Barainsky is joined by baritone Mikhail Timoshenko to rebuke King Herod’s tragic decree (represented in vocalise) from the point of view of the Virgin Mary.
The two singers join forces further back in time for Purcell’s “Hear my prayer, O Lord.” With Matthias Lingenfelder and Andreas Arndt seconding on viola and cello, respectively, they create a wordless but no less ecclesiastical sense of grandeur. Preceding them are the Pavane and Chaconne, both in G minor, each an interlocking canvas of pastel and charcoal, and between them, “When I am laid in earth” from the opera Dido and Aeneas (also arranged by Pierini). Barainsky lays bare her respect for the tragedy, nevertheless finding beauty in it. And is that not how we survive?
Wolfert Brederode piano Matangi Quartet Maria-Paula Majoor violin Daniel Torrico Menacho violin Karsten Kleijer viola Arno van der Vuurst violoncello Joost Lijbaart drums, percussion Recorded August 2021 at Sendesaal, Bremen Engineer: Stefano Amerio Cover: Mayo Bucher Produced by Manfred Eicher Release date: September 23, 2022
For his fourth ECM album as leader, Wolfert Brederode returns with Ruins and Remains. This suite for piano, string quartet, and percussion, the result of a commission marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, telescopes the seemingly insurmountable distance between horror and hope.
While such a backstory might seem a pivot for the Dutch pianist, thematic connections are drawable to his past work. From the association-rich wanderings of Currents to the patient grooves of Black Ice, he has consistently demonstrated an awareness of time as a physical substance. In Post Scriptum between them, he was already exploring suite-like structures around questions of the human condition.
The present record takes elements from all that came before and bonds them with something so intangible that only a microphone can capture and amplify it: history. To that end, he ticks our path with four signposts entitled “Ruins.” With their cold expanse and cautious navigations, they trace the movements of those who have fallen in places where hands cannot reach and only the heart may tread.
In “Swallow,” Brederode and his fellow musicians sift through the rubble for something salvageable: a ring, a photograph, perhaps a gold-capped tooth that once served as a runway for speech. The Matangi Quartet speaks in the language of the past, dreaming of better times when violence was something one only read about in storybooks. Meanwhile, percussionist Joost Lijbaart reveals glints of the future. Along the way, Brederode emotes very much in the present, holding close to lessons on the verge of fading. With these in mind, titles like “Cloudless” and “Dissolve” feel as much like descriptors of what we hear as what they evoke. The resonance of these passages tells stories in which we can have no part, each walking a bridge that must collapse. In this regard, “Retrouvailles” comes across as a false promise, a moment in time expanded to show the scars it would otherwise gloss over.
Although musical details rise into prominence, including the plucked piano strings of “Ka,” the rolling snare of “Nothing for Granted,” and the cello’s sagacious presence across the waves, a holistic mise-en-scène pervades. Like the blush of “Duhra,” it strikes a glow where mostly darkness has taken hold, a film without a screen.
The music’s openness to change is part of what makes it real. As death becomes written and rewritten, our souls adapt to its language. And as it heeds the horizon’s beckoning, we are given a choice: follow or turn away.
Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond 