Classical

Giya Kancheli: Caris Mere (ECM New Series 1568)

| Tyran Grillo

Giya Kancheli
Caris Mere

Eduard Brunner clarinet
Maacha Deubner soprano
Kim Kashkashian viola
Jan Garbarek soprano saxophone
Stuttgarter Kammerorchester
Dennis Russell Davies conductor
Recorded April 1994 – January 1995
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The music of Giya Kancheli is firmly rooted in emptiness, in those silent spaces between musical gestures where the voice is born behind the words it sings. Kancheli seems also aware that silence can rarely be disconnected from violence, that in our configurations of human relations and conflict there are moments when one’s history ceases to exist in the utterable, moments that animate his musical frameworks with echoes of a distinct cultural memory. Such is the impetus for the composer’s Life Without Christmas cycle, which was begun on Abii ne viderem and is concluded with the present release.

Midday Prayers (for solo clarinet, soprano, and chamber orchestra) opens the album’s trio of compositions with a protracted meditation on Passion texts. An airy wash of sustained tones and rich orchestral timbres is broken by intermittent declarations of hidden sentiment. A certain dis-ease informs the winds, even as strings paint the thinnest veneer of hope. The seasoned Kancheli listener will have come to expect the intense dynamic distance to be found here, the balance of which focuses our attention on the details of quietude and an outburst’s potential to enlighten. A piano gives us the briefest glimpse into a time before strife ravaged a onetime joy. The piece’s sparseness makes its fuller moments shout with the force of an ensemble twice their size.

Caris Mere (for soprano and viola) moves with the same sense of unfolding as Midday Prayers, with the added hint of Medieval monophony. The title means “After the Wind” in Georgian and recalls that of his earlier piece, Vom Winde beweint (Mourned by the Wind). Where the latter expands with the looming presence of an entire orchestra, here we find that piece’s soloist with a voice that isn’t so much added as it is drawn from the viola’s heart. Kim Kashkashian and Maacha Deubner (previously heard to magical effect on Kancheli’s Exil) each carry their own weight, shedding it little by little as they scale new heights with every phrase. This music is arid but alive, the voice its only inhabitant, the lone survivor of a catastrophe immune to erasure.

Kronos Quartet fans will recognize the final piece, Night Prayers, from their album of the same name. This extended version (for saxophone and string orchestra) begins with very deep voices, resounding from the liminal realm that is tape, accentuated by a knotty fringe of strings. As saxophonist Jan Garbarek pierces the gloom with his light, the piece flaps its thematic shutters like a quiet storm. Generally a very meditative journey, though not without its moments of rapture, Night Prayers is a captivating highpoint of Kancheli’s spiral of sound. Jan Garbarek gives due respect to the music at hand, and makes the most of a brief improvisational window in an otherwise precisely notated architecture.

Kancheli’s music is a hall of mirrors, each one distorting us differently. Ruptures of energy inflict the pain of restriction upon a population that knows only freedom, and we become implicated among the oppressed. This is music that clearly delineates the boundary between the influence of tradition (such as it is conceived) and the power of hegemony.

<< Terje Rypdal: Double Concerto (ECM 1567)
>> Alexandr Mosolov: Sonatas for piano Nos. 2 and 5, etc. (ECM 1569 NS)

Händel: Suites for Keyboard – Jarrett (ECM New Series 1530)

| Tyran Grillo

Georg Friedrich Händel
Suites for Keyboard

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded September 1993, State University of New York, Purchase
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Georg Friedrich Händel, ever the poster child of the high Baroque, is of course widely known for his large-scale oratorios and chamber music. One sad consequence of such a reputation is the negligence of lesser-known, though no less winsome, works in the composer’s catalogue. As pianist Keith Jarrett notes, “When audiences decide what they think someone is great at, they tend to undervalue other things that same someone does.” Händel actually composed twenty suites for keyboard, though only a handful—known as the “Great Eight”—tend to be grouped together with any regularity. Jarrett chooses four of these, in addition to three outliers, for a single disc filled to the brim with life-affirming music. His unique euphonic sensibilities represent a vivid attempt to rescue these significant works from our ignorance.

This is Jarrett’s finest Baroque recording on ECM. As much as I adore his stately and humbling Bach, one finds a markedly different approach in the Händel. There is a sort of exuberant intimacy that scintillates with Jarret’s every articulation, a solemn poetry that undercuts much of the flowery prose for which Händel is more often appreciated. The opening Allemande of the Suite in G Minor is characteristic of the whole, seeming to leapfrog Bachian counterpoint while maintaining its own melodic robustness. Indeed, the buoyancy of Jarrett’s Allemandes throughout distinguishes him from hunt-and-peck performers who seem content with relatively forced segregations of bonded lines. Each Suite tells its own story, complete with problem, climax, and resolution. The G Minor continues its meditations on the transience of the creative process, made all the clearer by the brief Gigue that closes it. The Suite in D Minor coats this resignation with translucent regret, working through the latter by retreating into one’s fondest memories, only to flee in a cowardly flash. Fortunately, Suite No. 7 in B-flat sings a more joyous song and lifts the spirit with its gorgeous trills and frolicking syncopations. Nestled in the album’s center is the Suite No. 8 in F Minor, where we find ourselves in a more funereal mode, regressing further and further into the childhood of the one we mourn. We recall that prime of life, when innocence and circumstance walked hand-in-hand to a music that was both familiar and beyond present understanding. There is only beauty to be had in Suite No. 2 in F. The recitative-like introduction of its Adagio gives us a glimpse of the vocal Händel in utero before launching into the album’s most compelling Fuga. Suite No. 4 in E Minor opens in a flower of ivory and jubilation, marking a confident path into the finishing Suite No. 1 in A, of which another resplendent Allemande and sprightly Gigue highlight the tropes so firmly embedded in the Suites’ overarching brilliance.

In the presence of Händel, Jarrett is in top form. He pours his telescoped dynamics, fluidity of playing, and impeccable sense of rhythm (shown to greatest effect in the mid-tempo movements) into an attentively ordered program of quiet splendor. One need bring expectations of neither composer nor performer, but simply bask in the music’s ability to work its way into the bloodstream of a stressful day.

<< Krakatau: Matinale (ECM 1529)
>> Jarrett/Peacock/Motian: At The Deer Head Inn (ECM 1531)

Giya Kancheli: Exil (ECM New Series 1535)

| Tyran Grillo

1535

Giya Kancheli
Exil

Maacha Deubner soprano
Natalia Pschenitschnikova alto and bass flutes
Catrin Demenga violin
Ruth Killius viola
Rebecca Firth cello
Christian Sutter double bass
Wladimir Jurowski conductor
Recorded May 1994 at Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“When a person goes into a church, synagogue or mosque where there’s not service going on, there’s a special kind of silence. I want to turn that silence into music.”
–Giya Kancheli

Anyone who reads my reviews regularly will have noticed my penchant for the word “beautiful” when describing the music of ECM. And while I do invoke the word sincerely whenever I use it, at the risk of diluting it even further I should like to make a case for it in the context of this album over all others, for nowhere have I heard music that takes the concept to a level beyond even itself. For composer-in-exile Giya Kancheli, beauty is romantic only insofar as it stems from nostalgia, recognizing as it does the stoic enchantment in all that emerges from destruction. Exil (1994) draws its humble sentiments from, and sketches its permeable borders around, biblical Psalms and the poems of Paul Celan and Hans Sahl, and is scored for soprano and mixed chamber ensemble. Within the latter, alto and bass flutes constitute a vivid presence.

When my uncle, Anthony Grillo, was on his deathbed, losing his battle with stomach cancer, the sound of his brother’s voice reading Psalm 23 were the last he ever heard before his passing. Exil came into my life soon after. And so, when I first received the album, only to see that the selfsame Psalm was the basis for its pinnacle composition, I took solace in the confluence of its arrival. The opening alto flute invocation of Kancheli’s setting stills my heart every time and brings with it a host of angels. The tapping of bows and subtle violin accompaniments throughout extract an immeasurable potency from the depths of Maacha Deubner’s unaffected voice. I imagine the score looks just as empty as, say, that of Pärt’s Tabula rasa, but it is precisely those spaces that Kancheli seems intent on populating with pensive, unmoving figures. Listeners will recognize much of the thematic material from his Life Without Christmas cycle in crystallized form, and indeed it would seem to be the backbone of his entire oeuvre. It enacts a profound sense of development, flexing with every prostration. A distinct instrumental economy makes the work’s one explosive moment that much more jarring. As the music moves, so does its heart, borne along like a coffin in a slow and steady procession into sunset.

Deubner’s boy-like soprano haunts the divine understandings of Celan’s postmodern verses that follow, while Sahl’s reiterative “Exil” lends equal weight to pause as to utterance. Like the gaps between rosary beads, one cannot exist without the other. It brings that sense of hope, of sanctuary, back into view, symbolized by glassy harmonics on strings. And as the music reacclimates to the central theme, it curls into itself and sleeps in almost Messianic hibernation, awaiting the moment when it can spread its joy across the universe like a supernova unbounded.

This was one of my earliest New Series acquisitions and came right on the heels of my already profound exposure to the work of Arvo Pärt. My mother had heard “Psalm 23” on the radio and was so moved by it that she ordered a copy of the CD and sent it to me as a surprise. And what a surprise it was, for it opened my internal eyes to things I never thought expressible in human terms. The voice of Maacha Deubner is a revelation in and of itself. Stripped of its ornamentation, it sings a seemingly unmitigated song, shaping each phrase with the practiced lips of a priestess. The supporting musicians match her delicacy with an astonishing blending of tone and register. Performances such as these place a stethoscope to the divine and make audible the heartbeat that binds us all. The music’s sacredness speaks beyond printed pages and the ideological glue that binds them. It is the kind of music that makes one feel supremely grateful to have been born in an age where one could hear it.

(Session photo by Roberto Masotti)

As with many ECM releases, the accompanying liner notes include photographs of the recording session. Of these, one image remains permanently etched into my mind: that of engineer, musicians, and producer listening to playback, and the shattered depths of their faces. Many are on verge of tears, if not shedding them already. It makes me want to have been there, not only as a fly on the wall but particularly as a musician, to have had a hand in contributing to something greater than the sum of one’s musical parts. This photograph allows us a unique insight into that very dynamic that those of us on the consumer end of the recording process almost never get to witness, much less experience firsthand. Kancheli’s music nevertheless reveals, on its own terms, a juggernaut of spiritual proportions that comports itself with the gentility of a newborn lamb, its head struggling to look up into the light as it learns to negotiate those divine forces that shape its balance into being. This is music we humble ourselves before, yet which demands nothing of us.

For what it’s worth, this is my favorite ECM release thus far and belongs in the collection of anyone seeking the expansion of heart and mind that only art can bring. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I can only feel blessed for having beheld this.

<< John Surman Quartet: Stranger Than Fiction (ECM 1534)
>> Lena Willemark/Ale Möller: Nordan (ECM 1536)

Messiaen: Méditations Sur Le Mystère De La Sainte Trinité (ECM New Series 1494)

| Tyran Grillo

Olivier Messiaen
Méditations Sur Le Mystère De La Sainte Trinité

Christopher Bowers-Broadbent organ
Recorded June 1992, Hofkirche, Luzerne
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps:
silence of paintings. You language where all language
ends. You time
standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.
–Rainer Maria Rilke, “To Music”

Composer, teacher, and ornithologist were just a few of the roles adopted by Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) in his lifetime. Yet it was as organist that he seems to have felt most at ease. Messiaen carved his own niche through an increasingly “linguistic” approach to the instrument, such that every piece became another entry in a catalog of semantic impressions. In his 1969 Méditations Sur Le Mystère De La Sainte Trinité (Meditations on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity), Messiaen inaugurated a technique he termed “communicable language,” whereby full statements—in this case, culled from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas—were directly encoded into music. Messiaen was also synaesthetic (that is, he attributed colors to specific notes) and used this ability to paint audible pictures that perhaps found traction on his mental canvas alone. The mechanics of this 75-minute work have therefore been the subject of much debate around the issue of comprehensibility—i.e., whether or not the invisibility of its sonic messages undermines the intent thereof. In spite of the detailed paratext in which the work is couched, we are left with a daunting tangle of musical narrative to tease apart.

Divided into nine parts, Méditations acts as a mosaic of psycho-spiritual tropes and their representative forms. Messiaen gives his own commentary for each, summarized as follows:

I. the mystery of the begotten
II. birds and garden
III. one’s relationship not only with God, but in God
IV. “He is”
V. color; God as Father
VI. the Word; the light of humanity
VII. communicable language
VIII. divine attributes; a desire for wings
IX. “I am that I am;” garlands

Every moment feels played rather than composed, and Christopher Bowers-Broadbent captures the music’s spontaneous qualities with delicacy and tasteful drama. Turbulent chords speak of inner turmoil while “thinner” threads (such as can be found in Part II) constitute an altogether different strand. Some especially turbulent turns of phrase (Part IV) speak of an openness to one’s struggle with the idea of perfection. More protracted ruminations like Part V stretch the limits of their mortality, almost slipping from the page in the process. Part VI ends with a noticeably massive statement. Like a heavy metal power chord, it cuts to our core, shaking the ribcage and its resident heart. The final passages of Part VIII are some of the most beautiful to be found. Part IX is the galaxy on a pinhead, tearing through the cosmos with the air of one possessed, concluding with the song of the yellowhammer (a bird native to Europe and Asia).

These are about as far as one can get from Sunday morning hymns, though they are no less inspiring in their solitary way. Like the leviathan nature of transgression, the whole of this music spills over into destructive territories, all the while maintaining its central integrity. Messiaen’s is a world concerned with negative space, a world where the body fragments through music, filling worship with its own ceremony. So much of the music we associate with the cathedral is consonant beyond reproach, bringing out challenging harmonic relationships selectively and for italic effect. But here, we find the opposite: a multi-dimensional universe that turns in on itself, finding new paths in the miniscule, where human breath is mediated through an instrumental force so great that is must be bound to a single performer. With every pull of a stop, every change in register, we are brought into the aphasia of inspiration.

One cannot rightly imprison this work under one label. It is by turns magisterial and vulnerable. In showing us as much, Messiaen seems to remind us that apocalypse has nothing to do with fire and brimstone, but everything to do with knowing that creation cannot sustain itself without death. Thus does every gesture indicate an organic structure, every textual cluster a new chemical compound to be savored upon the aural tongue. The organ provides both composer and performer with a vocabulary in which crushing shouts and ethereal whispers play an equal part. It is an actionist approach to music, one in which pathos is dismantled and thrown at our feet in a heaping pile of meticulously crafted ecstasy. And wherever ecstasy reigns, so too do its attendant vices, each more melodically compelling than the last.

Pragmatically speaking, this is nothing more than an album of long meandering organ works that may turn off more listeners than it captivates. There would seem to be no thematic continuity, except for perhaps its rootedness in the sacred. Yet a dive into its fractured world yields a trove of sunken virtues. Messiaen has fearlessly plumbed the depths of his own misgivings, leaving us with a temperamental portrait of the Christian life. Gone are the universal(ized) gestures of Bach, the finely cast nests of Vierne, the porous processions of Reger, the playful romps of Karg-Elert. Here is an organ aware of its own body, as fleeting as those who wring from its innards the cacophony of our unrequited desires.

Upon listening to this album, I am left asking myself: What is a meditation? Is it an abandonment of one’s immediate reality? A total commitment to the psycho-spiritual path? For many, it requires silence, a total lack of physical disturbance, and absolute clarity of mind, while others see it as a challenge to aspire to in the midst of all distractions. For Messiaen, it would seem to be a willingness to complicate one’s faith in a reductive world.

<< Andersen, et al.: If You Look Far Enough (ECM 1493)
>> Bowers-Broadbent/Leonard: Górecki/Satie/Milhaud/Bryars (ECM 1495 NS)

The Hilliard Ensemble: Codex Speciálník (ECM New Series 1504)

| Tyran Grillo

 

The Hilliard Ensemble
Codex Speciálník

David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Recorded January 1993, Stadtkirche Gönningen
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

While the members of the Hilliard Ensemble have nary a stumble in their entire ECM track record, with Codex Speciálník they have left one of their most lasting footprints. Recorded during a veritable golden age of the ensemble’s relationship with the label, the album extracts its material from the eponymous “special songbook,” found in a Prague monastery and dated to around 1500. Said manuscript encompasses a wide array of music in two to four parts from composers renowned and arcane, if not unknown, and proves to be a rich source of Renaissance polyphony. The more compelling pieces tend to be anonymous, such as the Exordium quadruplate that opens the Hilliards’ carefully handpicked program. Its lilting quality speaks for the whole, weaving its lines with deceptive fluidity. The hymn-like In natali domini is especially uplifting in its evocation of the nativity and is sung in block chords with occasional chromatic ornaments. Yet the most striking tracks would have to be the expertly constructed duets (the anonymous Congaudemus pariter and Salve mater gracie; Petrus de Grudencz’s Presidiorum erogatrix). The sheer scope of their implied space is awe-inspiring to say the least. It is as if they were the seeds of farther-reaching compositions with invisible roots. Other pieces by Grudencz, and especially his Pneuma eucaristiarum, make for some of the album’s most touching moments, while the gorgeous Chorus iste of Johannes Touront exhibits a captivating interplay of registers. Another treasure is the Missa Petite Camusette, of which the Kyrie and Gloria are the most invaluable. Finishing the album is Josquin Desprez’s unbelievably gorgeous Ave Maria setting, performed here to perfection.

The Hilliards never fail to bring a measured passion to their performance style. Their individual commitment is palpable in every pitch-perfect moment (note, for example, Rogers Covey-Crump’s divine intonations in the Sophia nascitur and David James’s soulful restraint in the Magnum miraculum). An album like this allows us to appreciate the development of music in new ways. We see in it the heart of an unfathomable corpus, only the skin of which we recognize, even as we discover an undeniable part of who we are in its circadian rhythm.

<< Ketil Bjørnstad: Water Stories (ECM 1503)
>> Arvo Pärt: Te Deum (ECM 1505 NS)

Bach: 3 Sonaten für Viola da Gamba und Cembalo – Jarrett/Kashkashian (ECM New Series 1501)

| Tyran Grillo

J. S. Bach
3 Sonaten für Viola da Gamba und Cembalo

Kim Kashkashian viola
Keith Jarrett cembalo
Recorded September 1991, Cavelight Studio, New Jersey
Engineer: Peter Laenger

The exact dates of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord are contestable. We do know they were composed sometime in the 1740s, making their unity as a set tenuous at best. Still, on their own, they glisten with the genius that bore them. Though more commonly played on the period instruments for which they were written, one may still find the occasional cello filling in. On this recording, we find a unique substitution in the viola, which shares hardly more than a name with its predecessor. This is accomplished by transposing any notes below the viola’s range, making for a relatively buoyant sound. Purists take note: this is, in my humble opinion, the finest interpretation of these much-recorded sonatas. Admittedly, this opinion is as much informed by the fact that it is the first I ever heard of these works as it is by the stellar musicianship that follows Keith Jarrett and Kim Kashkashian wherever they go.

The opening Sonata in G BWV 1027is a warm embrace of Baroque elegance. Jarrett captivates from bar one, his continuo providing bold bass lines as Kashkashian’s deeply sustained tones guide us through foggy waters. The second movement, while airy enough, manages to support its fill of weighty trills and rhythmic spontaneity. The Andante establishes an even tighter bond as Kashkashian dots the i’s and crosses the t’s of Jarrett’s solid arpeggios. A rather bold intimacy is maintained throughout, lending the movement an almost orchestral fullness. It is at such moments—i.e., those where expansive instrumental coverage is implied through rudimentary means—that Bach’s creativity sparkles. This tightly knit synergy carries over into the final movement as the viola harmonizes with Jarrett’s sharply syncopated left hand before doing the same with his right. The harpsichord then takes the lead as the viola provides further diacritical accents to a smooth finish.

The lush Adagio that begins the Sonata in D BWV 1028 glows like a dying fire. It dangles on an unresolved note before diving headlong into the magisterial Allegro that follows. Another beautiful Andante awaits, this time led strongly by the viola, again harmonizing with the left hand, while another confident lead-in to the final Allegro births contrapuntal bliss.

The real tour de force here, however, is the Sonata in G minor BWV 1029 that closes out the trio. The angled playing of the opening Vivace describes an exultant rejuvenation. The viola seems to find purchase in every nook and cranny carved out by the harpsichord in anticipation of the potent repeat; every precisely measured note of the Adagio sends off vibrations of the utmost gorgeousness; and the concluding Allegro is introduced by a fibrous dance which is immediately spun by the viola into an indestructible c(h)ord. The riveting descending motif at the end rings in the heart long after its completion.

The range of sound from Jarrett and Kashkashian impresses as the powerful duo navigates Bach’s intricate contours with active precision and an overarching sense of freedom. Kashkashian’s warm, sandy tone meshes so well with Jarrett’s lively harpsichord that one would seem the symbiote of the other. Upbeat tempos and a gracious resistance to filler material clock the album at a modest 39 minutes. But with such enthralling music to be had, captured at the height of passion, the urge to listen afresh is only intensified. Easily one of ECM’s finest New Series releases, and a resilient exemplar of the label’s fresh take on the tried and true.

<< Jan Garbarek Group: Twelve Moons (ECM 1500)
>> John Abercrombie: November (ECM 1502)

Leonidas Kavakos/Péter Nagy: Ravel/Enescu (ECM New Series 1824)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Maurice Ravel/George Enescu

Leonidas Kavakos violin
Péter Nagy piano
Recorded March 2002 at Radio Studio DRS, Zürich
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The phenomenally talented Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos, one of the finest of his generation, is joined here by Hungarian pianist Péter Nagy for their debut ECM program paralleling Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) and his underrated contemporary, George Enescu (1881-1955). Although the two studied and performed together, Enescu was more widely known for his gifts as violinist and teacher (Yehudi Menuhin and Arthur Grumiaux were among his distinguished pupils) than as composer. Yet in the latter role he showed immense fortitude and an inventive interest in the folk music of his native Romania. His sadly overlooked Impressions d’enfance, op 28 (1940) is a revelation. Through a series of redolent images, each of its ten impressions, replete with all manner of programmatic effects, recreates a compelling story of remembrance. Titles such as “Brooklet at the Far End of the Garden,” “Cricket,” and “Storm Outside, in the Night” provide just enough descriptive information to immerse ourselves in their distinct atmospheres. Such cues ensure that the fragments of youth remain bound to the present by reflection—thematized, if you will, through the act of performance. The violin constantly doubles itself, as if trying to make its voice heard in this regard, while any lingering innocence fades into the more soluble fears of adulthood. Enescu’s better-known Sonata No 3, op 25 (1926) on popular Romanian themes receives an equally impassioned treatment. It is a folk-infused space in which dances exist only as memories, dissolving into blurs of skin and cloth. And though their spirit clearly animates the powerful final movement, it is in the second—marked, aptly, Andante sostenuto e misterioso—where the respective skills of the musicians become clearest. Where Nagy feels smooth, ceramic, Kavakos glistens with the dull sheen of wetted metal. Like a song heard through the trees, their combined forces entice as much as they perplex.

Bookending these standard-setting renditions are two major works of Ravel. The Sonate posthume (1897) sustains the graceful delicacy he is known for. As I listen, the leaves are just beginning to change outside. And so the music becomes a looming tree, its branches splayed like a frozen explosion, every gust of wind playfully recorded on strings and keys. Throughout this piece, the piano takes charge in introducing thematic changes, from which the violin may leap in a series of interpretive gestures. The two are given clear separation, as if to draw further attention to their courtship. On the other side of the coin is Tzigane (1924), Ravel’s singular self-styled rhapsody. The title—a generic French term for “gypsy”—refers more to an exotic ideal than to any specific motif. Its rousing introductory solo is one of the defining moments of violin literature, while its high-pitched acrobatics and virtuosic lines give Kavakos plenty of opportunities to show us the scope of his tonal breadth. This is certainly of the most well-balanced recordings of this piece (at least in its chamber form) one is likely to find.

The works of both composers are undoubtedly interactive. Their melodies are like fleeting glimpses that nevertheless burn themselves into the mind. Through the act of recall, we flesh out those images with our own pigments. It is for this reason that we cannot simply label such music as “impressionistic” and call it a day. That is, of course, unless see impressionism for what it is: not a vague, insubstantial view that can only been appreciated from afar, but rather an art of potent language that paints itself in the viewer’s mind. It is memory incarnate. Whereas in the photorealism of certain composers we find ourselves with relatively little room to explore, here we encounter endless space through which to run without fear. We can trust in this music. The piano becomes the paper upon which the violin may inscribe its audio diary. Impressionism writes the same story, with one crucial difference: though we may hear the nib scratching across the surface, we see only the plumed quill writing its mirror message in the air.

Schnittke/Raskatov: Symphony No. 9/Nunc dimittis (ECM New Series 2025)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Alfred Schnittke
Alexander Raskatov
Symphony No. 9/Nunc dimittis

Dresdner Philharmonie
Dennis Russell Davies conductor
Elena Vassilieva mezzo-soprano
The Hilliard Ensemble
Recorded January 2008, Lukaskirche, Dresden
Engineers: Markus Heiland and Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“It seems that the ninth is a limit. He who wants to go beyond it must pass away…. Those who have written a Ninth stood too close to the hereafter.”
–Arnold Schoenberg

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) is another in a long line of composers who have fallen to the so-called “curse of the ninth.” And while in Schnittke’s case the curse doesn’t quite hold water (it is, technically, his Tenth when one takes his Symphony No. 0 into account), the circumstances of its completion are prime material for the lore that surrounds such configurations of creative output. Regardless of how much we believe in the numerical significance of Schnittke’s Ninth, it was the last work he ever committed to paper. That he mustered the ability to do so after suffering four strokes, which had left his right side paralyzed, makes the work’s existence all the more enigmatic. Said debilitation forced Schnittke to write with his non-dominant hand, making for a virtually unreadable score. Famed Schnittke conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky subsequently prepared, under apparently spurious authority, a “performing edition,” which Schnittke vehemently rejected upon hearing a tape of its performance. Following his death soon thereafter, the score was entrusted by widow Irina to one Nikolai Korndorf, a fellow composer who sadly died of a brain tumor before he was able to do anything with it. Irina then passed the work along to Alexander Raskatov, who felt so moved in his attempts to provide a more definitive manuscript that he added an elegiac fourth movement of sorts to Schnittke’s already monumental three in the form of the Nunc dimittis (“Lord, let thy servant now depart into thy promis’d rest”) that rounds out this landmark recording.

The visceral Andante that opens the Ninth—which, in Raskatov’s estimation, acts as a “voice from beyond”—is like a string of blocks sagging over time. Harmonies move from consonance and dissonance in fluid sweeps, their ambiguity neither inviting nor repelling us. If anything, they signal a maturity that accepts those experiences that embolden us through their difficulty as well as those that refashion us through their proverbial beauty. Schnittke preserves his special sensitivity for the orchestra, treating it at times as a solo instrument, as if each section were its own string, and at others as if those voices were so distinct that they existed only through the vast spaces that separate them. It is this constant balancing act that makes the Schnittke experience so alive with nuance, easily adapting to our changing temperaments. In such a world of sound there is no self yet stable enough to hold on to for a lifetime. There is only the constant negotiation of our own musicality and the indeterminacy that binds it. And so, when the timpani announces itself at last, it sounds less like a declamatory statement and more like the heartbeat of a feeble and weary body. The addition of a harpsichord in the Moderato as a sort of tangential continuo of times past is a perfect example of Schnittke’s asymptotic grace. It also gives the symphony a concerto-like pathos, ever offset by a cryptic aftertaste and recumbent winds. As a whole, the Ninth is dominated by scales, which take a most blatant turn at the tail end of the Moderato, during which a trumpet runs through a chromatic line (perhaps in acknowledgment of its pedagogical roots?) as a lead-in to the final Presto, where we hear this modal motif echoed in the strings, and again in the lone oboe that welcomes the harpsichord’s unassuming return. Such fundamental utterances are, I think, keys into the piece’s inner energies, and prepare us for the gentle letting down of its cessation.

Raskatov’s intriguing companion piece, written in memoriam, is scored for mezzo-soprano, men’s voices and orchestra. It opens with verses by Joseph Brodsky, a favorite poet of Schnittke’s, and imparts its remaining attentions to a text by hesychast Staretz Silouan (who ECM listeners will recognize as a name of interest on Arvo Pärt’s Te Deum). Raskatov delves deeper into Schnittke’s symphonic territory, trail-marking it with voices along the way. Brief outbursts from harpsichord and marimba, along with some Ligeti-inspired vocal articulations, lend a ceremonial cast to the glowing mood. Dense brass swellings recall Górecki’s Old Polish Music, while a watery gong and shadowy electric guitar work their way into an ending that is but a mirror image of its own intentions.

A professor once told me: “Only a fool would think the answer is the most important part of the question.” Such a statement suits the music at hand, if only because the death(s) it circumscribes are as inexpressible as my unworthy attempts to relate it to the silent reader. In this regard, the present recording may be a give and take for the Schnittke admirer. On the one hand, it lacks the conviction of, say, his often-hailed Eighth. On the other, listeners will delight in the familiar presence of his beloved harpsichord and mellifluous scoring. By far one of the most stunning ECM New Series entries, this album is a more than fitting testament to a glorious composer and an opportune introduction for another who, though not so well known, walks humbly in his shadow.

Keith Jarrett: In The Light (ECM 1033/34)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1033_34

Keith Jarrett
In The Light

Keith Jarrett piano, gong, percussion, conductor
String Section of the Südfunk Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart
Mladen Gutesha conductor
The American Brass Quintet
The Fritz Sonnleitner Quartet
Ralph Towner guitar
Willi Freivogel flute
Recorded 1973
Engineers: K. Rapp, M. Wieland, M. Scheuermann
Produced by Manfred Eicher and Keith Jarrett

One look at my other Keith Jarrett reviews is enough to confirm that I have been guilty of separating his skills as performer and improviser from those of his role as composer. After listening to an album such as In The Light, however, I begin to suspect that for him they are one and the same.

The lush flavors of Metamorphosis for flute and strings are a most substantial appetizer to the many courses that follow in this early foray into larger territories. Soloist Willi Freivogel soars through the orchestra’s empty skies with a free and easy charm, bringing a pastoral sound in which memory is more than recreated; it is relived. Jarrett’s balance of density and linearity speaks with the same sense of total concentration and calculated surrender to the melodic moment as his most admirable improvisations. Moods and techniques take sudden turns, as in a particularly inventive passage during which the members of the orchestra tap their instruments for a pointillist interlude. The album has its fair share of similarly expansive works, including the enchanting Short Piece For Guitar And Strings (with Ralph Towner on nylon), and the anthemic In The Cave, In The Light (pairing Jarrett on piano, gong, and percussion with orchestra). While the latter two never quite scale the heights of Metamorphosis, they are so distinctly realized that one is hard-pressed to make a case for such comparisons. A smattering of chamber works rounds out this ambitious double effort, of which the String Quartet is the most appealing. Its pseudo-neoclassical style is sharp, taut, and uplifting. Unfortunately, Crystal Moment for four celli and two trombones doesn’t work so much for me, and seems to meander from the album’s otherwise steady path. The Brass Quintet, on the other hand, is a wonderful hybrid of timbres and chameleonic styles. Two solo pieces, Fughata for Harpsichord and A Pagan Hymn (both played by Jarrett on piano), provide the sharpest angles in a gospel-Baroque pastiche.

Overall, the idiomatic slipperiness of In The Light keeps us on our toes and ensures that we never outstay our welcome in any given label. Though perhaps a daunting journey to take in one sitting, it is nevertheless a deep insight into one of contemporary music’s most fascinating figures. These orchestral projects are in some ways Jarrett’s most “experimental.” Then again, isn’t experimentation what music is all about?

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