Classical

Christopher Bowers-Broadbent: Trivium (ECM New Series 1431)

| Tyran Grillo

Trivium

Christopher Bowers-Broadbent organ
Recorded October 1990, Grossmünster, Zürich
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I am a rider without mount, an ocean without waves, a horizon without dawn, nailed to myself, nailed to an absence in time which, after me, becomes the time of absence.
–Edmond Jabés, The Book of Questions

Avid Arvo Pärt listeners will be more than familiar with the profound talents of Christopher Bowers-Broadbent. The English organist has long held contemporary music in high regard, and has enriched the liturgical landscape with numerous commissions as well as his own compositions. With such a wealth of music available at the tips of his fingers (and toes), Bowers-Broadbent was faced with a daunting task: namely, crafting a personal take on music’s creative intimacy through one of its most leviathan instruments. The end result is, in his own words, a “performance about time and space.” As such, the reach, not the fleeting emotional effect, of his selections becomes paramount. Rather than lay out a program of short, varied pieces, he has turned inward, finding in the works of only three composers enough to describe a universe of ideas.

He first unveils the night sky with a quartet of pieces by Arvo Pärt. Trivium (1988) is like a constellation burning silently for our scrutiny. What remains flat on the stargazer’s map becomes three-dimensional in Bowers-Broadbent’s care. As with Pärt’s other tintinnabular quests, Trivium is both explorer and the landscape being explored. Its powerful middle section connotes a triune infrastructure, embodying the balance of divine order in every disturbance. The steady pulse of Mein Weg hat Gipfel und Wellentäler (1989) breathes with earthly lungs, even as it cradles a heart that can only be seen with a telescope. Its path stays true to the peaks and valleys of its title, taken from a poem by Edmond Jabés (Pärt would later rescore this piece in a version for strings and percussion that can be found on the ECM recording In Principio). Annum per annum (1980) is structured like a mass and brings that same sort of complementary vision to its stark dynamic contrasts. Pari Intervallo, composed in 1981, layers intonations in the higher register over a slow chromatic sway of transfiguration.

We are slowly brought back into our bodies with two of three voluntaries composed by Peter Maxwell Davies in 1976. These arrangements of sixteenth-century Scottish hymns seem to unpack, in a brief span of time, the mystery of faith. With enigmatic precision, Psalm 124 (after David Peebles) traces the contours of God’s raging waters with a touch of resignation, glorying in the safety of grace and retribution, while O God Abufe (after John Fethy) expresses even more succinctly the awe of a prayerful mind.

By the time we arrive at the final two pieces, each a spectacular arrangement of music by Philip Glass, we are well primed for the metamorphoses implied therein. Satyagraha renders the finale of Act III from the selfsame opera into a whirling dervish of stratospheric proportions. One can almost feel the air coursing through the organ’s pipes with every recapitulation. Dance IV, on the other hand, is a more extroverted piece that populates its periphery with movement and attractive forces. It ecstatically forms the center of the album’s galactic structure, drawing in countless voices until it reaches critical mass.

Bowers-Broadbent has the uncanny ability to take music that is seemingly histrionic and forge from it a host of instinctual meanings. From the wafting strains of Pärt’s sublime prostrations to the enlivening regularity of Glass’s exuberant leaps, we are treated at every moment to an august evocation of music for its own sake. All too often, it seems, organ recitals fall under our radar. Albums like this become the radar, and we the blips upon its screen: transient yet unmistakably there.

<< Arvo Pärt: Miserere (ECM 1430 NS)
>> Anouar Brahem: Barzakh (ECM 1432)

Hans Otte: Das Buch der Klänge (ECM New Series 1659)

| Tyran Grillo

Hans Otte
Das Buch der Klänge

Herbert Henck piano
Recorded September 1997, Festeburgkirche, Frankfurt am Main
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“It is an old dream of mine that the nature of sounds is discovered and that they are not used in order to express something else.”
–Hans Otte

Hans Otte (1926-2007) was a German composer, pianist, and sound installation artist. A student of Paul Hindemith, he came to see the role of sound as a phenomenon in its own right, and seems to have treated his piano music as a crucible in which musical lexicons might be boiled down to their essential vocabularies.

Herbert Henck offers up this sweeping interpretation of Otte’s twelve-part masterwork, Das Buch der Klänge (The Book of Sounds), as a stunning example of what piano music can grow into when loosed from its binds and allowed to breathe of its own volition. The cycle was three years in the making, and exudes gentle and attentive care. Part I is remarkably consonant, seesawing between the same two chords while alternating with more quickly syncopated passages. From these first moments we get the sense of travel that comes to characterize the trajectory to follow. There is also a nostalgic air that one finds in many of John Adams’s earlier compositions (and especially in Phrygian Gates). Part II undulates in cascades, from which single notes call out with assurance and clarity. Part III returns us to the journey, its slowly applied chords pressing like footsteps into the soil. Part IV erupts in dramatic cloudbursts, bleeding into Part V, in which the same chords are deployed with more urgency. The piano sings here, knitting between its open strings the makings of a vocal tract. Part VI is a linear melody, each note dotting the darkness with a distant galaxy. Part VII is one of the most spiritual sections of the piece, and is like the ostinato of a more expansive composition that never develops into a lead line, but rather looks inward via more pinpointed notes within arpeggiated clusters. In dispensing with the imagined right hand, the music speaks for itself, as if to untie the binds of its inner heart so that each note may flow freely through its ventricles. Part VIII marks the return of cautious footsteps. This is the frustration of travel, the annoyances, delays, and logistic disconnects that are inevitable when experiencing any new culture, however adored. Part IX at last offers some reprieve, giving itself over into rest. It is the time of reflection, when the return seems all too imminent and the lessons learned have hardly had time to take root, and we come to realize that those moments of misunderstanding are the ones we cherish the most. Part X shines like the dawn. Only now do we realize this landscape may be forever lost to us, so we glory in every flaw and perfection alike while we still can, in the hopes of carrying it inside us when we leave. Throughout Part XII, one hears a little Satie peeking through in the finality of its playful departure. It is the quiet checkered landscape below on the return flight, the silent coastline receding behind the ship, the cloud of dust churning behind the bus, the slowly waving hand left behind at the train station. All such moments are brought to bear in Otte’s Buch, so that all we have left is this audible postcard on the back of which Henck has inscribed as much as could possibly fit in such a limited space. But the real beauty of this recording is that, as a tangible object, it can be held, turned in the hands, admired for its cover art, intellectually fed upon through its liner notes, and the journey repeated at any moment one wishes. It is music like this that reminds us of the pleasurable luxury of recordings and their didactic effect. They transport us to unseen locations, or conversely reconstruct those locations stone by stone in our very minds without us having to lift a finger. Most importantly, they allow us to appreciate the very real experiences we have in our own travels, and in doing so give us the gift of hindsight, reminding us of how memory shapes who we are.

Considering Henck’s often-eclectic approach, I was both surprised and reassured by his championing of Otte. Although Henck has always chosen fascinating material, the reductive power of this music is nothing short of revelatory. These sounds speak directly to the heart and feel as if they grew out of solitary nocturnal improvisations. Notions of minimalism are easily vanquished with a careful listen, which reveals a wealth of subtle details and variations peppered throughout. Through the infliction of its uneven terrain, the joys of arrival and the memories that linger once the destination has been found become one and the same. Henck plays with grace and fortitude, making explicit use of the sustain pedal and the instrument’s own internal space. This is music that looks simple on paper, but requires personal commitment to articulation, speed, timing, and volume. Thus, it becomes a magnifying glass into the musician’s, and the listener’s, sense of being. By far one of ECM’s finest achievements.

<< The Hilliard Ensemble: Lassus (ECM 1658 NS)
>> Mats Edén: Milvus (ECM 1660)

Barry Guy: Folio (ECM New Series 1931)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Barry Guy
Folio

Maya Homburger baroque violin
Muriel Cantoreggi violin
Barry Guy double-bass
Münchener Kammerorchester
Christoph Poppen conductor
Recorded February 2005, Himmelfahrtskirche, München
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Over the years, ECM New Series listeners will have variously encountered Barry Guy as composer, performer, and improviser. In Folio, we get to experience all three. I have always found his improvisatory role to be the most compelling, for it stirs my heart with communicative possibilities. And so, in the spirit of living in the moment, I share this review verbatim, as I dictated it while listening:

“Barry Guy is very much concerned with the internal, the biological nature of music. The seemingly sourceless energy it evokes through human contact enables us to question our own energy: whether it is divinely given or naturally ordained. While his epic explorations of thematic material by Diego Ortiz betray a more honed compositional reach, Guy still inhales the oxygen of indeterminacy. This music functions very much like memory: when one focuses on one memory, others try to creep in, sometimes courting unwanted associations, secrets we would rather not acknowledge…. Even at its most dynamic moments, this music is all about gentility and caution—not as a sign of fear…but as a way of life, a philosophy. The improvised ‘commentaries’ peppered throughout add a rich sense of bulk to the album’s presence…but one shouldn’t think they are any less substantial, for they wouldn’t be what they are without their source texts. They give the musicians a crisp field in which to ponder the emotional implications of what they have just played…to share those feelings with the listener rather than covet them unceremoniously. The ‘Folio’ pieces are richer in orchestral texture. They tap into a broader sensibility of the music’s own potential while also burying the possible egotism of the solo artist…in a lush balance of restraint and emotional surrender. Guy uses gimmicks briefly and wisely, and is never afraid to stutter. This is music that never edits itself. The commentaries are immediate responses. They do not simply act as arbitrary filler material, but rather speak to the lingering effects…grasping on to those effects before they fade out of sight and out of mind. And so, I think this is why Track 13 is called ‘Memory,’ for what is commentary but solidified memory shared with others…? And similarly, what is a review but a memory…a conscious chronicling of an experience that can never be recaptured, but only inadequately preserved in one person’s thought. For rather than a simple memory, I should like to share a record of my experience. This track also speaks to me in the same way we often search through our memories for an originating thought. Oftentimes, especially as we are going to sleep, we let our minds wander, only to backtrack, looking for that one sound or image or word or impression that launched our mental exploration…and this is perhaps what we stumble into in ‘Ortiz II,’ which in some way charts the frustration of our psychological imperfections, while also exploiting those imperfections to audible effect. This is an altogether intriguing album, which is always greater than the some of its parts, as it allows for the listener’s own reflection and for the compositional nature of personality to run amok, or slumber as it may, in pockets of empty space.”

Werner Bärtschi: W.A. Mozart/G. Scelsi/A. Pärt/F. Busoni/W. Bärtschi (ECM New Series 1377)

| Tyran Grillo

 

W.A. Mozart/G. Scelsi/A. Pärt/F. Busoni/W. Bärtschi

Werner Bärtschi piano
Recorded July 1988 at Kirche Blumenstein, Switzerland
Engineer: Andreas Neubronner
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In this ECM debut, Swiss pianist Werner Bärtschi offers up an intriguing and carefully conceived program. Having studied with Klaus Huber and Rudolf Kelterborn, Bärtschi brings a decidedly compositional attention to his playing that lends itself well to the material at hand. He begins with Mozart’s C minor Fantasie (1785), which, as the longest piece, reads like a single human life. It is not a simple reimagining of the past but a reliving of it, for to play the piano is to articulate a biography in sound, using the body in imitation of what bore those same feelings in “real time.” After such a piece, the Four Illustrations on the Metamorphoses of Vishnu (1953) by Scelsi may seem like a startling transition. Yet humble quartet presents us with a rare programmatic gesture from the Italian, whose microscopic approach actually balances out Mozart’s broader strokes and veils the turmoil of mortality behind the surface of the spirit made flesh. Bärtshi surprises us yet again with Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina. This early 1976 version is like a dream we question upon waking: Did we really hear it, or did the music rise in our minds out of an unspoken memory? And so, when we next encounter Mozart in the 1788 B minor Adagio, we hear him with fresh ears and open hearts. Rather that scoping out the Mozartean influence in the surrounding works, we see the latter funneling into the former. Bärtschi follows with a piece of his own, Frühmorgens am Daubensee (1986/88), realized during an early morning hike in the mountains surrounding the eponymous lake. In it we hear snatches of something upon the wind, distant conversations, activities, worldly movements, the beginning of an avalanche that never quite forms. This salves us nicely for the relative onslaught of Busoni’s 1921 Toccata, a masterful yet demanding unfolding of theme and counterpoint. After such a towering cascade of notes, Mozart’s B major Sonata (1783) is like a gentle return, a pair of hands lowering us slowly to the earth, leaving us to slumber in a blanket of solid ground.

Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich provides a beautifully conceived essay which, despite risking an overuse of the word “oriental” (it appears no less than five times in the liner notes), makes a viable case for Bärtschi’s musical choices as being firmly rooted in the spirit of magic and fantasy that engenders the program as a whole. Where Jungheinrich characterizes this as a piano recital of “Mozart and…,” I would go a step further and say it is equal parts “…and Mozart.” yet although Mozart bookends the recital and inhabits its fulcrum, his infrastructural presence is no more significant than the validation of the superstructure. As such, the continuity between these pieces is a narrative rather than formal concern—not a linear continuity, but one in which the potential for speech is equally present at every stage.

<< Dino Saluzzi: Andina (ECM 1375)
>> Heinz Reber: MNAOMAI, MNOMAI (ECM 1378 NS)

Ensemble Belcanto: Come un’ombra di luna (ECM New Series 1739)

| Tyran Grillo

Come un’ombra di luna

Ensemble Belcanto
Dietburg Spohr mezzosoprano, director
Birgitta Zehetner mezzosoprano
Andrea Baader soprano
Rita Huber soprano
Dzuna Kalnina alto
Rica Rauch alto
Recorded January 2000 at Festeburgkirche, Frankfurt am Main
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I have at home a blue piano
and yet know no note.
–Else Lasker-Schüler

My first encounter with Ensemble Belcanto was on an extraordinary recording of Klaus Hinrich Stahmer’s Hommage à Daidalos on the ProViva label, which combined Belcanto’s rich voices with the sound sculptures of Elmar Daucher (whose resonating stones also found their way into ECM via Stephan Micus’s The Music Of Stones). The ensemble was formed in 1986 by mezzo-soprano Dietburg Spohr as a springboard for new music activity and has since honed its skills in a variety of percussion instruments. The ensemble’s depth of performance is clearly seen in Haim Alexander’s Mein Blaues Klavier (1989-90), a setting of four poems by Else Lasker-Schüler. Although the piece inhabits a tight chromatic range that steps just beyond one octave, the singers manage to expand its borders through a wealth of gingerly applied drums, gongs, triangles, and other accentuating paraphernalia. The ritualistic arrangements lend the voices a flavor of incantation, each word seeming to bring about a discernible change in the music’s countenance. Mein Blaues Klavier is severely analytical without being clinical, especially in its final section, in which repetitive clangs probe deeper into self-inflicted wounds.

This is followed by two a cappella settings. The first, Konrad Boehmer’s Un Monde Abandonné Des Facteurs (1996), is a wavering slog through its text. The composer’s Darmstadt School roots are on full display, voices bristling with his teacher Stockhausen’s same penchant for the instability of the utterance. The 1997 title composition comes from Fabrizio Casti. His is a haunting weave of darkness and light that burns like the calls of sirens in one’s head.

We close with Wolfgang Rihm’s Séraphin – Stimmen (1996), a magnificent cartographical exploration of wordless territories. It is the most minimal piece on the album, and all the deeper for it. Rihm’s use of percussion is most adept, and seems to be directly influenced by Noh theatre, where a single wood clap can accentuate an emphatic syllable, and where the beat of a drum can synchronize an action or gesture, infusing it with intense programmatic effect. Also like Noh, the piece makes the most of silence and its implied sense of movement. And in fact, the entire album has the feeling of something staged, inhaling and exhaling through its dramaturgy.

While every voice here is superb, Spohr’s stands out for its technical breadth and for possessing one of the most engaging vibratos I have ever heard. The ensemble as a whole shapes every syllable with strict attention, elongating certain syllables and severely shortening others. Such textual detail is always such a pleasure to hear, for rather than trying to fit a text into a predetermined musical structure, Spohr and her companions adapt their sound to emergent vocal surroundings. Again, this speaks to an explicit root in drama, for ultimately these pieces are like plays of the mind, populated by characters of one’s own making.

<< Michael Mantler: Hide and Seek (ECM 1738)
>> Bobo Stenson Trio: Serenity (ECM 1740/41)

Bach: Goldberg Variations – Schiff (ECM New Series 1825)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Johann Sebastian Bach
Goldberg Variations

András Schiff piano
Concert recording, October 30, 2001 at the Stadtcasino, Basel
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“This is one of those few journeys that can be repeated again and again.”
–András Schiff on the Goldberg Variations

Bach, says Schiff, “was a composer with encyclopedic ambitions.” As such, one might say that the Klavierübung—of which the Goldberg Variations are the crowning jewel—was as much an attempt to fill in a musical gap, if not to elevate a preexisting one, in a form so concise that no one could claim its place. In their profoundly moving dance between the Apollonian and Dionysian, the Variations fold and refold themselves like a constantly shifting origami figure reusing the same sheet of paper. Likewise, the collection begins and ends with an all-encompassing Aria, so that by the end one spreads that sheet out to reveal a tightly knit symmetrical pattern of inimitable proportions.

As with any pianistic interpretation of Bach, debates over medium abound. Whatever your instrumental preference, however, I put forward that Schiff’s clarity transcends any and all technical concerns. And let us not forget that the success of any recording lies as much in the hands of its engineers, instrument makers, and tuners. The clarity of this particular ECM recording, and its marriage with Schiff’s performance, is particularly refreshing, for it gives each variation such a firm position in the greater scheme of its placement that we cannot help but become utterly invested in its brief traversal. Schiff’s surgical precision lends itself particularly well to the faster variations—Nos. 1, 5, 8 (a personal favorite), and 21—as it gives them just enough added vigor to make them spring from their cages. For the slower variations—particularly Nos. 9 and 15—this approach means a validation of brevity, emboldening as it does the delicate lines they walk between speech and song. As for the more heavily syncopated numbers, such as 4, 7, 12, and 16, this feeling descends into one of rootedness. For me, Variation No. 14 is the prize and Schiff handles its demanding trills and hand-crossings with the utmost fluency, providing us with more than enough energy to work our way to the Aria’s reprise.

Listening to Schiff play Bach is always an uplifting experience, and nowhere more so than here. The palpable bond between him and the music speaks of a mutual love. The recording scintillates throughout, but is a live one, so everything from piano dampers to the occasional cough comes through. It is worth having in physical form for Schiff’s whimsical “guided tour” of the Variations included in the booklet. While this has the makings of a benchmark recording, I recommend that you also check out Keith Jarrett’s ECM recording of the same on harpsichord. The two make a lovely pair.

12 Hommages A Paul Sacher (ECM New Series 1520/21)

| Tyran Grillo

12 Hommages A Paul Sacher

Thomas Demenga
Patrick Demenga
Jürg Wyttenbach Conductor
Recorded June 1993, Kirche Blumenstein, CH
Engineer: Teije van Geest
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Before first encountering this recording, Paul Sacher was an unfamiliar name to me. Now that the album has been with me for fifteen years, it is a name I cannot forget. Sacher (1906-1999) was a Swiss conductor and patron of the arts who championed all of the composers represented in this 2-CD tribute. His wealth and musical acuity led him to commission some of the most defining works of the twentieth century. Without him we wouldn’t have, for example, Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta or Stravinsky’s Concerto in D. For this project, realized in commemoration of his 70th birthday, a choice group of composers were commissioned to write pieces for cello around the so-called “Sacher hexachord,” a tone row derived from Sacher’s name: Eb=Es A C B=H E D=Re. The concept is similar to that of the B-A-C-H motif (Bb=B, A, C, H=B natural), which has been incorporated into works by, among many others, Liszt, Busoni, Pärt, Webern, and Bach himself (see ECM’s Ricercar for a creative juxtaposition of the latter two). The project was originally spearheaded by Mstislav Rostropovich, but has been recorded here with requisite flair by Thomas and Patrick Demenga.

At the heart of this project is Benjamin Britten’s Tema, the most straightforward iteration of the Sacher theme. Originally, the other composers were asked to simply write variations thereof, but their ideas soon developed into full-fledged pieces in their own right. Alberto Ginastera’s Puneña No. 2, Op.45 immediately draws us in with its keening melody, crying out like a hawk losing sight of its prey. The majestic bird tears at the sky as it would the earth, eliciting a flurry of virtuosic leaps and plucked asides. Each whispered harmonic lifts the bird with the silent power of a thermal. But then the prey is spotted, and falls as if pierced by an arrow from its hunter’s very gaze. Agitated pizzicati scamper like the rodent’s ghost into a dense thicket of trees as the hawk raises calls of revelry and tears its meal limb from limb. To my ears, this is one of the most technically demanding pieces on the album, sometimes requiring the cellist to pluck with the left hand while bowing with the right. Wolfgang Fortner’s Zum Spielen für den 70. Geburtstag – Thema und Variationen für Violincello solo is a more somber affair, its flashes of consonance piercing the surrounding dissonant fabric with divine light. The Capriccio by Hans Werner Henze is among the more cryptic pieces. Its complex narrative and subtle details beg repeated listening. This is followed by a string of vignettes. Of these, Henri Dutilleux’s 3 Strophes sur le nom de Sacher and Witold Lutosławski’s Sacher-Variationen are remarkable. Both give us a “conversational” portrait, perhaps reflective of the relationship either composer may have had with the man behind the music, for like a conversation among friends these pieces are fraught with conflict and agreement in equal measure. They are also very “alphabetic” and are perhaps the most committed to the their morphological assignment. Cristóbal Halffter seems to take a similar tack in his Variationen über das Thema eSACHERe, while Conrad Beck and Luciano Berio opt for a more concise approach that favors melodic dissection over prosody. By far the longest piece is Klaus Huber’s Transpositio ad infinitum – Für ein virtuoses Solocello, another compelling delineation of attenuate character and detail. Following this, Heinz Holliger yet again flexes his brilliant compositional muscle with the Chaconne für Violoncello solo. This rather enumerative piece makes apt use of the acoustics of the recording space and exploits the incidental sounds of the strings against the fingerboard as a sort of parallel dialogue. And just when we begin to suspect all possibilities have been exhausted, Pierre Boulez, ever the nonconformist, throws us for a loop with his Messagesquisse for seven cellos, which seems to blend all that came before until smooth.

Even though all of this music inhabits the same landscape, each piece digs up its own relic and turns it into music. The album is passionately performed, and recorded in clear and present sound. It is a unique testament to a unique individual, one that unlocks Sacher in a way those of us who will never know him cannot ever experience otherwise. Essentially, it is the Sacherian equivalent of A Hilliard Songbook, for just as the latter would not exist without the Hilliard Ensemble, so too is this album a timeless memorial to a figure whose absence might have effectively erased an entire generation of masterworks.

<< David Darling: Dark Wood (ECM 1519)
>> Charles Lloyd: The Call (ECM 1522)

György Kurtág: Kafka-Fragmente (ECM New Series 1965)

| Tyran Grillo

 

György Kurtág
Kafka-Fragmente

Juliane Banse soprano
András Keller violin
Recorded September 2005, Reitstadl, Neumarkt
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The true path goes by way of a rope that is suspended not high up, but rather just above the ground. Its purpose seems to be more to make one stumble than to be walked on.
–Franz Kafka

The Kafka-Fragmente (1985-87) of György Kurtág make up the composer’s longest song cycle to date. Written for soprano and violin, its forty short pieces fall just shy of an hour. While Kurtág frames the text, consisting of fragments from Franz Kafka’s diaries and letters, and its ordering as being secondary to the music, I believe a closer look at the words can only enrich one’s experience of these finely composed vignettes. In the same way that Kurtág has pulled Kafka out of context and reworked him, so too has he pulled melodic material from the words themselves and fashioned it into a demanding exercise in instrumental and vocal economy. The scoring may be sparse; the results are anything but. Kurtág’s miniaturist approach ensures that every word gets its unadulterated moment, while the intimate arrangements pay due attention to the space into which those words are deployed.

Some of these pieces are relentlessly dramatic—“Ruhelos” (Restless), “Stolz” (Pride), “Nichts dergleichen” (Nothing of the kind) come to mind—and others meditative—“Berceuse I,” “Träumend hing die Blume” (The flower hung dreamily), “Ziel, Weg, Zögern” (Destination, path, hesitation)—but all are linked by dialogue. Still others are playfully programmatic and concise, such as “Es zupfte mich jemand am Kleid” (Someone tugged at my clothes) and “Eine lange Geschichte” (A long story). The one fragment that is Part II, which I have quoted above, is a haunting piece and seems to act as the center toward which the others gravitate.

As part of a lifetime’s worth of personal musings and correspondences, Kafka’s jottings are, of course, rather candid, and indeed give us a “fragmentary” vision of the great writer. None is perhaps so self-deprecating as his letter to Milena Jesenká. “I am dirty,” he writes, “endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing that we take for the singing of angels.” Whatever darkness this piece may imply on the printed page is immediately transformed into a serenade, evoking the final image with voracious dedication. We find another lyrical moment in the mysterious “Verstecke” (Hiding-places), in which Kafka muses: “There are countless hiding-places, but only one salvation; but then again, there are as many paths to salvation as there are hiding-places,” and for which the accompaniment is suitably cryptic, scampering toward any available cranny in which it might conceal itself. Another highlight is “Szene in der Elektrischen” (Scene on a tram), a whimsical anecdote about street musicians and the delicate line they walk between musical appreciation and intrusion into personal space. Because the story tells of two violinists, the violinist must switch between two differently tuned instruments on either side of the soprano, who strings the narrative along with her own bowed articulations. The final fragment, “Es blendete uns die Mondnacht…” (The moonlit night dazzled us…), is a brooding and mystical evocation of animal spirits and the limits of human understanding.

Soprano Juliane Banse displays a superb command of voice as she squeals, chirps, and whispers her way through Kurtág’s personal selections, and violinist András Keller negotiates the minutiae therein with finesse and panache, while also managing to maintain the touch-and-go relationship with the texts at hand. In spite of the bright performances and ingenuity throughout, this isn’t necessarily music to have on the in the background while surfing the internet or throwing a dinner party (and to anyone using Kurtág to enhance a soiree, I humbly request that you invite me), but rather demands our attention as “readers.” Kurtág was in the studio throughout the entire recording process, and his presence is palpable. It is only appropriate, then, that we be just as present in the listening.

Jean-Luc Godard: Nouvelle Vague (ECM New Series 1600/01)

| Tyran Grillo

Jean-Luc Godard
Nouvelle Vague

Featuring the music and voices of:
Dino Saluzzi
David Darling
Patti Smith
Jean Schwartz
Werner Pirchner
Paul Hindemith
Heinz Holliger
Paul Giger
Arnold Schoenberg
Gabriella Ferri
Alain Delon
Domiziana Giordano
Roland Amstutz
Laurence Cote
Jacques Dacqmine
Christophe Odent
Laurence Guerre
Joseph Lisbona

But I wanted this to be a narrative. I still do. Nothing from outside to distract memory. I barely hear, from time to time, the earth softly creaking, one ripple beneath the surface. I am content with the shade of a single poplar, tall behind me in its mourning.

In every Godard film, there are moments in which chaos reigns. Ambient sounds replace human voices. Animals, especially dogs and crows, always seem to have something to add. The mechanical world becomes part of the conversation. These intersections of sound and darkness, of silence and light, underscore our social inequities and nothing more. They pass without judgment, suddenly swallowed whole by accidents and unarticulated pain. Yet it is in precisely these gnarled irregularities that the larger construction of life, and this film depicting it, is betrayed. There is no order beyond choice, no means for permanence in a world so finitely recreated. The film gives illusory clout to its own staying power and falls flat against the screen long before its depth can be realized.

As a soundtrack, Nouvelle Vague is a rich experience, made all the more so if one has seen the film and has its images in mind. An earlier companion piece to the vastly significant Histoire(s) du cinema, this is the complete aural map of Godard’s multi-sensory essay. Like the soundtrack to Histoire(s), it brings to light not only the film’s interior but also its exterior nuances, probing its topography, if you will, with a practiced hand. This is strictly a descriptive engagement. As spoken voices fade in and out of a painterly mélange of musical selections, ECM and otherwise, our ears (and our eyes) spin the one continual thread holding it all together. The musics of Dino Saluzzi and David Darling figure most heavily in Nouvelle Vague and inform much of its dialectic edge. They are placed among, and in place of, dialogue, adding to a mounting intellectual cacophony. Darling’s cello merges with a beeping car horn and screeching tires, Hindemith graces the inside of every mask donned by the film’s characters, and voices cry out like solo instruments against a larger orchestral palette. Godard’s familiar splashing water also makes its requisite cameo. Yet it is Saluzzi’s bandoneón that provides some of the more understatedly dramatic moments. Its tearful, bellowed cry is as recognizable as the rhythms of the filmmaker using it, and ends the text on a stark note as a car speeds away in a swirl of filmic dust.

With this release, ECM redefined what a soundtrack can be: something that literally “tracks sound,” marking every stage of a narrative with its most fleeting aspects. Diegetic distinctions are arbitrary in Godard’s world. Sound is image is sound. Our own mental pictures are no less substantial than those captured on film, for captured is precisely what they are. Nouvelle Vague invites us to let the visual world unfurl—not through the sound, but as the sound itself.

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