Classical

A Hilliard Songbook (ECM New Series 1614/15)

| Tyran Grillo

 

The Hilliard Ensemble
A Hilliard Songbook: New Music For Voices

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Barry Guy double-bass
Recorded March/April 1995, March 1996 at Boxgrove Priory, Chichester
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Those who approach this album like I did—that is, only after listening to the Hilliard Ensemble’s many early music recordings—may be in for a surprise. Whether that surprise is a pleasant one or not may depend on the listener’s openness to new sounds. The opening convulsion that is Barry Guy’s aphasic Un coup de dés would seem to foreshadow a bumpy ride. Its whirlwind of extended double bass techniques and choral acrobatics leaves us hard pressed to find our bearings. The score, Guy tells us, encourages improvisation and even the modification of what has already been written. Using a section from a Mellarmé poem, which likens the process of thought to a mere dice-throw, the piece works its way into our ears like a dwarfing star. It is abstract, agitated, and unsettling, yet full of gracious detail we cannot help but enjoy. The Hilliards demonstrate that they can execute a piece of such technical difficulty and “modern” sensibility with as much fluidity as they approach their more familiar repertoire—at least insofar as their recordings are concerned, for they have always been known for juxtaposing contemporary works with those of bygone ages in their live performances. And then we get the short and sweet Only, the earliest published composition of Morton Feldman. In less time than it takes to microwave a frozen dinner, we are utterly transported by Feldman’s visceral melodic rendering of a Rilke sonnet, brought to its fullest fruition through the angelic voice of Rogers Covey-Crump. It is a folk song for its own sake, a funereal hymn for the living. This sets off a spate of shorter pieces by Ivan Moody and Piers Hellawell. Moody’s viscous miniatures live up to the composer’s name, taking us through a range of emotional colors. Endechas y Canciones sets Arabic-Spanish poetry from the 15th and 16th centuries. The second of these, “Endechas a la muerte de Guillén Peraza,” is a dirge from the Canary Islands that pulls at the heartstrings with a pace slow and focused, like moderated speech. The Hilliard Songbook by Hellawell, on the other hand, is a whimsical journey through A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning by Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619), the celebrated Elizabethan portraitist. This is the centerpiece of the album, both in title and in song. The treatise’s idiosyncratic descriptions of color inspired the composer to recreate those very colors with voices. Regulating the piece is a refrain taken up each time by one member of the ensemble: “True beautie of each perfect cullor in his full perfection in perfect hard bodies and very transparent.” Through this many-hued ode we are given valuable insight into not only the Hilliards’ vocal art, but also into the visual mind of their namesake.

Of the longer pieces represented here, Paul Robinson’s Incantation is textually the broadest. The words are adopted from Byron’s poem of the same name—what Robinson calls a “vitriolic curse”—through which the composer sought to foreground the Hilliards’ sonority over the work being performed. As the music marks its slow path through a rather morbid text, we feel the voices blend into a single destination. Kullervo’s Message, by Estonian composer Veljo Tormis, recounts a dramatic episode from The Kalevala, Finland’s nineteenth-century national epic. From a line of skillfully harmonized textual lifts, Tormis hangs a series of messages by which the eponymous tragic hero is informed of the deaths of his loved ones, even as he prepares to exact his revenge upon those whose ridicule led him to such self-destructive fervor. Tormis’s melodic and programmatic colors are ideally suited to their source material, moving with the virtuosity of a master storyteller. Scottish composer James MacMillan offers his own epic statement in the form of …here in hiding…, a deceptively simple mesh of the poem “Adoro te devote” by St. Thomas Aquinas in both its Latin and English forms.

The remaining pieces comprise a flavorful mixture of words and musical ideas. Two exemplary statements from Arvo Pärt, And One Of The Pharisees… and the splendid vocal version of Summa, make fine company of Elizabeth Liddle’s Whale Rant, which takes its cues from Moby-Dick, and works its music like clock hands, with one arm counting the hours while another traces a faster, larger circle. The second hand becomes invisible, implied only in the vocal gestures of the sensitive performance, and is forever lost in the ocean of its source. Joanne Metcalf’s Music For The Star Of The Sea, is a thinly veiled meditation on the words “O ave maris stella” (“O hail star of the sea”) that extends the possibility of a single utterance into a vast Marian fabric. Sharpe Thorne by John Casken paints an image of Christ impaled, while Michael’s Finnissy’s Stabant autem iuxta crucem praises the one who bore him. And in Canticum Canticorum Ivan Moody again dazzles with this setting of verses from the Song of Songs and its loving incorporation of Byzantine chant.

Those wishing to hear the range of the Hilliards’ technical prowess will want to check out this collection for sure. This humble quartet sings with such clear articulation of phrase that one accepts every note like the nourishing morsel it is. While the music is for the most part contemplative and lovely, never ceasing to fascinate even at its least accessible moments, much of it feels spun from the same thread. The pieces by Ivan Moody stand out here as being the most well thought out and textually aligned, while the Hellawell, Tormis, and Guy enchant with their distinctive flair. That being said, it seems a shame to think that cultures outside a Eurocentric Judeo-Christian context should be shunted here. Considering that nearly all of these pieces were written for the Hilliard Ensemble, and that some of their composers were involved in the Hilliard Summer School led by the ensemble in residency, a narrow scope is perhaps understandable. Geographical limitations aside, the traveling instinct is still there in the Hilliards’ adventurous spirit, captured in every flawless phrase, in every committed performance that continues to issue from their very throats.

<< Evan Parker EAE: Toward the Margins (ECM 1612 NS)
>> Dino Saluzzi: Cité de la Musique (ECM 1616)

Steve Reich: Octet / Music for a Large Ensemble / Violin Phase (ECM New Series 1168)

| Tyran Grillo

Steve Reich
Octet / Music for a Large Ensemble / Violin Phase

Russ Hartenberger marimba
Glen Velez marimba
Gary Schall marimba
Richard Schwarz marimba
Bob Becker xylophone
David Van Tieghem xylophone
James Preiss vibraphone
Nurit Tilles piano
Edmund Niemann piano
Larry Karush piano
Steve Reich piano
Jay Clayton voice
Elizabeth Arnold voice
Shem Guibbory violin
Robert Chausow violin
Ruth Siegler viola
Claire Bergmann viola
Chris Finckel cello
Michael Finckel cello
Lewis Paer bass
Judith Sugarman basse
Virgil Blackwell clarinet
Richard Cohen clarinet
Mort Silver flute
Ed Joffe soprano saxophone
Vincent Gnojek soprano saxophones
Douglas Hedwig trumpet
Marshall Farr trumpet
James Hamlin trumpet
James Dooley trumpet
Recorded February 1980 at Columbia Recording Studios, New York; March 1980 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg (Violin Phase)
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Have you ever repeated a word over and over again until it loses meaning? Cognitive science calls this “semantic satiation.” Now imagine that someone could do the same thing for instruments and you’ll have a clear idea of the power of a Steve Reich composition. In this selection of three longer examples, we get exactly that: an unraveling of music’s genetic code, transformed from within. It is for this more than any other reason that I’ve always been wary to use the word “minimal” in reference to Reich’s music, which is endlessly complex and never fails to engender new discoveries with every listen.

The instruments in Music For A Large Ensemble fit perfectly in a vast sequence of aural DNA, as logical as it is mystifying. Every voice is given ample breathing room in a piece that, while densely layered, is as airy and ordered as a puff of windblown dandelion. Strings waver with the unrelenting heat of a desert sun, horns ebb and flow in a brassy wash of equilibrium, and a vibraphone rings out like magic over all. Although the music moves mechanically, its feel is decidedly organic. This earthiness is maintained in the Violin Phase, which consists of a repeated motif that, as with all of Reich’s “phase” pieces, is knocked just slightly out of alignment by the doubling voice, like two turn signals rhythmically staggering and realigning. This is the most localized of Reich’s phases, clearly rooted as it is in the bluegrass fiddling tradition. The violin grinds like dirt or sand, small particles swirling and separating yet holding fast to some invisible predictability. After two such strikingly different pieces, the Octet somehow comes across as the most intimate. The inclusion of wind instruments, and in particular the clarinet and flute, adds a crystalline contrast in texture and melodic shifts, bringing us to a glorious and sudden silence.

Albums like this and Music for 18 Musicians will easily make one lose track of time. I am so often taken aback when this music ends, for it pulsates with such a robust sense of perpetual motion that its effect always seems to linger somewhere inside me. It is a tessellation in sound, each image shifting through time and space like an Escher print, so that what begins as a diamond ends up a bird in flight. Naturally, the sheer precision required to play Reich’s music is a feat in and of itself. That such a synergistic cast of musicians could arise out of the work of one composer is by all turns spectacular, and when so lovingly recorded their cumulative effect is all the more heightened. This is music that finds its expansiveness internally, charting the endless waters of our biological oceans until we come to our beginnings anew.

Peter Ruzicka: String Quartets (ECM New Series 1694)

| Tyran Grillo

Peter Ruzicka
String Quartets

Arditti Quartet
Irvine Arditti violin
Graeme Jennings violin
Garth Knox viola
Rohan de Saram cello
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau speaker
Recorded December 1996 and October 1997, WDR Cologne and Immanuelkirche Wuppertal
Engineers: Mark Hohn and Christian Meurer
Produced by Harry Vogt (ECM co-production)

“Die Musik in mir.
Die Musik, die im Schweigen ist, potentiell,
möge sie kommen und mich erstaunen.”
–Paul Valéry

In astrophysics, basic string theory posits that the known universe can be understood through a successful marriage of quantum mechanics and general relativity. Each “string” represents a unique atomic signature with which all physical matter is composed through vibrational fields. In order to explain string theory to us laypeople, physicists analogize these vibrations with those of an instrument: each string is capable of producing a variety of notes depending on where the cosmic finger is placed on the fretboard. The string quartets of German composer and conductor Peter Ruzicka, collected for the first time in this landmark recording, demonstrate this theory with and without words. Through a distinct micropolitics of sound, Ruzicka uses instruments not to make a declamatory statement, but to evince an unstable question. The title of Ruzicka’s third quartet, …über ein Verschwinden (…about a disappearance), is about as succinct a description as one could hope to formulate in regards to his music. Ruzicka’s sound world is sparse, comprised as much by empty spaces as by audible gestures. These spaces, the very ether through which the music flows, are rich with conceptual integrity.

This is music that inhabits its own edges. It bids our silence when it speaks, provokes our speech when silent. The quartets are riddles in and of themselves, even if they contain everything we need for their solutions in plain view. The keys are in the titles. Klangschatten (Soundshadows) is more about effect than about process and seems to disavow its own origins by reflecting those of the listener, separating these two histories with a huge sheet of darkness. The second quartet, „…fragment…”, is a laconic pentaptych of self-styled “epigrams.” Introspezione, subtitled as a “documentation for string quartet,” navigates an introspective matrix filled with quotation marks, question marks, and exclamation points, but not a single period. The fourth quartet, „…sich verlierend” (…are losing) for string quartet and speaker, is an intriguing anomaly. Because so much of Ruzicka’s music is already “spoken,” the entry of a human voice seems quite natural, as if it had been there all along. The music is not incidental to the voice, but rather the voice incidental to the music.

In his liner notes, Thomas Schäfer informs us of Ruzicka’s disinterest in grand narratives and his preference for the in-between. For all their galactic reach, the quartets are utterly rooted in the terrestrial. The third quartet, for example, sounds like George Crumb’s Black Angels stripped of its explosive core and shredded by wind. Violins scratch out their incantation, figures moving in crude stop-motion. Other quartets abound in allusions from Gesualdo to Mahler to Webern in what the composer terms moments of “full identification.” Ironically, however, in such surroundings even the most familiar music seems to come from a distant planet, having reached us by some unimaginably powerful intergalactic signal. And when we do recognize it, we are awed to learn it has come from an abstract “out there.” In the end, it is silence that rules this album, so that any violence that erupts consumes us completely. These are the moments Ruzicka would seem to live for, when the intensity of experience can only be expressed by its sudden disappearance.

<< Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: Drawn Inward (ECM 1693)
>> Patrick and Thomas Demenga: Lux Aeterna (ECM 1695 NS)

Eleni Karaindrou: Elegy of the Uprooting (ECM New Series 5506 & 1952/53)

| Tyran Grillo

Eleni Karaindrou
Elegy of the Uprooting

Maria Farantouri voice
Vangelis Christopoulos oboe
Socratis Sinopoulos Constantinople lyra, laouto
Maria Bildea harp
Konstantinos Raptis bayan
Sergiu Nastasa violin
Renato Ripo violoncello
Stella Gadedi flute
Nikos Guinos clarinet
Sopcratis Anthis trumpet
Spyros Kazianis bassoon
Vangelis Skouras French horn
Aris Dimitriadis mandolin
Christos Tsiamoulis ney
Panos Dimitrakopoulos kanonaki
Andreas Katsiyiannis santouri
Andreas Papas bendir, daouli
Eleni Karaindrou piano
Hellenic Radio and Television Choir
Antonis Kontogeorgiou choirmaster
Camerata Orchestra
Alexandros Myrat conductor
Recorded live March 27, 2005 at Megaron (Hall of the Friends of Music), Athens
Engineers: Nikos Espialidis, Andreas Mandopoulos, and Bobby Blazoudakis
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“What am I, if not a collector of vanished gazes?”
–Theo Angelopoulos, Ulysses’ Gaze

Elegy of the Uprooting condenses two decades of work by Eleni Karaindrou into what the Greek composer calls a “scenic cantata.” This is no mere retrospective, but a gravid musical statement in which the listener’s soul is carefully unfolded to reveal the sounds hidden within. Excerpting 13 scores for film and stage, this concert pulls out the red threads running through Karaindrou’s non-diegetic oeuvre with stunning video and audio clarity.

Of the 110 musicians seen in this live DVD—including an orchestra, chorus, and ensemble of traditional instruments—many of the soloists have been working with Karaindrou for many years, and their dedication shows. Of note are…

Vangelis Christopoulos on oboe:

Socratis Sinopoulos on the Constantinople lyra/Maria Bildea on harp:

Konstantinos Raptis on the bayan:

Vangelis Skouras on French horn:

Aris Dimitriadis on mandolin:

Panos Dimitrakopoulos on kanonaki/Christos Tsiamoulis on ney:

and the composer herself at the piano:

Much of the music will be familiar to ECM enthusiasts: Ulysses’ Gaze, The Suspended Step of the Stork, Eternity and a Day, The Weeping Meadow, and Euripedes Trojan Women feature heavily in this wide-ranging program, with the latter two in particular providing a larger thematic framework. Lesser known works such as the stunning Rosa’s Aria—from the film by Christoforos Christofis and reinterpreted here with total corporeal commitment by the legendary Maria Farantouri—should excite veteran and new listeners alike.

The staging was overseen by Manfred Eicher and is accordingly minimal. A large screen behind the musicians displays artfully arranged stills and clips from Angelopoulos’s films, as well as some computer generated imagery of swaying reeds, falling rain, and shooting flames.

It’s a joy and a privilege to see such a synergistic group of musicians banding together to share such doleful beauty, and to see the physical process of it all, the sheer assembly of talent and logistics required in putting together such a performance.

In all this rhetoric lately of carbon footprints and the detrimental impact of human activity on the physical environment, it’s easy to forget that our creativity often leaves the most “eco-friendly” impressions. Karaindrou has created for the world a statement without tangible shape, a visceral wave of melancholy into which we may project a semblance of ourselves. Like the water that figures so prominently in Angelopoulos’s films, her music ebbs and flows in spite of our foibles.

Elegy of the Uprooting is also available in this 2-CD set. I highly recommend both, for each is its own experience.

Kim Kashkashian: Neharót (ECM New Series 2065)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Neharót

Kim Kashkashian viola
Münchener Kammerorchester
Alexander Liebreich conductor
Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Gil Rose conductor
Kuss Quartett
Recorded between 2006 and 2008 in the USA, Poland, and Germany
Engineers: Peter Laenger, Lech Dudzik, Gabriela Blicharz, Joel Gordon, John Newton, Blanton Alspaugh
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Neharót Neharót (2006/7) for viola solo, accordion, percussion, two string ensembles and tape by Israeli composer Betty Olivero opens a haunting album from violist Kim Kashkashian. It is a slow awakening—not into light, but into twilight—and swells with the wounds of fresh tragedy. Kashkashian arrives as if by wind and with the raw imperfection of an unpreened bird. The tone and feeling are not unlike that of John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil at its tensest moments. The strings roil like turgid waters in which eddy the relics of an unseen war. Two women’s voices reach into the storm with tendrils of mimicry. This call and response blossoms into a profound moment of rupture, at which point the orchestra and percussion spill over one another. Fragments of the audible past come through as snatches of Monteverdi quoted from his Orpheus and eighth book of madrigals. These recycled motifs are like a dream that quickly consumes itself before waking again. The viola rises in their place, seeming to run around frantically in search of the voices that so enlivened it. When they are nowhere to be found, the outcast wallows in the hopes that nightfall will be her cloak. But then the voices come back: the viola prostrates itself, fearing to expend the ancestral legacy it breathes. It wants nothing more than to offer gratitude, but can only contort itself into a vowel of need.

After such a profoundly draining journey, the three Armenian selections that follow are a welcome rest, though one not without its internal travels. Tigran Mansurian gives us his Tagh for the Funeral of the Lord for viola and percussion, Three Arias (Sung out the window facing Mount Ararat) (2008), and Oror, a lullaby by Komitas (1869-1935) arranged and performed here by Mansurian at the piano. The “tagh” is an ancient Armenian song, and Mansurian’s breathes with organic vitality. Its lament echoes across cold plains, the percussion a mere accent to the viola-driven melody. The Three Arias are essentially a series of orchestral swells with viola interludes, an audio essay of the music’s own origins and possible futures. The viola acts like a lens over a film sheet, trying to find the one picture that most clearly articulates something that can only be remembered through image, but that can only be musically described. The viola struggles with an unseen force in spite of its orchestral inheritance. A dazzling ending is made all the more so for the effort required of us to get there. And this is precisely what the piece is about: seeking out those moments that, in a life remembered, also define that life most clearly. Mansurian’s interludes are like the passage between two days, a conduit between continents and cultures, a subtle diaspora of sound.

And so, by the time we return to Israel in Eitan Steinberg’s Rava Deravin (2003) for viola and string quartet (the tile means “Favor of Favors”), we feel more fully prepared for any and all emotional obstacles. The piece was originally scored for voice and a mixed chamber ensemble, but was transcribed as the current version at Kashkashian’s behest; hence the accordion-like opening harmonics that speak of bellowed breath. Yet even before the music begins, the instrumentation tells us so much about what we are about to hear. We know the viola soloist has a second self, a ghost presence amid its accompanying quartet, and yet here it is at once extracted and embedded in its periphery, singing with its own voice even while knowing it has been long aligned with the larger organism behind it. When the quartet takes a more syncopated stance, we never lose sight of the abstract milieu in which it is situated. The viola must resign itself to self-division, and toward the end it squeals and scatters snake-like through tall grasses of harmonics. The music dies not by lowering itself in volume, but by pushing us away so gradually that by the time we notice the music has gone, we are already too far away to catch up with it.

Were the orchestra to be analogized as body, the viola would most certainly be the throat, for the vibrations of song rattle its chambers more than those of any other. In this respect, Kashkashian has given more lucid breath to this recording than to any other she has made. She only seems to get better with every draw of her bow, and her dedication once again remains paramount. This is a cohesive program of some of the most original music to come out of ECM in a long time. Not to be missed.

Sarah Leonard/Christopher Bowers-Broadbent: Górecki/Satie/Milhaud/Bryars (ECM New Series 1495)

| Tyran Grillo

Górecki/Satie/Milhaud/Bryars

Sarah Leonard soprano
Christopher Bowers-Broadbent organ
Recorded June 1992, Hofkirche Luzern
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Not many record labels would produce, let alone conceive of, an album consisting mainly of works for soprano and organ. I am glad to say that ECM did not back away from such a challenge, and in the process left one of its most indelible musical marks on the classical landscape. Of the four composers represented here Bryars is the only ECM mainstay, but he is in fine company indeed.

Henryk Górecki’s O Domina Nostra (1982-1985/90), conceived as an apostrophe to the Black Madonna of Jasna Góra, emerges from and recedes into a profound stasis. An earthly low pedal D on the organ is paired with triads descending from the cosmos, leaving us caught in the middle. Our only guide is the bare text and the voice that articulates it:

O Domina nostra
Claromontana
Victoriosa
Regina nostra Maria
Sancta Maria ora pro nobis

Oh, our Lady
Of the Bright Mount,
Victorious
Our Queen, Mary
Holy Mary, pray for us

Amid this murky swirl a soprano scours her lowest range, trying to pull herself from the depths of some unnamable crisis. She proclaims her joy in faith, as if each new utterance might touch a hope that its predecessors failed to reach. She returns to the opening invocation, closing on a supplicative “O Domina.”

The epic Messe des Pauvres (1895), or Mass for the Poor, by Erik Satie is, like much of the composer’s paradoxical output, both representative of the eclecticism for which he is known and something of an anomaly. According to Wilfrid Mellers’s liner notes, early on in his compositional career Satie “sought to reintegrate the disintegrated materials of tradition by juxtaposing fragments of melody and chord-sequences without obvious relation to one another or to development.” Thus do we get the Messes des Pauvres, a piece rooted in plainchant, sans the theological overload such a comparison might imply. Normally the organ is accompanied by unison voices, but forgoes them here. The piece rarely lingers, as if the four limbs required of its performance were seeking a point of unity through which to gain access to something far more mystical. Yet the piece also questions the mystical, and with a levity that indulges our skepticism. The music is wrought with such beautiful indecisiveness that moments of resolution seem intrusive. Only when the organ bares its teeth midway through is the power of this indecision fully realized. The heavy feet of an overarching sarcastic glory trample even the fluted reverie that follows.

The diptych of miniatures that is Darius Milhaud’s Prélude I/II (1942) is charmingly rustic and prepares us for the masterpiece that awaits us. The lead melodies are like the ramblings of shepherds, whose carefree desires can only go so far before the flock disperses beyond containment. The rhythms move like a human figure, as graceful as they are imperfect.

Which brings us to this album’s pièce de résistance: Gavin Bryars’s The Black River (1991). The text, culled from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, is told from the viewpoint of Professor Aronnax as he describes the many underwater life forms that escort the mighty Nautilus through a vast underwater current from which the piece gets its name. Bryars successfully makes of this passage a world unto itself, one not subterranean but submerged. A languid introduction from the organ opens our ears to the soprano’s entrance as she propels herself through a subdued tour de force of intonation, melody, and atmosphere. The melody sustains itself through a constantly shifting mosaic of moods, in which recapitulation is found only in the organ at the end.

Sarah Leonard sings with rare beauty, and her rich voice is laced with a nasal quality that burrows into the very marrow of the listener’s bones. Her high note in The Black River sends shivers down the spine (and do keep an ear out for the haunting overtone she unwittingly produces at the 13:18 mark in the same piece). Christopher Bowers-Broadbent is the perfect foil, eliciting from the organ a delicacy I have heard nowhere else. This will always be one of my most beloved New Series recordings.

<< Messiaen: Méditations Sur Le Mystère De La Sainte Trinité (ECM 1494 NS)
>> Aparis: Despite the fire-fighters’ efforts… (ECM 1496)

Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Bücher I & II – Jarrett (ECM New Series 1362/63 & 1433/34)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett never ceases to astound me: not because of his chameleonic ability to shift between jazz and classical music, but by the sheer passion and commitment he brings to both. On these recordings of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Jarrett proves himself to be a more than consummate classical performer. That being said, I don’t think Jarrett is out to “prove” anything here. Neither does he seem interested in laying to rest—despite critiquing others’ approaches, particularly Glenn Gould’s, in his liner notes—the ongoing debate of authenticity regarding the interpretation of Bach (and if you ask me, perhaps not even Bach ever played Bach “authentically,” tailoring as he did his keys and tempi to the occasion). What Jarrett does seem interested in is taking his ego out of the equation as much as possible. And while one cannot, of course, completely disavow a performer’s presence, this presence can be intrusive and overblown all the same. For what it’s worth, Jarrett toes the line between restraint and levity, humbly approaching the music from below rather than attacking it from above. Essentially a series of preludes and fugues written for keyboard students and enthusiasts, The Well-Tempered Clavier consists of generally short pieces, each its own microcosm of energy and ideas. Jarrett opts for a no-frills approach, though he has made a bold decision in recording the first book on piano and the second on harpsichord. Nevertheless, whatever novelty there is of “Jarrett playing Bach” wears off quickly, allowing the listener to focus on the music rather than dissect the performance thereof. Quite simply, this is a singular talent playing music by a singular composer.

ECM 1362_63

Johann Sebastian Bach
Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Buch I (ECM New Series 1362/63)

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded February 1987
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Book I opens with one of the most significant musical utterances of the Bach catalogue: the Prelude and Fugue in C major (Gould’s recording of which was deployed into space on the Voyager Golden Record). Jarrett plays these with a strong sense of forward motion that sets the tone for a beautifully articulated journey through every major and minor key of the chromatic scale. Jarrett excels in the faster movements, of which notable examples are the G major and B-flat major Preludes, as well as the Fugue in E minor. But he shows an equal aptitude for those quieter moments, able to switch from sprightly (Prelude and Fugue in F major) to ponderous (Prelude and Fugue in F minor) in one fell swoop. Other gems in the latter vein include the C-sharp major Prelude, to which Jarrett brings a flowing pace that is fast enough to excite while also allowing the notes to breathe; the languid C-sharp minor Fugue; the sensitively handled E-flat major Fugue; the E-flat minor Prelude with its dexterous simplicity and emotive ritard; and the intimate A-flat major Fugue. Throughout Book I, Jarrett revels in his love for rhythm and a relatively bare aesthetic. The sound quality is accordingly muted, the piano recorded as if it were a harpsichord. Jarrett takes time with his trills, and while some might disagree with his pedal choices, for the most part they add a welcome splash of color.

<< Keith Jarrett Trio: Still Live (ECM 1360/61)
>> Tamia/Pierre Favre: de la nuit … le jour (ECM 1364 NS)

… . …

ECM 1433_34

Johann Sebastian Bach
Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Buch II (ECM New Series 1433/34)

Keith Jarrett harpsichord
Recorded May 1990
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Book II ushers in an entirely different sound when the piano is abandoned for harpsichord. Jarrett’s choice to do so may seem arbitrary, but I like to think it was more deeply thought out. On the surface Book I is more elegiac and perhaps therefore amenable to a pianistic performance. Book II, however, offers more in the way of the grinding syncopations and dance-like diversions more often associated with the instrument for which it was written. Where the piano seems an expansive medium, the harpsichord is a supremely tactile one that arrests us with its plucked immediacy, and the relay from one to the other gives us the luxury of both worlds, as it were. From the dazzling C-sharp major Prelude to the lush F minor Fugue, Book II is replete with gorgeous moments. The C-sharp minor Fugue is another wonderfully syncopated affair with jarring half-turns and unexpected phrasing. The harpsichord holds its own here in a variety of moods, ranging from vivacious (Prelude in D minor) and stately (E-flat major and A minor Fugues) to perpetual (E minor and A major Fugues,; Prelude in G major) and resplendent (Fugue in G major), while the final B minor Fugue caps things off with a rousing flourish.

<< Anouar Brahem: Barzakh (ECM 1432)
>> Arild Andersen: Sagn (ECM 1435)

… . …

At every moment during the 4+ hours it takes to get through The Well-Tempered Clavier, Jarrett allows the music into his heart and releases it verbatim. He exercises little dominance over the score and follows it as closely as he can. Where some interpreters turn these purely didactic exercises into showpieces, Jarrett lets them stretch their limbs and remain comfortable where they are. Oddly enough, the fact that Jarrett had already been playing Bach for 22 years before recording Book I, and the harpsichord for nine before recording Book II, has done little to staunch the flood of insults thrown his way for even attempting such a feat. Yet I find much of the criticism leveled against him to be rather self-defeating. “He’s so pretentious,” people say, “trying to establish himself as a serious classical pianist when everyone knows he’s a jazz musician,” but then in the same breath call him out for not taking a more avant-garde approach to the canon. What these hypocrisies fail to acknowledge is the kindred spirit Jarrett brings to one of the most monumental works in Western art music. We do well to remember that Bach was also a master of improvisation and that his skills as such were at the heart of his comparably prolific output. I, for one, have heard many recordings of The Well-Tempered Clavier, and would never resort to calling any of them bad, uninspired, or somehow incorrect, for what and where is the “original” interpretation to which they might be compared? Regardless of whether or not one cares for what Jarrett has done with Bach, his utter devotion to the music at hand reduces the debate to a simple matter of preference over quality. And so, when Jarrett proclaims that “This music doesn’t need my help,” I propose that we take him seriously. What this music does need is our help, which we can offer by setting aside our own pretensions and listening with open minds.

Werner Pirchner: EU (ECM New Series 1314/15)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1314_15

Werner Pirchner
EU

Werner Pirchner accordion, bass-vibes, voice
Ernst Kovacic solo-violine
Kurt Neuhauser cathedral organ
The Vienna Wind Soloists
Vienna Brass Quintet Prisma
Recorded 1984-1986, Tonstudio Ströher, Innsbruck; Vienna; Tirol; Lend
Engineer: Hanno Ströher
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Werner Pirchner (1940-2001) is not a name likely to be well known outside of his native Austria. A multi-instrumentalist with strong jazz roots, Pirchner devoted much energy in the latter part of his life to strict composition, leaving behind an oeuvre of 130 works. This double album, one of the earliest in ECM’s New Series, is a delightful potpourri and a charming record of a unique musical career.

The Sonate Vom Rauhen Leben (Sonata of a Harsh Life) features the composer on the accordion. The music is mysterious, like folk music from afar. Pirchner’s playing is elegiac, highly descriptive, and paints with dense strokes. Loneliness mounts with each section, as if the music were resigned to live and die for itself. Streichquartett Für Bläserquintett (String Quartet for Wind Quintet) balances playful abstraction with comic determination, harrumphing its way through a slideshow of waltzes and tongue-in-cheek adventures. All the more satirical given that Pirchner uses a Tyrolean slave song as its thematic core. The music sounds like a wind section without orchestra, so vast is its implied periphery. Next is Good News From The Ziller Valley, a three-part jig for solo violin that abounds in microtonal harmonies. This is followed by the pointillist Kammer-Symphonie “Soirée Tyrolienne”, a programmatic exposition that sounds like it belongs in a ballet or stage production. Do You Know Emperor Joe is a series of delightfully syncopated vignettes for brass ensemble. This pieces bears its dedication to “Joseph II., the only monarch with the nickname ‘Menschenfreund’ and to Fritz v. Herzmanovsky-Orlando, author of ‘Kaiser Joseph and the Station-Master’s Daughter.’” The audience in this live recording is in stitches and seems to be enjoying itself thoroughly, making us wonder what we missed by not having been there. The mood changes with Two War-& Peace-Choirs, the first of which sounds like something out of Meredith Monk’s vocal world, while the second revels more overtly in the feel of its text—especially in its trilled Rs—and ends with a humorous “Amen” from a deep bass. This is appropriately followed by Kleine Messe Um “C” Für Den Lieben Gott, a dirge for solo organ that seems to pick up on a grander scale where the accordion left off at the album’s intimate beginnings. We end with the brilliant Solo Sonata for Bass-Vibes, played to perfection again by our composer.

It’s hard to know what of make of EU. On the one hand it’s a fascinating cross-section of a very idiosyncratic composer. Pirchner’s innovative approach is apparent at every turn and escorts his listeners through an amusement park of moods. On the other hand some of the pieces do drag on a bit, making sustained interest an occasional issue. Pirchner embodies a unique paradox: where some minimalist composers take repetitive motives and make them sound highly varied, he somehow takes a wide variety of musical elements and makes them sound repetitive. At its best moments Pirchner’s music is uninhibited and just plain fun; at its worst it feels ultimately insubstantial, like an afternoon nap cut short. That being said, the music is also fraught with pauses, leaving much time for listeners to ponder the implications of what they’re hearing. Pirchner’s skills are particularly obvious in the shorter pieces, his bass-vibes sonata the clear standout in this regard. Part III of the selfsame sonata is a stroke of genius matched by an equal level of performance. And speaking of performance, the musicianship, tuning, and recording quality throughout are positively superb.

As I bask in the whimsy of EU for this review, a summer thunderstorm unleashes its ominous fury over my roof, providing a stark contrast to the delightful sounds in my ears. This seems like just the sort of irony that Pirchner would appreciate, one that milks the unpredictability of life for all it’s worth and says in response, “Yeah, I can work with that.”

Incidentally, for a wonderful rumination on Pirchner and his music, check out Stephen Smoliar’s post at The Rehearsal Studio.

<< Miroslav Vitous: Emergence (ECM 1312)
>> Kim Kashkashian/Robert Levin: Elegies (ECM 1316 NS)

Gavin Bryars: After the Requiem (ECM New Series 1424)

| Tyran Grillo

Gavin Bryars
After the Requiem

Bill Frisell electric guitar
Alexander Balanescu violin, viola
Kate Musker viola
Tony Hinnigan cello
Roger Heaton clarinet, bass clarinet
Dave Smith tenor horn, piano
Gavin Bryars bass
Martin Allen percussion
Simon Limbrick percussion
Evan Parker soprano saxophone
Stan Sulzmann soprano saxophone
Ray Warleigh alto saxophone
Julian Argüelles baritone saxohpone
Recorded September 1990, Rainbow Studio, Oslo and CTS Studio, London
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Stepping into the territory of Gavin Bryars is like coming home, so familiar are the morphemes with which he composes his musical language. One of the most significant recordings in the Bryars catalogue, this disc offers a fine condensation of his spirited and nostalgic sensibilities.

After the Requiem dates from 1990 and follows his Cadman Requiem of the previous year. After completing the latter, which was written for the Hilliard Ensemble in memory of Bryars’s friend Bill Cadman, Manfred Eicher suggested that Bryars spin an instrumental postlude from the requiem’s latent fibers, thus giving us the title piece of this brooding and gorgeous album. Scored for two violas, cello, and electric guitar, After the Requiem offers a distinct take on the state of mourning it so affectionately recreates. Like the gravelly strings that open the piece, the mood is raw and unbounded. Frisell’s guitar sears the darkness like the northern lights with a slow and lustrous fire, bleeding spectral life force into the evening sky. The strings gather momentum, as if to coax the guitar toward the horizon, chasing the memory of an afternoon that can no longer be recovered. Frisell plays as if he were bowing the guitar, drawing out an amplified sustenance that nourishes the vocal hunger of his accompaniment. Where the strings seem to mimic voices, the guitar mimics the strings, ad infinitum. The piece slows about midway through, burrowing even deeper into contemplative soil, at which point Frisell wrenches out some grinding low tones from the lower register of his axe. What would be but one voice lost in a power chord more forcefully played rings here with the humility of supplication. Before long the guitar lets out more substantial tones and shifts to an aerial shot of the same landscape. The earth recedes, leading into the most beautiful moment of the piece, during which the guitar drops from a soaring high note. One can hear, indeed almost taste, the meticulous care that went into this performance. The music fades, as if sending off a spirit to a realm where life continues of its own accord. The continuity between instruments here is such that there are almost no audible gaps between them. And while all the musicians play with consummate grace, Frisell is nothing short of astonishing. Despite the polished feel of the piece it was the result, as Bryars makes clear in his recording diary, of much refinement and experimentation on Frisell’s part, working closely with the composer to achieve the ideal effect.

The Old Tower of Löbenicht. This piece, composed in 1986, is the early version of an instrumental interlude for a yet-to-be-realized opera adapted from Thomas DeQuincey’s The Last Days of Immanuel Kant. Says Bryars, “It occurs at a point in the opera where Kant is disturbed at the way in which growing poplar trees have obscured the view of a distant tower which ‘he could not be said properly to see…but (which) rested upon his eye as distant music on the ear—obscurely, or but half revealed to the consciousness.’” The music is meant to evoke Kant’s divided response to the tower’s presence and obfuscation, hence the nocturnal bass clarinet and ominous bells that dominate the first half. The music moves like a barge through ice flows. Its signals ring across the waters to the mainland, traversing coastline, steppes, mountainous terrain, barren fields, contaminated pools. A solemn piano appears with a rhythmic and minimal motif, rocking between two-part harmonies, as Balanescu solos beautifully on violin, at times doubled by Roger Heaton on bass clarinet. This progression is landmarked by a plucked bass and vibraphone. Bryars weaves a few audible strands of light into the otherwise requisite darkness, where constellations are but a memory lost to annals of history. The music very much resembles the trajectory of Glorious Hill, another Bryars masterpiece. The sheer clarity of Balanescu’s tone, at once thin and rich with melodic substance, is the binding thread. As the piece ends, a marimba flutters like butterfly wings in and out of our sonic purview, leaving behind a litany of bells while a bass clarinet scrapes the bottom of its available registers.

Alaric I or II (1989) is scored for two soprano saxophones, one alto, and one baritone. “The title,” Bryars tells us, “comes from the name of the mountain, Mount Alaric, in South West France, opposite the Chateau where I spent the summer [composing this piece]. No-one seemed to know which of the two ‘King Alarics’ the name referred to.” Alaric I or II is an exercise in virtuosity, requiring of the players a variety of techniques, including long bouts of circular breathing and controlled multiphonics. As with the rest of the album, this piece builds slowly yet with purpose. After a series of languid dissonant clusters the alto sax sketches a theme in its haunting surroundings. Suddenly, the two soprano saxes launch into a rhythmic arpeggio, lending a Philip Glassian flavor to the palette. Soon this thins out in a more contemplative air, pausing on a resolved chord, further darkened and reformed into a new beginning. Another rhythmic section begins as the baritone sax raises its throaty call. From this point a steady energy is maintained by at least one instrument as the others play over or around it: one lead is immediately switched off for another, typically between alto and soprano. An evocative fluttering technique signals a close as the quartet subsides into quiet agreement, hermetically sealed and indistinguishable from the rest of the rocky cove. The musicianship here is superb, the saxophonic sound rendered with precision. At times this piece shares an affinity with the brief saxophone quartet in Michael Nyman’s soundtrack for The Piano and would be equally suited for some incidental purpose. Although this is a fairly minimal piece, it evokes a range of atmospheres and images. Its energy moves in peaks and valleys, opening the earth’s bindings just a little further to smell its ink-blotted pages. It’s like a captain’s log floating unseen in the wake of shipwreck, plowing the waves for days before the water turns it into invisible molecules.

Allegrasco (1983) is an “operatic paraphrase” of Bryars’s first opera Medea. It is another larger ensemble piece that opens humbly with piano and clarinet. Brooding strings wrap their arms around the central melody. A bell intones; the strings grow louder; the clarinet snakes its way around like a loose scarf caught in a strong but silent wind. A playful passage ensues, a dance in a silent film. The guitar grows into a more supportive voice, dropping remnants of the album’s title piece into this limpid pool. Allegrasco is a series of finely wrought vignettes, each turning like a musical waterwheel. The music is never still, as if at the whim of an unseen narrative force. We graze the shoreline with each musical gesture, sometimes sinking, sometimes floating.

Bryars’s music practically begs for imagery, if only the listener’s own. It is corroded, antique, and accrues value with age. One hears it anew every time, for it holds a world of possibility.

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