ECM New Series Releases

Christian Reiner: Pier Paolo Pasolini – Land der Arbeit (ECM New Series 2768)

| Tyran Grillo

Christian Reiner
Pier Paolo Pasolini: Land der Arbeit

Christian Reiner reciter
Recorded 2021/22
Garnison7, Wien (2, 4, 5, 8)
Recording engineer: Martin Siewert
Innenhofstudios, Wien (1, 3, 6, 7)
Recording engineer: René Kornfeld
Mastering at MSM Studio, München
Engineer: Christoph Stickel
Cover drawing: Lilo Rinkens, “Arabische Pietà”
Produced by Wolf Wondratschek and Manfred Eicher
An ECM and Joint Galactical Company Production
Release date: November 18, 2022

He throws the bird in his hand into the fire,
takes the camera and films what everyone,
whether they like it or not, understands: the
animal that with its wings always ignites the
fire in which it burns.
–from “Pasolini” by Wolf Wondratschek

In 2020, the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase hosted an exhibition titled Pier Paolo Pasolini: Subversive Prophet. Although more widely known stateside as a filmmaker, the 20th-century (anti-)renaissance man who died in 1975 at the age of 53 was also a prolific poet, one who railed against the establishment writ large and all its material fetishes. And so, perhaps it would be more accurate to call him a prophet of subversion who treated written words much like characters in his cinema: namely, as ciphers for human sin.

The present album, a collaboration between poet Wolf Wondratschek, producer Manfred Eicher, and actor Christian Reiner, builds on previous ECM New Series releases featuring the works of Joseph Brodsky and Friedrich Hölderlin with equal acuity. In this instance, the trio zooms in on some of Pasolini’s most scathing sociopolitical insights in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth year. But as Wondratschek writes in his accompanying liner notes, Pasolini was someone who reveled in every band of the spectrum: “He wanted to celebrate the festival of life, the flower of passion, the flower of play, and finally, as an extreme action, the flower of death, his death.” He goes on to describe the challenges of deciding not only what to include in the span of a single compact disc but also how to bring it across verbally in a language not originally its own (all of Pasolini’s texts are read here in German translation). Thus, he wonders, “How do you go from admirer to brother of a poet?” A fair question that deserves as robust an answer as those put forth by the pasticheur of the hour.

The album’s title piece is the last stop in his collection, The Ashes of Gramsci, in which the peasants of Southern Italy toil not to live but as a means of sustaining their death. It begins innocently enough, describing the eponymous Land of Work (“Terra di Lavoro” in the original Italian) as a swath of roaming buffalo, the occasional farmhouse, and dotted crops. But as the camera zooms in on the details, a certain melancholy begins to take hold. Once humans enter the picture, we see the depravity of man come into focus:

If you look at their eyes, their hands,
a pitiful blush on their cheekbones,
where their soul, their enemy, is revealed.

Thus, the self is revealed to be one’s greatest adversary (a leitmotif in all his work, whether on page or screen). As the verses proceed, the peasants are likened to various domesticated animals, becoming increasingly less human the more they labor. The conditions are so poor that even the potential wonders of a newborn life are undermined by the observation that whatever might seem new to the young is at once tired to the old. Reiner reads with a varied cadence, at one moment flowing through the language, taking a pregnant pause the next, letting the after-effects of his speech linger in the air. The recording strips his voice of space so that it hangs from a thread of its own making.

Next is a letter written in 1963 to fellow poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. In it, the self-styled “Catholic Marxist” attempts to bypass their intellectual aneurysms amid the broader global maelstrom to which they were both staunch intellectual observers. It’s also a tense negotiation between Pasolini’s adoration for Pope John XXIII (to whom he dedicated his film, The Gospel According to Matthew) and the looming threat of all-out nuclear war (indicated by his reference to Nikita Krushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis).

While the title of “To the Prince” (1958) might imply a kindred slant, it’s more of an inward examination of youth’s fleeting nature, contrasted with the world’s immutability through the lens of an artist wrestling with apathy (“I am no happier, whether enjoying or suffering”). Appropriately, Reiner inflects the poem with relative brightness, holding it higher in the throat, not quite looking the listener in the eye. If it sounds lyrical at all, that may be one reason it was set to music by the band Alice in 2003.

“It’s so hard to say in a son’s words what I’m so little like in my heart.” So begins a brief yet densely packed slice of heartbreak: “Prayer to My Mother.” Written in 1962, it reveals that growing up amid unconditional love and understanding was what made him such a creature of anguish and honed his “love of bodies without souls” as a slave to time. This balance between the devotional and the deviant (his sexual proclivities on subtle yet obvious display here) is palpable.

A mysterious interlude then comes in the form of “Große Vögel, kleine Vögel” (The Hawks and the Sparrows), after Pasolini’s neorealist film of the same name from 1966. Instead of words, it draws a thread of bird song, seemingly replicated by sped-up whistling, à la Marcus Coates’s Dawn Chorus. This is followed by “When the classical world will be exhausted,” as quoted from Nico Naldini’s book, Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Life, which expresses Pasolini’s disillusionment with nature in a world destined to destroy it—a loss from which we will never recover.

All of this feels like small steps toward the giant leap of “Patmos,” a long poem from 1969 that was first published in the October/December issue of the magazine Nuovi Argomenti. The title references the island where John the Apostle was exiled and where God revealed to him what is known today as the Book of Revelation. After opening with this biblical foundation, it transitions into a list of victims of the Piazza Fontana bombing of December 12, 1969, and finally to a political analysis of then-Italian President Giuseppe Saragat. Reiner emotes with the most somber attention to detail, allowing the mood to settle on its own terms.

A poem by Wondratschek himself, “Am Quai von Siracusa” (1980), brings us to a close. With a stark insight that recalls the acuity of Paul Celan (whose works were set to music by Giya Kancheli on my favorite ECM New Series release, EXIL), it offers a bleak yet profound meditation on entropy:

The lion’s teeth are already rotten.
The cats give birth in empty palaces. And
a crack runs through the Madonna’s smile.

Thus, in these readings, we hear the fatigue of the encounter, of cycling one’s flesh through the ringer of Pasolini’s barbed words, and coming out the other side lacerated but all the more in tune with the fragility of life. Like my attempts to wade through Italian poetry by way of German on this spoken-word recording, we are forced to pick up whatever pieces we can find along the way, in the hopes of having a coherent narrative to show for it when all is said and done.

Signum Quartett: A Dark Flaring (ECM New Series 2787)

| Tyran Grillo

Signum Quartett
A Dark Flaring

Signum Quartett
Florian Donderer violin
Annette Walther violin
Xandi van Dijk viola
Thomas Schmitz violoncello
Recorded March 2022, Sendesaal Bremen
Engineer: Christoph Franke
Design: Sascha Kleis
An ECM Production
Release date: July 18, 2025

A Dark Flaring marks the second ECM New Series appearance of the Signum Quartett, following their renditions of Erkki-Sven Tüür’s chamber music on 2020’s Lost Prayers. With an even more evocative title through which to guide our listening, they present a singular program of selections from South Africa. In her liner notes, journalist and music critic Shirley Apthorp sets the stage for us most vividly:

“In both Xhosa and Zulu tradition, a healthy relationship with your ancestors is a prerequisite for wellbeing in the present; modern psychology is still catching up with much of what older cultures have known for centuries. While it remains a challenge to find a common thread between South Africa’s many and diverse cultures, this awareness could be said to knit together both the rainbow nation’s populace and the works on this recording.”

And in Komeng (2002), by Mokale Koapeng (b. 1963), we begin to understand just how wide the gap between mind and body can be. The piece takes its inspiration from “Umyeyezelo,” a celebratory song by Thembu musician Nofinishi Dywili (1928-2002). Dywili was a master of the uhadi, a single-stringed bow played with a stick akin to the Brazilian berimbau (an effect replicated here con legno). The song’s title means “ululation” and refers to a Xhosa coming-of-age ritual, the circular nature of which is organically expressed in the music’s structure. A play of sunlight on a child’s face, a swaying reed, a tree standing tall on the horizon: images of past and future comingle in the present, rendering such divisions of time meaningful beyond measure (to say they do away with them would be to undermine the music’s committed sense of time). A rocking motion in the cello, fragile pizzicato, and other liminal gestures from the higher strings add vital details.

Next is (rage) rage against the (2018) by Matthijs van Dijk (b. 1983), which begins innocently enough before imploding. It is directly connected to loss (the composer having lost his mother when he was 18) and personal trauma, paying homage to both the Dylan Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and the band Rage Against the Machine. Toeing the line between fury and dark resignation, it exploits the limits of the string quartet’s capacity for depth and breadth. Stomping feet add necessary punctuation. The piercing sirens of its final act are thrilling, like a rock song being fed through the meat grinder of Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima until the bleeding slows to a trickle. A subliminal drone woven into the ending gives hope of a life beyond the chaos.

From the newest to one of the oldest of the program, we switch to the Five Elegies for String Quartet (1940-41) of Arnold van Wyk (1916-1983), who, in the late 1930s, became the first South African composer to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He also knew loss, having suffered the death of his mother and oldest sister by age 17. Despite being his first compositions for string quartet, these elegies immediately evoke Shostakovich in their fiercely shaded lyricism and were among a handful of early works that earned him great renown in his day. The balance of fluidity and razor-sharp insight is immediately apparent in his examination of war. The lively second movement, marked Allegro feroce, grabs the hem of joy but never manages to defrock the dark zeitgeist that flaunts it. The central Adagio is the mournful heart of it all, a forlorn viola solo against a backdrop of aftereffect: bomb smoke, fire ash, and tear stains. Only toward the end does the cello answer the call as if from the grave. And in the final movement, we encounter the most lyrical motifs, which build into a Beethovenian drama before ending in a near whisper.

Péter Louis van Dijk (b. 1953) is the father of Xandi van Dijk, violist of the Signum Quartett. His iinyembezi (2000) draws from John Dowland’s “Flow My Tears” (1596), as indicated by the Xhosa title (meaning “tears”), refracting the theme until it becomes a chain of half-starts and unrequited remorse. At one point, pizzicato playing evokes the mbira (African thumb piano), and the musicians even tap their instruments in kind. Over the course of 16 and a half minutes, it traverses continents’ worth of terrain, giving itself over to jubilation but always falling back into a bed of tentative truth claims. Despite the expressive depth at hand, it draws an ever-tighter circle of influence around itself until, like an ouroboros, it must stop just shy of self-extinction. 

Robert Fokkens (b. 1975), who also studied at the Royal Academy of Music and has lived in the UK ever since, gives us Glimpses of a half-forgotten future (2012). An elegy to deaths in his own life, it too evokes the uhadi but bears further imprints of Cage, Feldman, Bach, and the French spectralists. Spaced out in three movements, the second of which leaps as if in an attempt to escape the clutches of grief, it finishes with microtonal contemplation, seemingly at odds with its surroundings.

The finale is an astonishing discovery in the form of the Quartet for Strings (1939) by Priaulx Rainier (1903-1986), another Royal Academy of Music graduate who studied with Nadia Boulanger, among others. Inspired by the music she grew up with in Zululand, she stayed on at the Academy as a professor of composition. Being a relatively early work, the Quartet for Strings eschews some of the technical challenges that would beset much of her later pieces, but it’s no less challenging for its emotional demands. Its opening movement, for one, teeters between lyricism and skepticism—or, if you will, between looking us straight in the eye and askance—while the trembling second movement dances at the edges of a fading memory. The third movement, marked Andante tranquillo, makes artful use of pizzicato cello and moves in flowing chords attached at the hip. Finally, a spirited Presto chews hard until it reaches bone in the viola. Sliding strings share the air with muted harmonics, a textural quality that makes me wonder whether she didn’t make an impression on composers like Boucourechliev later on.

If A Dark Flaring has a soul partner there in the universe, it is the Kronos Quartet’s seminal Pieces of Africa from 1992. If you admire that album as much as I do, then you’ll find plenty to savor in this one as well. Although born of a different stripe and spirit, it holds equally deep roots in its hands and refuses to let go of them from start to finish.

Danish String Quartet: Keel Road (ECM New Series 2785)

| Tyran Grillo

Danish String Quartet
Keel Road

Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen violin
Frederik Øland violin
Asbjørn Nørgaard viola
Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin violoncello
Recorded November 2022
The Village Recording Studio, Copenhagen
Engineer: Thomas Vang
Recording supervision: Guido Gorna
Mixed at Bavaria Musikstudios, München
by Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, Guido Gorna, and Michael Hinreiner (engineer)
Cover photo: Nadia F. Romanini
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: August 30, 2024

Folk music and its sensibilities have always been the Danish String Quartet’s guiding star, as they likely were for many of the composers whose works they champion. Over the years, they’ve amassed a collection born of their love for songs of the people, and at last, in Keel Road, we have an ECM New Series program dedicated to this facet of their creative spirit. Through a selection of tunes themed around the North Sea, touching not only Scandinavia but also the Faroe Islands and beyond to Ireland and England, and featuring additional instruments (including spinet, harmonium, bass, and clog fiddle, all played by the DSQ), we are treated to a cornucopia of colors and flavors.

“Mabel Kelly” by Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738) eases us into this sound-world with a simple fable rendered with deep reflection. Other melodies by the legendary Celtic harpist from County Meath trailmark the journey that follows. From the programmatic “Carolan’s Quarrel With The Landlady” (Terry Riley after a little too much Jameson, perhaps?) to “Planxty Kelly,” his penchant for emotionally attuned textures is only heightened in the present renderings, fitting snugly in the company of the English traditionals “Lovely Joan,” in which pizzicato intersections cast a net for dreams, and “As I Walked Out,” where delicacy and sharpness mesh harmoniously.

Denmark gets placed under the microscope of “Pericondine,” a dance that moves with tender force. Despite the clean, modern production, it conveys a raw quality before shifting into the joyful “Fair Isle Jig” by lead violinist Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen. It’s one of a few such mashups, including an old archival recording of “En Sokamger Har Jeg Været” that presages Sørensen’s denouement thereof in “Once A Shoemaker.” Wordless vocals add to the cinematic tint of its imaginativeness. The pinnacle of this form, and of the album as a whole, is the triptych formed by “Marie Louise” (Danish traditional), “The Chat” (co-written by Sørensen and cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin), and “Gale Warning” (Sørensen). Starting with mid-tempo urgency, it rides the rails through mountains in search of something lost before resolving into an oncoming storm.

Even with such gems as “Når Mitt Øye, Trett Av Møye,” in which a harmonium enhances the hymnal qualities of the DSQ’s haunting arrangement, one might hardly tell the past apart from the future as eras intermingle in the studio. A most welcome surprise in this regard is the tune “Stormpolskan” by Ale Carr, who joins on cittern alongside Nikolaj Busk on piano, thus bringing together one of my favorite folk ensembles, Dreamers’ Circus. How wonderful to see them under the ECM banner, doing what they do best.

Erkki-Sven Tüür: Aeris (ECM New Series 2784)

| Tyran Grillo

Erkki-Sven Tüür
Aeris

Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
Olari Elts conductor
German Hornsound
Christoph Eß
Marc Gruber
Stephan Schottstädt
Timo Steininger
Recorded September 2022
Estonian Concert Hall, Tallinn
Engineer: Tammo Sumera
Cover photo: Jan Kricke
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: May 23, 2025

If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.
–Psalm 130:3-4

In the book of 1 Samuel, the Bible records the birth and rise of the eponymous prophet who becomes a great mouthpiece for the God of Israel, only to end up appointing his two sons as judges at a time when such roles were divinely chosen in times of need, not by bloodlines. Seeing how his progeny are swayed by bribery and other improprieties, their subjects seek kingship instead. Although God warns that this will bring about nothing but bigger government and restricted freedoms, they double down on their decision. For that kingly role, he chooses Saul, who eventually crumbles under the weight of so much power—a tale all too familiar to us today and proof that there is indeed nothing new under the sun. And yet, none of this has stopped others from letting their faith speak through art in the face of regimes bent on crushing it underfoot.

A case in point is the Soviet empire, during which the inherent impulse to create was channeled into the service of the state. Echoes of this history are implicitly examined here by Erkki-Sven Tüür on Aeris. In his liner notes for the Estonian composer’s latest ECM New Series program, musicologist Kerri Kotta situates the importance of the symphonic form in the USSR, where the genre came to be upheld as high art. “If the motivation was largely propagandistic,” he writes, “composers still found opportunities in the symphony’s complex but abstract musical semantics to express their worldview and even be covertly critical of the authorities.” Such statements were worlds unto themselves, each a circle of birth, life, contemplation, and death. Tüür’s symphonies, Kotta goes on to say, “are musical journeys towards a wholeness which does not overlook the conflict of its parts but rather glimpses in them a means of moving forward towards greater inclusiveness.” In that respect, we can read his sonic language as one of liberation, to be sure, but also of substantiation. We must regard the sacraments of these offerings reverentially, knowing that they are as ephemeral as the words uttered over them yet as eternal as the resurrection to which they ping our internal compasses. Thus, even in the face of supremacy, music manages to speak more freely than (and in place of) those who compose it.

Tüür’s Symphony No. 10 “ÆRIS” (2021), which forms the centerpiece of this album, may be best read not as an expansion of all that came before in earthly majesty but rather as a reckoning of the shadows lurking within its rafters. Scored for a quartet of French horns and orchestra, it follows nature from creation to unity to dispersion. Opening with the low hum of darkness giving way to light, it separates the water from the firmament and cuts the Earth from its tether, like a newborn from its umbilical cord. A single piccolo sounds the first fowl of the air, and others join it to enliven the scene. Land animals open their eyes and hearts. Forests and gardens tangle into life. Bright slashes of light in the percussion and strings reveal open wounds of sin, while the horns blend even at their most commanding, ever the voices of prophecy. The clopping of a mule brings us into an era of agriculture, while martial tendencies hover all around. Rhythmic cross-cuts and tubular bells speak of the responsibility of kingship we were never meant to handle. Quiet passages of high mist and deeper contemplations funnel into a climax of harmonic flute, stretching out the heavens like a piece of paper on which the names of every believer are written before ending with a shiver and giving way to the inevitable entropy of time.

On either side of this juggernaut are two major orchestral works. Phantasma (2018) is an indirect homage to Beethoven, featuring time-traveling echoes of the Coriolan Overture. It sings in timpani and tremors, a veil through which one can see just enough of reality to believe it’s still there. As a leitmotif, these constitute a darkness that doesn’t oppress so much as float just beyond reach in dreams. As the atmosphere builds, and fluid runs of vibraphone and winds skirt the edges of our perception, climbing strings only make the fall that much harder. The piano haunts the background like a vestige of the past seeking physical contact in the present but never finding a body to inhabit.

De Profundis (2013) is based loosely on Psalm 130. The English horn introduces its arid theme before patterns of leaves imprint themselves on the ground as if to memorialize the trees that shed them. As a monument to fear (the beginning of all wisdom), it is the epitome of ashes to ashes.

This is Tüür’s most mature program to date, even without pulling on the theological threads running through it. Its power is self-sufficient enough to carry the full weight of its life force. In the end, however, it’s hard to avoid its piercing eyes, asking, “Has the proof of hindsight yet convinced you that God was right all along?”

Zsófia Boros: El último aliento (ECM New Series 2769)

| Tyran Grillo

Zsófia Boros
El último aliento

Zsófia Boros classical guitar, ronroco
Recorded March/April 2022, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Cover photo: Fotini Potamia
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 14, 2023

Guitarist Zsófia Boros returns with her third program for ECM’s New Series. Pairing selections from Argentina with those of French composer Mathias Duplessy, the result may just be her most meticulously constructed dollhouse yet. Indeed, it’s as if every track were either a room or a piece of miniature furniture placed artfully within it.

We begin at the entrance with Duplessy’s “De rêve et de pluie.” The use of harmonics here, alternating with liquid arpeggios, evokes an architectural awareness of the surroundings. Boros traces the contour of the doorway, takes her shoes off in the foyer, and steps carefully inside to take it all in. Next, she tiptoes up the stairs built by Joaquin Alem, whose “Salir adentro” cradles a brief rhythmic tapping in its tenderness. It breathes almost dramatically despite the near-stillness, burrowing as an animal preparing for hibernation. From this dreamy escape, we enter the reality of the nursery, in which Quique Sinesi’s “El abrazo” crochets its lullaby. For this, Boros wraps a rubber band around the guitar strings—a muting technique she developed to allow her to practice while her children were sleeping. The effect is warm and familiar.

From there, Boros recedes into the kitchen, where Alberto Ginastera is cooking lovingly at the stove. His take on the “Milonga” is a spider-webbed tango, as savory as it is sweet. Moving on, we are led into the study, where two books bound by Duplessy lie open for our scrutiny. Whereas “Le secret d’Hiroshigé” recalls the sound of the Japanese koto, moving through paper screens as if they were made of air, “Perle de Rosée” is more botanical. With an understated quality that eschews the pitfalls of virtuosity in favor of its grace, it navigates fields of crops on the verge of being harvested. Meanwhile, a fire burns softly in the fireplace, where the kindling of Sinesi’s “Tormenta de ilusión” leaves us to regard some more unexpected turns of phrase. Played on the ronroco (the 10-stringed instrument for which it was originally written), it destroys memories of the past the tighter it tries to hold to them.

As we wander into the gallery, Duplessy treats us to a modest yet captivating private collection. In “Le labyrinthe de Vermeer,” we can sense oils, pigments, and brushstrokes coalescing into a coherent image. Each section has its own fragrance and distinct perspective. His “Berceuse,” the album’s pinnacle, draws a poignant ebb and flow, while “Valse pour Camille” expresses childlike wonder, coming of age in resonant strums.

We end in the greenhouse, where the album’s title piece by Carlos Moscardini casts its light on a bonsai tree. As a marvel of curation, it doesn’t so much mimic its larger cousins but shows what music is capable of at its most cellular level.

Ludwig van Beethoven: The Piano Concertos (ECM New Series 2753-55)

| Tyran Grillo

Alexander Lonquich
Münchener Kammerorchester
Ludwig van Beethoven: The Piano Conceros

Alexander Lonquich piano, direction
Münchener Kammerorchester
Daniel Giglberger concertmaster
Recorded January 2022
Rathausprunksaal, Landshut
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Cover: Fidel Sclavo
An ECM Production
Release date: November 8, 2024

After a years-long relationship with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, pianist Alexander Lonquich had an opportunity to perform Beethoven’s entire cycle of piano concertos over the course of an autumn evening in 2019. The present recording draws upon that collaboration as a gesture of preservation. Composed between 1790 and 1809, the five completed concertos are what the pianist calls “outward-looking creations” and give us insight into the composer’s depth and breadth of mind. 

Lonquich begins, naturally, with the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, op. 19, given that it was written first but published second due to Beethoven’s initial displeasure with it. Although its opening movement immediately calls Mozart to mind, there are plenty of distinctive colorations to enjoy in its ferocious ebullience, and its central departure into more delicate textures is a marvel. The Adagio is haunting for its sustain-pedaled penultima, setting up the final Rondo, which introduces a veritable horse race of energy to reckon with.

The Mozartian flavors continue in both the Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, op. 15, and Piano Concerto No. 3 in c minor, op. 37. Whereas the former’s martial beginnings (bordering on overbearing with the occasional blast of timpani and brass) and symphonic conclusion speak with the inflection of a true Classicalist, the second movement adopts a romantic sway. Its soliloquy drips from Lonquich’s fingers like moonlit water, while the surrounding brushwork lends dimension to the scene. The wind writing is especially poignant, blending with the soloist as organically as a forest envelops every tree. The op. 37 mirrors this format almost to a T, beginning with another garagantuan Allegro con brio. At 17 minutes, it’s nothing to take lightly and flows more comfortably to my ears than its op. 15 counterpart. Perhaps it’s the minor key, the more mature writing, or a combination of the two, but whatever the formula, it is bursting at the seams with inspiration and invention, not least of all in the cadenza. (It also seems to foreshadow the Fifth Symphony in the same key, to be written five years later.) Between it and the foot-tappingly engaging third act is cradled another beautiful Largo. As an inward turn, it looks to itself as if through a glass darkly. Yearning for the future, it glows like an ember of possibility.

The Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, op. 58, opens with even more resolutely symphonic textures, as winds and brass weave a tapestry of pastoral imagery. At 20 minutes, it is half the length of the average symphony and deserves regard as a universe unto itself. The piano’s entrance is timid, almost mocking, before it exuberantly courts the orchestra in a dance of ambitious proportions. Like the Rondo at the other end of the tunnel, it emerges confident, almost brash, in its virtuosity. The Andante con moto operates at a whole other level at their center. Originally conceived with the Orpheus myth in mind, it is by turns agitated and contemplative. This push and pull continues until the piano unfurls its grief alone in a tangled catharsis.

In his liner notes for the album, Lonquich conceives a title for the Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, op. 73: “Battle, Prayer and Folk Festival.” For while the opening joys seem set in stone, they quickly crumble as more desperate convolutions come to the fore before the piano moves to its highest registers in a rousing meta statement. The Adagio un poco moto, perhaps the most recognizable movement of the collection, is easily heard anew in the present rendering, so crisp are its articulations that the smoothness of their skin feels real to the touch. Beethoven himself in the score marks the piano’s entrance “like the break of dawn,” but as Lonquich notes, what follows “feels to me like the attraction of a nocturnal source of light, which seems to be robbed of its radiance just five bars before the end.” And in that regression, we feel all sorts of trepidations shuffling through the mind until we land on the rousing third movement, where the sun indeed has the last word. Despite its many asides, tempering the sense of victory with that of retrospection, the music moves forward with confidence. Beethoven holds the flowing arpeggios and boisterous dances in constant check so as not to let time rule over space. With a brief yet inspiring finale, it sweeps us away in its arms and runs as far as its legs will carry us.

Keith Jarrett: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (ECM New Series 2790/91)

| Tyran Grillo

Keith Jarrett
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Keith Jarrett piano
Recorded May 1994 at Cavelight Studio, New Jersey
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Cover photo: Mayo Bucher
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 30, 2023

In his 2014 monograph, The Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, music historian David Schulenberg paints a compositionally focused portrait of Johann Sebastian’s second son. Despite living in his father’s shadow, his influence managed to shine a light through the veil of history by way of his seminal Essay on the True Manner of Playing Keyboard Instruments and the conduit he was purported to have furled between the Baroque and Viennese Classical schools. As a composer of nearly 1,000 works, his oeuvre is nothing to sneeze at, nor his style, as much an example of evolution in and of itself as of eras retrospectively defined. 

As Paul Griffiths notes in the liner text for the present album, which documents Keith Jarrett’s traversal of CPE’s Württemberg Sonatas, the ocean between father and son may seem vast, even as it churns with currents of familiarity in concert with calls from more distant shores. Dedicated to Carl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, this collection “makes the point about inheritance avoided, or qualificated, or contradicted, or accepted, whether with gratitude or resignation.” Although nominally composed in 1742/43 for the student who would soon ascend to his dukedom, Griffiths observes, “More likely it was for his own fingers he was writing, and for his own ears.” Jarrett, having only heard these pieces on harpsichord, felt compelled to make a piano version, resulting in this home studio recording from 1994, likewise also for his own fingers and his own ears. All the more honored we should feel to have it available three decades later.

Sonata I in a minor is glorious from the start. There are moments of intense poignancy, as in the Moderato, while the faster outer layers elicit feelings of joy that are always undercut by what Griffiths calls a “sad grace” throughout (I might also call it a glorious melancholy). The final movement, marked Allegro assai, carries astonishing depth in tow. What seems a lightly articulated dance has room for so much more than the listener can calculate. Jarrett brims with vitality and precision without ever letting go of the improvisational spirit for which he is known on the jazzier side of things.

The sheer clarity of Jarrett’s voicings, a profound match for the younger Bach’s own, is fully displayed in Sonata II in A-flat major, of which the concluding Allegro is especially vibrant for its multifaceted joys. Like a brick wall, each layer staggers, parallel to every other layer below and above it, adding strength to the overall design and function.

The opening of Sonata III in e minor is perhaps the most glorious of them all, revealing its heart from the first sweep of the second hand. The Adagio is nostalgia incarnate, while the Vivace—the briefest movement of the collection—peels itself away with unfiltered love. The pauses in Sonata IV in B-flat major make for passionate contrast, yielding an Andante of great beauty. Working in stepwise formation, it is a DNA helix surrendering to melodic sequencing.

The more these sonatas develop, the more they veer toward Father Bach, especially in the Adagio fugue of Sonata V in E-flat major. With sweeping intimacy, it pieces together its puzzle between gusts of wind and spirit. The final Sonata VI in b minor is another inwardly focused distillation that defends variegations of light and shadow. The clocklike Adagio is a gem, while the final Allegro glistens in the setting sun. Each is a different keyboard, two eddies in a bay coming together harmoniously, speaking the same truth but with different tongues.

Vox Clamantis: Music by Henrik Ødegaard (ECM New Series 2767)

| Tyran Grillo

Vox Clamantis
Music by Henrik Ødegaard

Vox Clamantis
Jaan-Eik Tulve conductor
Recorded March 2021 at St. Nicholas Dome Church, Haapsalu
Engineer: Margo Kõlar
Recording supervision: Helena Tulve
Cover photo: Jan Kricke
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 2, 2023

O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth.
– Psalm 96:1

Gregorian chant was the experimental music of the medieval era. Here, filtered through the work of Norwegian organist, choir conductor, and composer Henrik Ødegaard (b. 1955), it blends into the folk music of his own country, all tied together by a contemporary classical idiom that takes two steps back for each one forward. In the throats of Vox Clamantis under the direction of Jaan-Eik Tulve, his sound feels as inevitable as the faith that binds it at the molecular level.

The Genesis of this musical Bible is Jesu, dulcis memoria (2014/15). Its dialogue of darkness and light draws from the liturgy of the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus to establish the grandest of all dichotomies. As a drone appears underneath, followed by shifting chords, it opens itself to new shades of the text. Such is Ødegaard’s respectful approach to spiritual building, leading to an interwoven “amen.” From here, we get an even deeper dialogue in the inner heart work of Alleluia, Pascha nostrum. Its tender monophony speaks of Christ’s death, while O filii et filiæ(2015/21) offers Ødegaard’s examination of the resurrection. At its core is a 15th-century paschal hymn, building polyphonically through its refrain. Men’s and women’s voices make contact and separate, each a flock of birds gracing the sky with its murmurations. The Gregorian section concludes with a Kyrie and a Pater noster, the latter from a 13th-century Madrid codex, containing some surprising friction and sound colors.

Antiphons from a Scandinavian manuscript of the same century are the basis of the eight-part Meditations Over St. Mary Magdalene’s Feast in Nidaros (2017), which occupies the album’s largest portion. In her liner notes, Kristina Kõrver writes of the work, “It is as if the composer were literally sitting in front of a fragmentary manuscript, filling in the gaps and adding the missing lines, not as a scholar-restorer, but as a poet, a co-creator.” Whether working in tension or harmony with his sources, Ødegaard always seems to be exploring the material as one might repair a piece of old furniture, knowing that even the most seamless integrations will reveal themselves with subtle differences in hue, texture, and quality. The first and last sections are the most personal, revealing the composer’s penchant for unsettled yet cohesive harmonies. Their flow is always restrained so that our ears might be directed inward and our eyes upward.

When encountering Psalm 62 in the antiphonal “Mini osculum non desisti,” we find ourselves not torn but made whole, as if two parts of ourselves walking away from each other have turned around to meet in fellowship. Meanwhile, Canticum Trium Puerorum emerges organically from the chant of “Oleo caput meum non unxisti” as steam from boiling water. As Ødegaard continues to open our hearts to these possibilities, they begin to feel as natural as the souls rendering them. The choir shapes these with such grace as to be stilling in effect. In the setting of Psalms 148-150, a shushing sound feels like the rasp of pages being turned from the pulpit: a reminder that the Word was indeed made flesh. The deepest font is in the Magnificat, merging with “O, Maria, mater pia.” The resulting flow is so alluring that anything floating upon its waters would seem out of place. And that it does—at first. But something transformative happens as the women’s and men’s choirs align to illustrate the gospel’s power to seek, find, and restore unity.

If I were to compare the Meditations to a stained glass window, it would be analogous to the solder that holds together the panels rather than the panels of color themselves. It is a skeleton enshrouded by centuries of worship, made animate by the power of the lungs and the breath of life that fills them with the oxygen of salvation.

Thomas Larcher: The living Mountain (ECM New Series 2723)

| Tyran Grillo

Thomas Larcher
The Living Mountain

Sarah Aristidou soprano
Alisa Weilerstein violoncello
Aaron Pilsan piano
Luka Juhart accordion
André Schuen baritone
Daniel Heide piano
Münchener Kammerorchester
Clemens Schuldt conductor
The Living Mountain / Ouroboros
recorded June 2021
Bavaria Musikstudios, München
Unerzählt
recorded May 2022
Gemeindezentrum Weerberg
Engineer: Christoph Franke
Cover photo: Awoiska van der Molen
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 6, 2023

“At first, mad to recover the tang of height, I made always for
the summits, and would not take time to explore the recesses.”
–Nan Shepherd

The Living Mountain is the fourth ECM New Series album dedicated to the work of Thomas Larcher, whose previous programs have proven the Austrian composer to be, much like his mentor Heinz Holliger, a human magnifying glass. His attention to detail grows only more precise as his instrumental forces increase. Meanwhile, the chamber works unfurl in grand (but never grandiose) imaginings of times and places that we would never experience except through the filter of his awareness of the past. The eponymous song cycle for soprano and ensemble is a particularly vibrant example. Composed between 2019 and 2020, it sets selections from the memoir by Scottish poet Nan Shepherd, whose own penchant for highlighting the intimate in the vast suits Larcher’s sensibilities hand in glove.

From an introductory heartbeat, the landscape pulses with the music of blood flow, visceral and true. Larcher articulates this anatomy with surgical precision on his way to Part II, where we feel ourselves on the verge of falling over. That sense of vertigo—at once glorious and terrifying—sweeps through every crevice. Singer Sarah Aristidou expresses Shepherd’s words as if they were her own. Whether in brief expulsions of accordion breath or the hammering of piano strings, the diurnal reigns supreme. The final movement’s evocation of snow, as sparkling and wind-roused as it is blinding, runs down the text’s spinal cord.

At the other end of this proverbial tunnel is another song cycle, Unerzählt (2019-20), this one for baritone and piano based on the poetry of W.G. Sebald. These vignettes turn stills into moving pictures. Moods range from the programmatic (e.g., “Die roten Flecken,” which evokes the red spots on Jupiter in dramatic fashion, and the prepared piano rattlings of “Wenn die Blitze herabfuhren”) and the morose (“Am 8.Mai 1927”) to the contemplative (“Gleich einem Hund”) and painterly (“Blaues Gras”). One highlight is “Es heißt daß Napoleon,” from which we get this wry piece of historical revisionism:

They say
that Napoleon
was colorblind
& blood for him
was as green as
grass

The delicacy of Larcher’s setting brilliantly toes the line between mockery and empathy. Another standout is the final song, “So wird, wenn der Sehnerv zeerreißt”:

And so, when the optic nerve
is torn, the silent airspace
turns as white as the snow
on the Alps.

Thus reconnected to the snowy expanse in which we began, we can take strange comfort in its inhospitable nature—which, in the end, makes us all the more human. Pianist André Schuen and baritone Daniel Heide mesh beautifully, allowing bell-like sonorities to percolate through deeper gravel.

Stretching out the darkness between these is Ouroboros (2015). Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and the Munich Chamber Orchestra navigate three movements, opening with a dance of slow-motion detections. Despite the nominal instrumentation, the piano plays a vital moderating role in this relationship. Neither call nor response, theirs is a symbiosis that implies an eternal path to nothingness. The tempestuous middle movement deals in fear with a squealing, unrelenting grind. The conclusion reveals an ethereal balancing act, Weilerstein reaching the most pristine high notes I’ve heard on a cello in a long time before a frenzied crackle of fire and ash consumes itself. As the flame goes out, it moans one last time, just before comprehension and death become one and the same.