Marilyn Mazur: Celestial Circle (ECM 2228)

| Tyran Grillo

Celestial Circle

Marilyn Mazur
Celestial Circle

Marilyn Mazur drums, percussion, voice
John Taylor piano
Josefine Cronholm voice
Anders Jormin double-bass
Recorded December 2010 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Under the guidance of percussionist Marilyn Mazur, Celestial Circle cinches a wealth of continental influences by resonances and rivers. The group is trio-plus, with pianist John Taylor and bassist Anders Jormin forming the core unit and Swedish jazz vocalist Josefine Cronholm pouring her magic at selective intervals. Of the latter, “Your Eyes” (with words by Cronholm and music by Taylor) and the Mazur original “Antilope Arabesque” feature straight-from-the-heart singing and cinematic atmospheres. Both paint acres of forest, through which Jormin dances and Mazur adds characteristic splashes as she plays among, around, and through her bandmates. Confirming the arboreal theme, “Among The Trees” (another Mazur original) imagines a landscape of swans and sunlight. Wordless vocals linger here and there, stretching canvas for Taylor’s brushwork in “Temple Chorus,” cradling the ritual punctuations of “Drumrite,” and scatting delicately across the propulsive “Kildevaeld.”

In addition to its sparkling variety, the music on Celestial Circle dives headlong into the subtle art of evocation. “Winterspell,” with words and music again by Mazur, casts its painterly nets via Taylor’s snowfall and Mazur’s icicles before Cronholm articulates a single word. Here the trio breaks free for a spell of its own before ending in sun-kissed freeze. Mazur sews the seams at every turn. Whether duetting with Taylor in “Secret Crystals” or with Jormin in the flowing “Oceanique,” or even doing nothing more than caressing a gong by her lonesome in “Transcending,” she wields every instrument like a palette, to which invites the listener to add any hues that may come.

(To hear samples of Celestial Circle, click here.)

Arianna Savall & Petter Udland Johansen: Hirundo Maris (ECM New Series 2227)

| Tyran Grillo

Hirundo Maris

Arianna Savall
Petter Udland Johansen
Hirundo Maris – Chants du Sud et du Nord

Arianna Savall voice, gothic harp, Italian triple harp
Petter Udland Johansen voice, hardingfele, mandolin
Sveinung Lilleheier guitar, dobro, voice
Miquel Àngel Cordero double-bass, voice
David Mayoral percussion, voice
Recorded January 2011 at Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I fell in love by night, by moonlight beguiled.
If ever again I fall in love, let it be in the broad light of day.

Hirundo Maris is a landmark achievement on at least two counts. First, it literally marks land on either side of the North Seas, the currents of which linked Vikings, Catalans, Scots, and Sephardic Jews by lines of exploration and cultural exchange. Second, it spotlights the voice of Arianna Savall in ways that so recall her mother, Montserrat Figueras, with especial affection. Savall in fact dedicates this album to Figueras’s memory, to the “voice that sang to me and accompanied me from my very first heartbeat.” It’s a poignant undercurrent that might easily slip by the digital downloader without a CD booklet in hand, but one that imbues this sometimes-surprising bouquet of song with that much more generosity.

Fronting a seamless “jam band” aesthetic, the core duo of Savall (also a masterful harpist) and Petter Udland Johansen (singer, fiddler, mandolin player) elicits a seamless mash-up of early music and folk influences. In the latter vein, Johansen offers traditional songs from the tundra. With spotlight thrown on his lyrical voice, he helms their passage with troubadourian intuition. A handful of Norwegian examples boasts the consummate balladry of an unconsummated love in “Om kvelden” (In the Evening) and the dancing strains of “Ormen Lange” (The Long Serpent), which details the building of a great ship by the same name (a mood and image paralleled in Johansen’s bare rendition of the Scottish folk song “The Water Is Wide”). Other notables flower beneath overcast skies. There’s the sad tale of Bendik, who loves the king’s daughter, Årolilja, and is ordered to be killed when he is found out. In this song, Johansen’s ashen fiddling gives way to piercing, constellatory light as he trades verses with Savall in a complementary atmosphere. There’s also the “Trollmors vuggesang” (Mother Troll’s Lullaby), a Swedish children’s song by Margit Holmberg (1912-1989), in which the protagonist sings nonsense syllables to her eleven little trolls.

Throughout the program, these two gorgeous voices are joined by guitarist Sveinung Lilleheier, bassist Miquel Àngel Cordero, and percussionist David Mayoral, whose presence is felt in evocations from the mainland. Five traditional Catalan tunes highlight the syllogistic “El mestre” (The Schoolmaster), the liltingly harmonized “Josep i Maria” (Joseph and Mary), and artisanship of “El mariner” (The Sailor). The latter tells of a maid who sits embroidering by the sea. When she runs out of silk, a sailor lures her aboard with promises of more. He sings her to sleep. She awakes, only to discover he is the son of England’s king and means to marry her. With its synthetic ocean waves and tactile harping, it is the album’s most evocative song. Also evocative is the “Tarantela” by 17th-century Spanish harpist Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz. The crispness of Savall’s rendition only emphasizes its lustrous antiquity.

Savall’s craftwork comes into greater focus in her original tune “Le Chant des étoiles,” which joins her harp in a sparkling instrumental of plucks and plumes. Johansen also contributes an original: the enchanting “Penselstrøk” (Brushstroke). “The dream is lost in a moment of joy,” he sings, “and for you it could be the last.” And with those words, he cloaks the sun in dusk. The collection rounds out with three Sephardic traditionals, including “Buenas noches” (Sweet Nights), which shines with steel-string inflections, and “Morena me llaman” (Dark One, They Call Me), another song of ship and sail. This genre favorite receives a downtrodden treatment here, replete with sparse instrumental reflections throughout.

Although this very special album bears the subtitle “Songs from the South and North,” by its end one feels the futility of mortal instruments to gauge directions across time. It is, instead, a chronicle not of geographies per se but of the transitions between them.

(To hear samples of Hirundo Maris, click here.)

Vox Clamantis: Filia Sion (ECM New Series 2244)

| Tyran Grillo

Filia Sion

Vox Clamantis
Filia Sion

Vox Clamantis
Jaan-Eik Tulve conductor
Recorded September 2010, Dome Church of St. Nicholas, Haapsalu
Engineer: Igor Kirkwood
Editing: Margo Kõlar
Recording supervision: Helena Tulve
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

O wisest Virgin,
where art thou going in this deepest red of dawn?

Estonian vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis shares its passion for Gregorian chant in an album dedicated to the Daughter of Zion. Directed by Jaan-Eik Tulve (husband of composer Helena), who sees precise blending as the foundation for purposeful singing, Vox Clamantis adds subtlest gold leafing to the program’s Marian repertoire. Remarkable in this regard is the use of overtone singing, an unlikely technique begotten through the spirit of improvisation during rehearsal. It is employed to glorious effect in two 12th-century pieces by Magister Perotinus and Hildegard von Bingen. As the twin hearts of the album, they shine with the depth of conception, mysterious and divine.

Polyphonous textures are only occasional throughout the program, appearing noticeably in the “Rex virginum,” which comes from the 13th-century Codex Las Huelgas of Spain. Cycling between two-part harmonies and plainchant, its timbral cast magnifies sanctity with sanctity. The motet “O Maria”—from another codex (from Montpellier) of the same period—gilds kindred geometry, while the tenors of “Prelustri elucentia” (by Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz, c1400-c1480) bind linearly, like the ligament of a spiritual body. The album’s final piece, a Jewish chant from Cochin entitled “Ma navu,” comes as a revelation that flows from chest to sky through c(h)ords of light.

Most of the album is rooted in plainsong, and few ensembles extol its unifying force with the grace of Vox Clamantis. The thickness of the monophonic pieces, and these performances of them, is such that polyphony would seem an overwhelming embellishment. Rather than muddy the waters, the singers clarify them, moving antiphonally between solo and tutti passages. Each chant feels torn from a book of shadows, so that it might be inscribed with light. This record comes long after a wave of chant albums that flooded the New Age market in the mid- to late 1990s. Unlike those transients, the present disc is set fully in its proper context. Its heartfelt prayer is for circularity: ashes to ashes, voice to voice.

The people of the nations that lay in darkness
rise up at the joy of so renowned a birth.

Eleni Karaindrou: Concert in Athens (ECM New Series 2220)

| Tyran Grillo

Concert in Athens

Eleni Karaindrou
Concert in Athens

Eleni Karaindrou piano
Kim Kashkashian viola
Jan Garbarek tenor saxophone
Vangelis Christopoulos oboe
Camerata Orchestra Alexandros Myrat conductor
Concert production: The Athens Concert Hall
Recorded live November 19, 2010 at Megaron Hall (Hall of the Friends of Music), Athens
Recording engineer: Nikos Espialidis
Editing/assistants: Bobby Blazoudakis, Peter DePian, Alex Aretaios, and George Mathioudakis
Mixed and edited March 2012 by Manfred Eicher and Nikos Espialidis
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Eleni Karaindrou’s 10th album for ECM frames the self-taught Greek composer as the subject of worthy tribute in a second live conspectus for the label. Five years have passed since the recording of Elegy of the Uprooting, also captured at Megaron Hall in Athens, and the depth of her soundings has only intensified in that period. While that former performance made obvious her intimate working relationship with late filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos by way of a large projection screen at stage rear, here the music is its own actor. Differences between the two programs are striking, with emphasis now on Karaindrou’s incidental music for theatre. Directions also play out in the featured soloists: violist Kim Kashkashian and saxophonist Jan Garbarek. Kashkashian was instrumental—in the most literal sense—in exposing international listeners to Karaindrou’s sound on the highly successful Ulysses’ Gaze . Like that perennial soundtrack, Concert in Athens is a way station on her distinctive compositional path. Garbarek makes for an equally fine companion, his salted tone tessellating every motif it embraces.

Eleni

Garbarek oversees the most brooding portions of the concert, which opens and closes with his flute-like tenoring in “Requiem for Willy Loman” and its variation. This piece, from Death of a Salesman, suspends its mournful souls like laundry without bodies to wrap. It’s a tender circle, within which further theatrical connections abound. Whether unlocking dramatic awakenings in “Invocation” (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) or matching the sway of windblown branch in “Tom’s Theme” (The Glass Menagerie), Garbarek holds these melodies to be self-evident. The same is true for the consummate “Adagio for Saxophone,” the inward spiral of which traces the album’s endearing highlight.

Kashkashian, for her part, sails closer to the coast, skirting the rim of darkness beyond the lighthouse’s purview. The strings reveal her singing patina in “Closed Roads” as if it were a jewel clasped in silver. With just a sweep of her bow, she evokes a tug of war between flesh and horizon that finds resolution only in the “Dance” from Ulysses’ Gaze. As an agent of memory, she emotes without mitigation, standing out even among the trio settings of “Laura’s Waltz” (with orchestral accompaniment) and “After Memory” (without). The latter’s braiding with Garbarek and oboist Vangelis Christopoulos is another of the performance’s focal points.

Karaindrou herself sits at the piano, laying the groundwork for much of the activity surrounding these themes. Her solo from Eternity and a Day comes second in the program, a hinge for every door thereafter. Other cinematic intersections include Landscape in the Mist and Dust of Time. In these, tension becomes an organic material, a bed of soil as ocean. On that note, there is a textuality to both this music and its sources that finds confirmation in four pieces inspired by M. Karagatsis’s novel Number Ten. Of these, “Waltz of Rain” unfolds most nostalgically, affirming yet again why Karaindrou’s oeuvre is as enduring as the relics of her homeland.

(To hear samples of Concert in Athens, click here.)

Stefano Bollani/Hamilton de Holanda: O que será (ECM 2332)

| Tyran Grillo

O que será

Stefano Bollani
Hamilton de Holanda
O que será

Stefano Bollani piano
Hamilton de Holanda bandolim
Recorded live August 17, 2012 at Jazz Middelheim, Antwerp by VRT-Vlaamse Radio en Televisie
Engineers: Walter de Niel and Johan Favoreel
Mixed at Rainbow Studio, Oslo by Jan Erik Kongshaug, Roberto Lioli, and Stefano Bollani
Album produced by Manfred Eicher

Since first sharing a stage together at a 2009 music festival in northern Italy, Italian pianist Stefano Bollani and Brazilian bandolim (10-string mandolin) maestro Hamilton de Holanda have met frequently as a duo. In this, their first full live album, they expand their commitment to beauteous improvisation in an electric atmosphere bound by faith in the moment. While not such a surprise in terms of programming—Bollani has, after all, extolled his passion for Brazilian music on Orvieto, and elsewhere—the album sparkles with ingenuity.

Bollani and de Holanda

In his pointillist fervor, Bollani has an obvious affinity for Chick Corea and Scott Joplin, while de Holanda’s playing dovetails Django Reinhardt and Egberto Gismonti at their best. These are a mere few of the many influences one might read into the notecraft of these consummate virtuosos, to say nothing of the great composers whose timeless melodies fly from their fingers. That said, the verdant, sparkling relays of Bollani’s “Il barbone di Siviglia” and the crystalline wanderings of de Holanda’s “Caprichos de Espanha” hold their own alongside classics from Astor Piazzolla (“Oblivión”), Antonio Carlos Jobim (“Luiza”), and Pixinguinha (“Rosa”). In their capable hands, such timeworns are fresh as summer while the originals feel like folk songs torn from the pages of a shared past. Across the board, de Holanda’s picking is restless but never overbearing. Bollani in the meantime emotes assuredly, caressingly, and all with a smile like the setting sun.

Two tracks of strikingly different character epitomize the duo at its most attuned. De Holanda dominates the ins and outs of “Guarda che luna” (Gualtiero Malgoni/Bruno Pallesi), in which his impassioned singing inspires cheers and laughter from the audience. A memorable relay as he switches to muted comping beneath Bollani’s flights of fancy adds oomph to their pristine musicality. Even more engaging is “Canto de Ossanha” (Baden Powell/Vinicius de Moraes), which becomes a rhythmic master class in controlled tension. The feeling of progression here is so vivid, it’s practically uncontainable. And yet, contain it the musicians do by means of their joyful, flared unity.

A smattering of lyrical tunes rounds out the set. Between the lush, balladic opener “Beatriz” (Edu Lobo, Chico Buarque) and the vivacious “Apanhei-te Cavaquinho” (Ernesto Nazareth) that closes, Bollani and de Holanda become increasingly more like each other, reflections of anticipation and follow-through. Like the title track (also by Buarque), their enchantment comes about in the exuberances for which no score has a means of notation. Rarely has a duo been this exciting, and results of this fortuitous encounter rank easily among ECM’s top 10 for the new millennium.

(To hear samples of O que será, click here.)

 

Tord Gustavsen Quartet: The Well (ECM 2237)

| Tyran Grillo

The Well

Tord Gustavsen Quartet
The Well

Tore Brunborg tenor saxophone
Tord Gustavsen piano
Mats Eilertsen double bass
Jarle Vespestad drums
Recorded February 2011 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After the trio with whom he crafted a classic trilogy for ECM, Tord Gustavsen returns with his quartet, adding tenorist Tore Brunborg to the nexus of bassist Mats Eilertsen and drummer Jarle Vespestad in a unit that has since become the core vessel of the Norwegian pianist-composer’s sonic dousing. Hence, The Well. This self-styled liturgical journey nurtures Gustavsen’s church music roots and thus deepens the spiritual edges of his rendering.

Gustavsen Quartet

Gustavsen cites the title track, part of a lion’s share of full quartet tunes, as a cornerstone of the set. Its groove emerges among a concentric wave of orbits as Eilertsen flings his satellite far into the darkness and Gustavsen emotes dustily to avoid impeding Brunborg’s signals. Such egalitarianism is part and parcel of the band’s streamlined dynamics, which from “Prelude” to the drum-less “Inside” weave bassing, percussing, and reeding into a basket of watertight beauty.

Song titles (for these pieces do indeed “sing”) indicate larger joints and ligaments beyond their immediate contexts. Whether through the oceanic, Byzantine enchantments of “Communion” and its variation or the soulful farewell of “Intuition,” a simplicity of vocabulary allows the listener to wander the band’s environs without fear of getting snagged by thorn or bramble, for here is a forest cleared of its dangers and replanted until every tree feels acknowledged.

Simplicity further infuses two trio tracks, which refer back to the earlier ECM works while also transcending them. “Playing” finds Vespestad grounding a softly popping current. Engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug fronts the drums here toward a balance of density and openness that is the trio’s signature. Eilertsen echoes in whispering ways, leaving Gustavsen to unravel his catch-and-release improvising. The inward blues of “Circling” is a kindred signpost, forging melody through rhythm and rhythm through inflection. It’s a reminder of just how complete the band felt before a saxophone was welcomed into its midst. But then, we encounter tracks “Suite” and “On Every Corner,” in which Brunborg’s non-invasive lines are the shuttle to the loom. With cinematic charge, he navigates a seeming crowd of pedestrians on his way toward solace.

And like Gustavsen’s solo “Glasgow Intro,” that is exactly what this album provides: a shelter for contemplation in a current that never ceases to pull at our sleeves.

(To hear samples of The Well, click here.)

Nrityagram Dance Ensemble Brings Magic to Cornell

| Tyran Grillo

Nrityagram

Nrityagram Dance Ensemble
Barnes Hall, Cornell University
February 4, 2015
8:00pm

Under most circumstances, calling a performance “magical” is like calling a sunset “picture perfect.” It reveals more about the limitations of the admirer than the uniqueness of what is being admired. That said, when Nrityagram presented Songs of Love and Longing to a packed yet intimate crowd at Barnes Hall on Wednesday night, the magic was undeniable.

Over an 85-minute traversal without intermission, the performance spotlighted the bodies, minds and spirits of dancers Surupa Sen and Bijayini Satpathy, both of whom are part of an intentional community (Nrityagram means “dance village”) in southwestern India, where they have dedicated their lives to expanding traditional Odissi dance forms through a gestural vocabulary that is very much their own. Along with a dedicated quartet of musicians playing harmonium, mardala (an oblong drum struck at both ends), violin and bamboo flute, they have lived and breathed their art before a variety of audiences around the globe. In this regard, just being in their presence was a wondrous experience, one that surely turned to whips of electricity for anyone fortunate enough to be held in a dancer’s gaze as she painted scenes with every calculated movement.

Interspersed with narration and threaded by singing, the program drew inspiration from the Gita Govinda, a Sanskrit poem written by the 12th-century mystic Jayadeva, and which describes the holy union between Krishna and Radha. Jayadeva defines their relationship not as one of divine lord and mistress, but rather as one of eternal reflection. The dancers’ ability to morph from one role to another (each switched between Krishna and Radha throughout) only served to emphasize their oneness. As Ms. Sen, who narrated verses offstage, said of Radha, “She revels in infinite spaces.” And indeed, one got the sense that Ms. Satpathy’s Radha permeated everything in the room. Whether plucking flowers from their stems or recounting Krishna’s slaying of the horse-demon Keshi, tracing a river’s flow or illustrating her lover’s redemptive touch, she showed exactitude in her comportment. Radha had all of creation in her grasp as fingers curled and splayed in sync with the live accompaniment. And that was when the first blush of magic came about, for as she shot out a hand into the air, a bat seemed to fly from her open palm. (In fact, the bat had been trapped in the hall and was startled by the mardala drum’s riveting entrance.)

As the story of Krishna and Radha ratcheted the tension, so too did the dancers when sharing the stage for the first time. At any given moment, I was aware of their bodily centers, from which extended invisible cords that tied them in moments of unison. These were among the most memorable aspects of the performance and made the playfulness of their courtship all the more thrilling. It also clarified the subtleties required to evoke the yin and yang of their gender play. Together, they were the hub of a divine wheel, each spoke of which told a variation of an interlocking story. This only served to underscore Krishna as a willing and able prisoner of Radha’s consuming love. The effect was such that, even when Krishna left his lover alone in pursuit of another, her power grew that much greater as she gathered resolve from the forest. When Krishna returned to her at last, he was a peacock spreading his tail feathers in a desperate bid for her attention.

Despite the obvious effort gone into its artistry, the sophistication and elasticity with which Nrityagram evoked these images was extraordinarily organic. Whether in its gallery of glances—at one moment burning with desire, the next cold with menace—or the ankle bells that became a part of its constant texture, the dance was a world unto itself, its spell so potent that every break for applause bordered on intrusive. We were no longer winter-weary travelers on Earth but participants in dialogue above it. As one moment became many, and those many more, Nrityagram proved that real magic takes root in the sacredness of human experience.

(See this article as it originally appeared in The Cornell Daily Sun.)

Franz Schubert: Moments musicaux (ECM New Series 2215)

| Tyran Grillo

2215 X

Franz Schubert
Moments musicaux

Valery Afanassiev piano
Recorded September 2010, Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Valery Afanassiev returns to ECM with his second program dedicated to Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Whereas his much-lauded Lockenhaus disc reckoned with the massive final sonata, here focus is on the Moments musicaux (D. 780, Op. 94) and the Opus 53 D-Major Sonata, both late works of characteristically bipolar flavor. Also characteristic are Afanassiev’s interpretations of them, infused as they are with ebullience and melancholy in equal measure. In his liner notes, the Russian pianist muses on the notion of a “no-time’s land,” a momentary space that Schubert has filled with this music. It is a lingering moment, a moment to take pleasure in the details of one’s surroundings, a moment that is itself music. He notes also the tendency among (a certain number of) Japanese poets to unravel a moment, “driving it to the brink of eternity.”

Such aesthetics operate at turning points throughout the disc, first noticeable in the transition between the C-Major Moderato and A-flat Major Andantino of the Moments musicaux. Schubert composed its six miniatures sporadically between 1823 and 1828. That Mendelssohn called them “Songs without Words” should come as no surprise, for the block chords that pervade the first of the two sections in question lay down a solid foundation for all the melodies to follow. Emotionally vibrant yet somehow neutral (the notes shuffle one step back for each taken forward), these mercurial waters yield an Arthurian sword of innocent beauty. Neither parallel nor divergent, these streams meet in the solace of a universal unfolding. Following the charming, child-like storytelling of the f-minor Allegro moderato, the c-sharp minor Moderato owes its texture to Bach, whose keyboard style it expertly emulates but also colors with its own romantic flair before returning to f minor in a galloping Allegro vivace. Afanassiev excavates the latter with just the variety it needs to catch our archaeological regard. Last is an Allegretto in A-flat Major. Its statelier posture and chromatic inhalations make it the most mature moment of the set.

Characterized by Afanassiev as “an assortment of games,” the D-Major Sonata is something of a fountain of youth. “Unlike Schubert,” he goes on to say, “I shall never play hopscotch again except in some of his sonatas.” A relatively brisk sonata by Schubert standards, the Opus 53 can hold a candle to any of Beethoven’s and rests on the foundation of its massive first movement. A dense opening reveals flowery, delicate runs, alternating between drama and reflection within a naked stream of consciousness. The second movement, while longer, is more introspective. Afanassiev’s management of its densities depends on a feel for harmony as masterful as the composer’s. Like the Scherzo that follows, and even the concluding Rondo, it fuels its own ambition with transparency.

Afanassiev is an artist keyed into cinema, philosophy, and cultural difference. He brings this knowledge to his Schubert, which opens its eyes like sails and catches the wind of an interpretive spirit. Through this allegorical filter, he turns life into light and shines it on the keyboard without compromise. These pieces, then, become part of a brighter whole, wherein beats the heart of one who had many more songs to sing.

(To hear samples of Moments musicaux, click here.)

Reto Bieri: Contrechant (ECM New Series 2209)

| Tyran Grillo

Contrechant

Reto Bieri
Contrechant
Music for clarinet solo

Reto Bieri clarinet
Recorded September 2010, Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Within the ECM New Series sub-catalogue of solo recordings, the label debut of Reto Bieri stands out for impeccable selection and technical prowess. The Swiss clarinetist studied at Basel’s Academy of Music and at the Juilliard School before embarking on a solo career in collaboration with new and established composers alike, and the fruits of those efforts are bursting from their skins on Contrechant. Luciano Berio is the only featured composer with whom Bieri did not work in preparing for this album, and his 1983 Lied opens the program with its cantabile, legato phrasings. Aside from establishing something of a theme (in his liner text, Paul Griffiths notes among these pieces an affinity for song), the meticulousness of Bieri’s approach to the instrument sets a precedent for mood and timing. At his fingertips—each a hand unto itself—the deceptive simplicity of Berio’s spatial grammar feels omnipresent.

Likewise omnipresent are the grammars of Salvatore Sciarrino and Heinz Holliger. Both composers make illustrative use of multiphonics and formidable extended playing. The former’s 1982 Let me die before I wake reveals a matrix of overtones so rich that the addition of any other instrument would be an intrusion. Its artisan quality seems to plane away its own surface until underlying patterns are revealed. The album’s title piece comes from Holliger. Composed in 2007, it strikes a characteristic balance between darkness and whimsy. Each vignette therein is a window both into itself and into the whole. Across a range of transcendent voicings, it steps through a spectral door in the five-minute epilogue. Holliger’s Rechant (2008) bears dedication to the late Swiss clarinetist Thomas Friedli, with whom Bieri briefly studied. Despite its kindred telemetry of action and reaction, of interpretation and extrapolation, a lighter footprint makes it a song of more internal measures.

Bieri

The title of Elliott Carter’s Gra means “to play” in Polish and was written in 1993 to commemorate Witold Lutosławski’s 80th birthday. With its leaping figures and exacting breath control, it is a virtuosic feast, to be sure. Beyond that, its youthful pilot light flickers with verve. Péter Eötvös’s Derwischtanz (1993/2001), on the other hand, travels upward rather than inward, shuffling staircases before falling like an autumn leaf with no purpose but to decay. The latter piece pairs well with Lightshadow-trembling (1993) by Gergely Vajda, a student of Eötvös whose embodiment of title feels like a narrative too restless to contain.

This is, in the end, what connects all of the above: an uncontainable feeling to be experienced.

(To hear samples of Contrechant, click here.)