Robert Schumann: Geistervariationen – Schiff (ECM New Series 2122/23)

| Tyran Grillo

Geistervariationen

Robert Schumann
Geistervariationen

András Schiff piano
Recorded June 2010, Historischer Reitstadel, Neumarkt
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Pianist András Schiff, best known for his surveys of Bach and Beethoven, combines the former’s austerity and the latter’s dynamism in this, his second ECM reckoning with Robert Schumann. More so than the first, the present program tracks a composer stepping out from Beethoven’s shadow and into a light very much his own. As any Schumann interpreter perhaps must, Schiff brings awareness of attendant shadows as well. These he evokes through a balance of restraint and transparency.

To be sure, the Papillons (1829-31) one of Schumann’s earliest piano works (it is his Opus 2), benefits from just such a well-rounded approach. This collection of 12 innovative vignettes linked in brazen montage is as colorful as it is compact. Indeed, each section would feel like the beginning of a longer excursion were it not already so elaborate. The C-sharp Waltz and Waltz in D are notably filigreed in this manner, while the playful chromatism of the Polonaise in D leaves a tannin-rich aftertaste.

The first sonata, his Opus 11, follows. Written in 1835 and dedicated to his future wife, Clara, it is an effusive and utterly heartfelt work, one from which Clara would draw themes for her own compositions. From the introduction alone, it’s clear that Schiff has hit upon the right formula. The modest Aria that follows is, at just over three minutes, a lovely foil to its 13-minute predecessor, and all the more enchanting for it. Even in his propriety, Schiff teases out an epic flow from its underlying fortitude. The final two movements pulse with theatricality. The last is engaging from the first, not least for Schiff’s handling of its quieter passages, the sonata’s most delicate. Through both jagged stitching and smoother threadings of the needle, a brocade of melody and atmosphere emerges that works lyrically, but with a certain sense of muscle that is distinctly Schumann.

The Kinderszenen or “Scenes from Childhood” (1838) are his most widely performed pieces and represent another innovation: children’s music for adults. Among the first of their kind, they have inspired many imitations but none quite so charming and musically direct. Moments of quietude and solitude increase among those of play as they drift onto darker, more dreamlike avenues, culminating in the grimly apportioned “Der Dichter spricht” (The Poet Speaks). Whether opaque or translucent, all 13 are suffused with a spirit that in Schiff’s hands feels as fresh as the ink drying on the original score.

On the subject of original scores, the Fantasy in C of 1836 will be either the decisive or divisive hinge, depending on your taste. Schiff works vitally through the first two movements, his left hand working overtime in support of the flowering right. Furthermore, he brings out that special stream of consciousness that pervades even the softest moments of Schumann’s writing at its most mature. In a brief liner note, Schiff delights in his possession of a first-version manuscript of the third and final movement. In this iteration, Schumann revives the final theme of the first movement—a strategy later scrapped for its pedantry. For the tried-and-true, Schiff tacks on the final, published version at the album’s end, leaving those used to the latter searching for it there. Perhaps a more useful strategy would have been to switch the two, but this is one pianist’s vision, and to it we are invited to abide. Whatever your preference, an inherent boldness perseveres.

The Waldszenen (1848-49) or “Forest Scenes” are similar in title to the Kinderszenen, but reflect a starkly different spirit. Schiff seems to draw energy directly from nature and experiences of observation for a reading that is understated yet lyrical. He brings enough insight to inspire but not to overwhelm, allowing the solace of each to occupy its respective niche with plenty of room to slumber.

Last on the program proper is Geistervariationen, or “Ghost Variations.” These pieces of 1854 are rarely performed, much less with such veracity, and comprise Schumann’s final piano work. Brokering some urgency here and there, the main theme and its five variations bespeak a tender privacy that is self-assured and wise, despite being written in the wake of a failed suicide attempt and soon before admission into an asylum. And yet, here it stands, calm and collected, in need of a wider circle of interpreters to make its visions known.

On the whole, this has the makings of a benchmark record, although some listeners will want to pair it with other classics in the field. These Kinderszenen, for instance, may not replace Horowitz’s beloved traversal of the same for CBS, but are a close second and well worth as much consideration as Schiff has put into them. Neither will Richter’s take on the C-Major Fantasy likely forfeit its place at the top for some (or any) time to come. Nevertheless, what we have here is another example of a profound relationship between artist and label, triangulating with a composer whose piano music glistens anew, as if of its own desire to be heard.

(To hear samples of Geistervariationen, click here.)

Susanne Abbuehl: The Gift (ECM 2322)

| Tyran Grillo

The Gift

Susanne Abbuehl
The Gift

Susanne Abbuehl voice
Matthieu Michel flugelhorn
Wolfert Brederode piano, Indian harmonium
Olavi Louhivuori drums, percussion
Recorded July 30-August 1, 2012, Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Assistant engineers: Nicolas Baillard and Romain Castéra
Produced by Manfred Eicher

If April and Compass, the two previous ECM traversals from Swiss-Dutch singer Susanne Abbuehl, charted a journey, then The Gift is its destination. Important to understanding the experience of listening to any Abbuehl album, particularly this one, is welcoming her idiosyncratic approach to poetry. These songs overflow with words from Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Emily Brontë, and Wallace Stevens. Rather than simply add music to them as would a jeweler bend miniscule claws around a diamond, she lets the verses walk around inside her before their spirits leave her lips.

Susanne Abbuehl

This time she incorporates her unique delivery into an even more attuned matrix. Pianist Wolfert Brederode and drummer Olavi Louhivuori sprout rhythmic branches that are every bit as melodic as her roots. But the flugelhorn of Matthieu Michel is what really sets this session apart from its predecessors. It’s a defining presence on the album where the clarinets of Christof May were before. Its rounded tone is a voice unto itself, swooning through the corridors of Abbuehl’s sole lyric contribution in “Soon (Five Years Ago).” This song, appropriately enough about the displacement of earthly time, may appear late in the program, but it’s also its defining statement of it.

Fans of Norma Winstone will surely rejoice at the freedom of Abbuehl’s approach, exemplified to peak effect in “The Cloud,” which opens in reverie. Activated by a kalimba’s metallic fingertips, her voice carries word and song along the trumpet’s cirrus drift. It is a restless feeling we counter here, one that remains in all that follows, so that even the simple admission of Dickinson’s “This And My Heart” (and its variation, which ends the album) harbors a shadow or two. We might feel this also in the arrangement, which engages voice and flugelhorn in marriages, divorces, and flirtatious commentaries. All the while, a processional feeling soaks through. Where the first song was emblematic for its atmosphere, so is this for an attention to detail by means of which Abbuehl and her band embody a conception of self that, so like a book, opens and flutters with the dynamism of language. From the mountains to the catacombs, it’s all here.

In light of such intensities, “If Bees Are Few” makes for an airy interlude, suspended as if above prairies misty with dandelion fluff. It closes its eyes and enters the dream that is “My River Runs To You.” Across this canvas of love, magical by way of lyric and music alike, the ocean paints itself into a network of inlets, each a harbor waiting for that one boat to make permanent docking. The effect is such that “Ashore At Last” breathes like a mission statement to the fanfare of its free and melodious flugelhorn. “Forbidden Fruit,” then, seems to close the circle of a miniature trilogy of sorts, swaying with all the gentle relief of a silhouetted tree against the night.

Indeed, for all its leaping heartbeats, much of The Gift is cradled in nocturnal contours and through them are revealed Abbuehl’s purest tones. In “By Day, By Night,” her voice is flute-like and devoid of vibrato, its waters as crystalline as those of time are muddied. Even in those passages in which she doesn’t sing, her spirit animates every reflection. In this sense, Stevens echoes farthest: “In my room, the world is beyond my understanding.” Holding to this philosophy, the album’s brightest moments are revealed where one might nominally least expect them: in “Shadows On Shadows.” Brontë’s imagery unfolds a scintillating act of transparency. It is the album’s lighthouse, but might remain unlit were it not for the embers of Abbuehl’s wonderful musicians. “Fall, Leaves, Fall” is the epitome of their sensitive approach. This song of death, haunted by an Indian harmonium and drummed whispers, is a prayer of sisterly forces. “Sepal” emerges from a landscape’s worth of flora and uncommon graces as a single petal falling, a light footstep without a trace except in the utterances of she who observes and vocalizes them into memory, as memory.

Understated yet full as a rose in bloom, this is the emotional clarity of which Abbuehl’s craft is possessed apart. In her purview, the moon disappears not when it is new, but when it hides beyond that most ephemeral of horizons: the human heart. It is a shadow of its own truth, a truth given understanding by Teasdale after all:

 I throw my mantle over the moon
And I blind the sun on his throne at noon,
Nothing can tame me, nothing can bind,
I am a child of the heartless wind—
But oh the pines on the mountain’s crest
Whispering always, “Rest, rest.”

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

Sheppard/Benita/Rochford: Trio Libero (ECM 2252)

| Tyran Grillo

Trio Libero

Trio Libero

Andy Sheppard tenor and soprano saxophones
Michel Benita double-bass
Sebastian Rochford drums
Recorded July 2011, Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizerra, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Putting on Trio Libero’s self-titled debut is like putting on a cashmere robe: it feels that good.

The level of comfort shared by saxophonist Andy Sheppard, bassist Michel Benita, and drummer Sebastian Rochford bears out from the first moments of opener “Libertino” with a looseness that never loses sight or hold of things. The themes are forthcoming but never insistent. An early solo from Benita trades off with some beautiful blowing from Sheppard, who unwinds a kite string toward cloudless sky. “Slip Duty” fronts Rochford’s limber bodywork as it traverses the landscape of his kit. To this percolating core Benita and Sheppard contribute structurally thematic elements in a variety of densities. “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” features Sheppard on soprano. Despite the whimsical title, it describes a world of honest reflection. The two-part “Spacewalk” indeed balances gravity and buoyancy, an alterity of pathos that breathes melody and ends with a nebular cry for solidarity. “Dia da Liberdade” opens with an almost mournful bass solo, a lullaby for the fallen that trips the pulse of Sheppard’s wood-planed entrance. At times one can hear Paul Motian speaking through the drumming (he would pass away only four months after this album was recorded), only with a moth’s added murmuring. “Land of Nod” features more astuteness from Rochford in step with bass and piano. Don’t let the title fool you. It is one of the album’s livelier tracks and ripples beautifully at Sheppard’s fingertips as might a pond’s surface at the touch of a leaf. “The Unconditional Secret” is by far the most beautiful statement of the album. Its diurnal collage unites dreams and realities in a collage of transparencies. “Ishidatami” begins with another lovely bass intro, now with a sopranism as lithe as a tightrope walker bounding from anchor to anchor. The title, it bears noting, is a Japanese term for paving stones used to maintain navigable pathways in erosion-prone mountain passages, and serves well as a metaphor for the band’s unity. “Skin / Kaa” sustains a rubato flow into the modal tributary of “Whereveryougoigotoo,” the latter distinguished by its masterfully legato tenoring. “Lots of Stairs” is a weary but never wearying traversal. Under guise of balladry, “When We Live On The Stars…” concludes with a promise that the people and pleasures we adore will still be waiting for us when we wake.

Nowhere within these relatively brief tunes will you find demonstrative solos or waving of virtuosic flags. That said, it requires a special kind of virtuosity to carry off such music so humbly, and with a spirit that is as naked as the day all of us were born. This is the art of the trio, liberated.

(To hear samples of Trio Libero, click the image below.)

Trio Libero Photo

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Vallon/Moret/Rohrer: Rruga (ECM 2185)

| Tyran Grillo

Rruga

Rruga

Colin Vallon piano
Patrice Moret double-bass
Samuel Rohrer drums
Recorded May 2010 at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Now here we have the debut of a trio for the ages. Deeply inspired by the folk music of the Caucasus, Rruga (the word means “path” or “journey” in Albanian) culminates six careful years of fine-tuning in a studio session that feels as if it were recorded the shadows of those very mountains. This Swiss outfit of pianist Colin Vallon, bassist Patrice Moret, and drummer Samuel Rohrer spins a web so robust that it threatens to uproot the trees it spans.

Vallon pens four tunes, of which two iterations of the title track stand like those very trees. The sound is likewise rooted from the very beginning and takes account of every crack of bark and quiver of leaf above. None of these young musicians seems possessed of ego, as if they were soloists of some inaudible and nameless orchestra—a force that by any other name might interlock into a familiar sigil of creative action. Here, however, the need for such emblems fades like so many notes, struck and plucked by hammers and fingers to rhythms born of the moment.

From the autobiographical (“Home”) to the cataclysmic (“Eyjafjallajökull,” meant to evoke the eponymous Icelandic volcano), Vallon and friends navigate a reflective grammar, interested as they are in forging tactile emotions as a unit rather than in dictating them through demonstrative soloing. The trio has an uncanny ability to sound electronic. “Eyjafjallajökull,” for instance, lays out a surface of drone into which Vallon drops strategic pebbles. The effect is haunting, gorgeous. “Meral,” named for the pianist’s late grandmother and reflecting a Turkish folk music influence, is smoothest of them all and embodies a straightforward approach to melody. There’s nothing jagged or showy. Even the prepared piano details feel like everyday occurrences.

Moret contributes two tunes. “Fjord” feels somehow suspended, sung as much by Rohrer’s brushes as by bass or piano. Yet it is his “Telepathy,” which takes its inspiration from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, that epitomizes the album’s reach. Vallon’s pianism evolves from sleeping to waking, carving its path through the night with a thread of sun in hand. As density builds, so does the sky also thicken—to the point where the trio lies on its back as one body like Michelangelo and raises a paintbrush to its surface: looking up to look within.

The beat is always slightly askew and coheres by no small feat of careful listening. This is most obvious in the three tunes from Rohrer, whose “Polygonia” is a stunner. Its modal qualities give vitality to every angle. “Noreia,” named for a vanished ancient city of the Alps, is another glory, a soaring gem of melody that lands as softly as it takes off. Last from the drummer is “Epilog,” a flower within a flower.

Completing the set is a trio improvisation around the Bulgarian song “Shope Shope” by Stefan Mutafchiev. Titled “Iskar,” its prepared piano resounds like a warped gamelan before smoothing into a mid-tempo groove. It strikes perhaps the deepest root and drinks of its histories until every drop contributes a song.

If you’ve ever wondered how a record label could singlehandedly enrich the piano trio art form, then consider this your Exhibit A. Vallon is that rare player who can turn smolder into sparkle, and his bandmates know his chemical signatures inside and out. Rruga is an astonishing achievement and easily holds its own among ECM’s finest releases of all time.

(To hear samples of the album proper, click here.)

Manu Katché: Third Round (ECM 2156)

| Tyran Grillo

Third Round

Manu Katché
Third Round

Manu Katché drums
Tore Brunborg saxophones
Jason Rebello piano, Fender Rhodes
Pino Palladino bass
Jacob Young guitar
Kami Lyle trumpet, vocal
Recorded December 2009, Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Third Round follows up drummer Manu Katché’s previous ECM albums, Neighbourhood and Playground with his deepest love long yet. Joining him are saxophonist Tore Brunborg, pianist Jason Rebello, bassist Palladino, and guitarist Jacob Young. The latter contributes to three polished tunes: the lovely, piano-driven “Keep On Trippin’,” the gorgeous “Springtime Dancing,” and the sunlit “Flower Skin,” in which his acoustic shines brightest. Also guesting is Kami Lyle, who sings her own lyrics and plays trumpet in the tender “Stay With You.” It’s something of a surprise in a soundscape dominated by grooves and paved improvisational avenues.

In spite of the equal contributions from each musician throughout and Katché’s own understated role as leader, the drummer’s cymbals are truly the key to unlocking this album’s secrets. The opening “Swing Piece” is emblematic in this regard. It takes its first stretches of awakening on a soft layer of piano, over which Brunborg and Palladino sprinkle their dust, setting up a pulse that moves us to the end. But it’s Katché’s sparkle that really sets this vessel along the set list’s meticulous progression from horizon to horizon. To be sure, his bandmates interlock expertly in “Being Ben” and “Shine And Blue,” but the cymbals break surface at every turn with almost neon brilliance.

Katché has always been a melodic player, but on Third Round he turns up the dial on atmosphere, brushing around the beat a little in “Senses” and lending fragrance to the blossoming “Out Take Number 9,” a nominally expendable studio blip that turns out to be a real highlight. In the smokily final “Urban Shadow,” he paints two eyes closing in anticipation of a dance that never quite comes. Then again, that’s the beauty of Katché’s music: delicate yet always engaging, it holds you just enough to let you know it’s there if you need its comfort.

(To hear samples of Third Round, click here.)

Alban Berg/Karl Amadeus Hartmann: Tief in der Nacht (ECM New Series 2153)

| Tyran Grillo

Tief in der Nacht

Alban Berg
Karl Amadeus Hartmann
Tief in der Nacht

Juliane Banse soprano
Aleksandar Madžar piano
Recorded March 2009, Historischer Reitstadel, Neumarkt
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

A grey man goes through the silent wood
singing a dismal song.
The birds at once fall silent.
The spruces tower so mute and sultry
with the heavy turmoil of their branches.
A sound rumbles in distant depths.
–Johannes Schlaf, “Rain”

When discussing Alban Berg, it’s almost impossible not to include Arnold Schoenberg, a mentor of whom he was the brightest protégé. While Berg grew into his own as a defining composer of the early 20th century, in scholarship and on record his early songs were relatively ignored at the time of this release. More than a transition stage, these songs embody key qualities of the composer’s output to come. The hand of Schoenberg is felt less in the music, which still has a foot in the waning Romantic era, and more in the assembly, as the Sieben frühe Lieder (1905–1908) that open the program were extracted from a set of thirty written under his teacher’s careful scrutiny. Setting the poetry of Carl Hauptmann, Nikolaus Lenau, Theodor Storm, Rainer Maria Rilke, Johannes Schlaf, Otto Erich Hartleben, and Paul Hohenberg, these seven songs are stippled with shadows and patches of forest, and the apparent ease with which soprano Juliane Banse and pianist Aleksandar Madžar weave through them enriches the listening experience. With titles like “Nacht” (Night) and “Traumgekrönt” (Crowned in Dreams), one can already sense the nocturnal imagery before a single word is sung. “You came,” goes a verse of the latter, “and softly as in a fairy tale the night resounded.” Thus the lyrics lead us into a world of fantasy. Whether carried on the back of “Die Nachtigall” (The Nightingale) or brightened in the final clip of “Sommertage” (Summer Days), each word turns charcoal to ash and ash to flame.

Rilke, Schlaf, and Storm further populate the Jugendlieder (1904-08) of the same period, along with poetry by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Carl Busse, and Peter Altenberg. Now the verses as well as the music are more colorful and, in light of Berg’s compact developments, genuinely impressionistic. From melancholic lullabies—“I mourn lost happiness,” sings Banse in “Erster Verlust” (First Loss)—to the Mozartian patterning of “Hoffnung” (Hope), composer and musicians draw from a nuanced palette of evocative pigments. Schlaf’s “Regen” (Rain) makes for a beautiful highlight, finding in the music a life only implied in the text. All of this culminates in “Mignon,” which expresses a longing for some idyllic land that, while beyond the reach of flesh, blooms across the landscape of art.

Two settings of the same poem—“Schließe mir die Augen beide” (Close Both My Eyes) by Storm—complete the Berg selections. The first, written in 1907, is already a masterful explosion and re-piecing of utterance, while the 1925 version works almost scientifically to balance freedom and precision. What was once a telescope now becomes a microscope.

Banse is extraordinary, not only for her diction but also for the steadiness of her footing as she journeys across Madžar’s constantly shifting topography. Berg is always felt, and Schoenberg over his shoulder, assuring that every change happens in mutual understanding, so that densities and clarities alike always share a strand.

One of those strands surely leads to Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Lamento (1955), a work that in its original 1936/37 form bore dedication to Berg. Like Hartmann, it survived the war—during which time he studied with another Schoenberg protégé, Anton Webern, in Vienna—with not a few dark clouds in its memory. For this, Hartmann sets three poems of 17th-century Silesian dramatist Andreas Gryphius. One may not feel this as a trilogy, but as a continuous gradation of dusk to dawn. “Elend” (Misery) compares earthly and heavenly troops, and engages the wonder of God’s non-action. Although the light flowers in Banse’s delivery, the geometric diffusion that follows casts a pessimistic shadow to be obliterated in the central song, “An Meine Mutter” (To My Mother). This eulogistic prayer acknowledges the potency of the divine in the realm beyond, a realm in which grace leaks out through Banse’s powerful highs. In the final “Friede” (Peace), she emphasizes the core message: “We once were dead; now peace a life is giving.” The pianism throughout is exquisitely written and executed, and leaves us, like the album as a whole, to reckon with the authority of silence.

Christian Wallumrød Ensemble: Fabula Suite Lugano (ECM 2118)

| Tyran Grillo

Fabula

Christian Wallumrød Ensemble
Fabula Suite Lugano

Christian Wallumrød piano, harmonium, toy piano
Eivind Lønning trumpet
Gjermund Larsen violin, Hardanger fiddle, viola
Tanja Orning cello
Giovanna Pessi baroque harp
Per Oddvar Johansen drums, percussion, glockenspiel
Recorded June 2009, Auditorio Radio Svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Christian Wallumrød is a court composer of our time, and we are his servants. His distinctly crafted chamber pieces on The Zoo Is Far ushered in a certain specificity and microcosmic style. Replacing trumpeter Arve Henriksen from that previous session is newcomer Eivind Lønning, whose lungs brighten the patina of Giovanna Pessi’s Baroque harp in “Scarlatti Sonata” and lend rounded contrast to the violin of Gjermund Larsen in the modestly titled “Duo.” Regulars Tanja Orning on cello and drummer-percussionist Per Oddvar Johansen flesh out the palette with insight and exactitude.

Wallumrød

This time, as Wallumrød’s sound-world paints through a new galactic stencil, he and his bandmates show a deeper commitment to the integrity and possibilities of atmospheric improvisation. Reference points are as varied as the album’s 18 tracks. “Quote Funebre” takes its inspiration from the music of Olivier Messiaen and Morton Feldman, which Wallumrød spins into what he calls “small harmonic events,” each a stepping stone for Larsen’s commenting fiddle, while the Swedish folk-inspired “Jumpa” (in two versions) lifts off agile feet into the future. For the most part, however, the core of each piece is a solar system unto itself, blown to dust and melted down into a rough gem. Here an emerald, there a ruby.

Pessi’s harping constitutes a defining voice within this modest choir. Her affinity for description infuses pieces like “Dancing Deputies” and “Blop” with tactility, foiling percussive undercurrents like staples across the skin of time, while her pathways light the way through the barely-touched instruments of “Snake.” Johansen is another, catching wind with wings in the descending trills of “Solemn Mosquitoes” and pulsing through the veins of “I Had A Mother Who Could Swim.” Through all of this mimesis, Wallumrød himself shines like a broken firefly, its light turned to liquid. The effect is somehow otherworldly. Even his toy piano in “Valse Dolcissima” feels less like the remnant of a human childhood and more like the language of an alien race who anthem is his concluding “Solo”—the benediction of an artist at play in his telescopic wanderings.

Alexander Lonquich: Robert Schumann/Heinz Holliger (ECM New Series 2104)

| Tyran Grillo

Schumann:Holliger

Alexander Lonquich
Schumann/Holliger

Alexander Lonquich piano
Recorded November 2008 at Auditorio Radio Svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Alexander Lonquich follows up Plainte Calme, an all-French program that introduced ECM listeners to this erudite German pianist, with a pairing from which New Series aficionados are sure to derive much pleasure. Composers Robert Schumann and Heinz Holliger may have intersected more recently on Aschenmusik, but here’s where it all began.

Schumann’s 1838 Kreisleriana and Holliger’s 1999 Partita share much in common. Both bear dedications to pianists (Schumann’s to Frédéric Chopin and Holliger’s to András Schiff), both are overflowing with ideas, and both immerse themselves in narrative to the last measure. Lonquich traverses the original 1838 version of the Kreisleriana, which, according to the composer, was “heavily revised,” many of its intricacies elided or otherwise obscured in its now-standard 1850 print. Lonquich notes an ego shift from the pianistic Schumann to the symphonic Schumann, but argues for the psychic exactitude of the earlier version, less glossed by a man rightly concerned with his public image. Indeed, the later changes “sacrificed many subtleties to the need for simplicity and clarity,” making the Kreisleriana, in modern parlance, more user-friendly.

Schumann’s wildly popular performance piece presents to us, as Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich notes in the CD booklet, “the dark, nocturnal sides of romanticism: wild dreams, phantasms, obsession, insanity.” Taking E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr and its protagonist, Johannes Kreisler, as inspiration (the novel shares another ECM connection with György Kurtág, whose Hommage à R. Sch. also makes reference), the music reveals a growing dissatisfaction with what Schumann saw as the piano’s limitations. Not that we have reason to agree. The sweeping cascades that open the collection make for some invigorating listening. From cautious steps to headlong rush, we are led up spiral staircases and over archways, following Lonquich’s expert navigations of quietude interspersed with flushes of activity. With such a robust palette at our scrutiny, there’s plenty to pique the interest of repeat customers—whether in the reflective fourth movement (every bit as enchanting as Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata) or in the sportive seventh—all the way to the curlicue finish.

Schumann has long occupied the “true center” of Holliger’s music thoughts, and in the Partita it’s easy to see why. Jungheinrich argues for a romantic affinity in Holliger’s penchant for the “fractured and insecure,” a characterization that in this instance takes sometimes wistful, sometimes complex form. If the title seems to cast its net over Schumann into Bach, it’s only because it seeks a structural traction in the face of romanticism’s self-deprecating infrastructures. Shuffled into the usual Prelude, Fugue, and Chaconne—all of which reflect Holliger’s prodigious ability to twist templates into deeply personal effects—are a few brilliant additions. Most notable are two Intermezzi marked “Sphynxen für Sch.” These achieve the cavernous atmosphere of their namesake by strumming inside the piano, sometimes in the barest whisper of skin on string, amid a pollination of microscopic adjustments. Another clever insertion is the “Csárdás obstiné,” a strangely beguiling vignette of interlocking helixes that seems a nod to Franz Liszt: an intriguing choice, given the complicated nature of Liszt’s relationship with Schumann. Such strategies, however, are to be expected of Holliger, a composer who has always indulged in a wry sense of patterning.

In addition to being a unique recital performed by its ideal interpreter, this is one of the finest pianos ECM has ever recorded. The instrument simply shines at Lonquich’s fingertips, as if eager to feast on every note until only resonant midden remains.

François Couturier: Un jour si blanc (ECM 2103)

| Tyran Grillo

Un jour si blanc François Couturier
Un jour si blanc

François Couturier piano
Recorded September 2008 at Auditorio Radio Svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After a handful of collaborative efforts (most notably with oudist Anouar Brahem) at last we encounter François Couturier unaccompanied, feeling his way through an artful selection of 17 (mostly) improvised vignettes. Although nominally distinct from his first leader date, Nostalghia – Song for Tarkovsky, it is in fact the continuation of that very project, the second in a trilogy completed in 2011 by the self-titled Tarkovsky Quartet. Continuing with the cinematic theme, Un jour si blanc takes its title from a poem by Arseny Tarkovsky, as recited in the 1975 film The Mirror, directed by son Andrei. Drawing from a distilled yet no less vivid palette, Couturier pursues themes spanning the robust and the fleeting across an ever-shifting terrain. The album traces a diurnal arc, waking in the soft hues of “L’aube” and “Un calme matin orange” and drifting off to sleep in the shadows of “Par les soirs bleus d’été” and “Moonlight.” Between them runs an elemental cross of fertility and fantasy. Couturier treats every note carefully at these outer margins, cradling it like a blown eggshell primed for his delicate scrim. Within that frame stretches a vast pond, the surface of which quivers with the raindrops of an oncoming storm. Reflections of trees are lifted like decals by his right hand in “Lune de miel” and stuck to sky in the highly charged “Le soleil rouge.” Yet despite my own vivid associations, the music is for the most part earthy and unmasked. In this regard, the program’s three homage pieces are clearest in their expressivity. Bearing dedications to Arthur Rimbaud (“Sensation”), J. S. Bach (“L’intemporel”), and Andrei Tarkovsky himself (the title track), each embraces a different fragment of the mirror, much like the film it honors, as if it were the cell of a larger, divine body. They harbor scents of memories, of places soon to be reduced to ashes…

The Mirror

While connections to certain images may be clear, also clear is that this is no soundtrack. Rather, it is a tracking of sound in a way only synaesthesists might fully appreciate. Much of it feels aquatic, for example, but only the subtlest of changes tells us whether we are floating in fresh or swimming in salt. Of the former flavor, we have the four-part “Colors,” which, unlike the piano on which it is played, echoes with the hymns of an amphibian cloister. Of the latter, the diptych “Clair-obscur” grinds a tangier brand of jazz against the crags. This intriguing album—one of ECM’s most intimate solo piano recordings to date—reveals an artist sensitive to the personal science of adaptation. Like the track “Voyage d’hiver,” it sails on waves of depth magic and brings forward a profound realization that, although experience and memories may be ephemeral, the past is infallible. (To hear samples of Un jour si blanc, click here.)