Tout Court: Les Violons du Roy Brings Late Baroque to Bailey

| Tyran Grillo

Les Violons du Roy
Bernard Labadie music director
Emmanuel Pahud flute
Cornell University, Bailey Hall
October 19, 2012
8:00 pm

More than anyone, we have Frederick the Great (1712-1786) to thank for last Friday night’s program at Bailey Hall. Though progeny to the post-Enlightenment despotism of the times, the Prussian king was first and foremost a student of the arts. Enchanted as a lad of 16 by the virtuosity of Johann Joachim Quantz, he immediately began studying with the German flutist and, much to his warmongering father’s chagrin, added Czech violinist Franz Benda and Johann Sebastian Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel to his roster at court. In due time his sonic coterie would grow to 50, the burgeoning hub from which our artists for the evening, Les Violins du Roy, drew their effervescent bows. The chamber orchestra hails from Québec City, where musical director Bernard Labadie has since 1984 nurtured its reputation for scintillating musicianship and spirited playing of the 17th- and 18th-century material in which it excels. Flutist Emmanuel Pahud, fresh from his tenure at EMI Classics with harpsichordist/conductor Trevor Pinnock, brought his expertise to bear with memorable panache.

Like many creatively inclined patriarchs before him, Frederick fancied himself a composer and penned the Flute Concerto No. 3 in C Major that proved Pahud’s delicacy with his entrance. Its stately dance evoked vine-drenched courtyards and butterfly wings, each a memory passing slowly like the reflections of clouds across water. An intimate interlude cast the final movement like a ray of light: swift, sure, and heaven-sent. Before this was the concert’s opener by Benda. The lilting cadences of his Sinfonia No. 1 in C Major spawned buoyant and programmatic side paths. Particularly evocative were the cautious footsteps in the Andante, like a lover for whom the forest was both prison and escape. Every sweep of violins painted a branch heavy with the foliage of parting.

While competent enough, these two pieces were thin on the ground in light of Quantz’s masterful G-Major Flute Concerto. From the luscious open chords of the Allegro, one thing was clear: here was the living echo unheard in the preceding architecture. Bach and Vivaldi peeked through that distinct veneer like recessive genes in search of expression. A heart-tugging slow movement, brimming with imagery for the hungry ear, found its dearest traction in the intermittent pizzicato shared by double bass and cellos. Incidentally, my newborn son, for whom this was his first live concert, at last settled into sleep during this passage, and on through the blossom of the final Presto. Transcendent.

J.S. Bach made his requisite appearance through the Ricercare from his Musical Offering. This seminal six-voice fugue is an epic in and of itself, and made for grave and inescapable listening. Cinematic before there ever was such a concept, its genius was all the clearer for Les Violons du Roy’s weighted playing—impressive after the concert’s gallant first half. The music of C.P.E. then brought its expressive foil through two works. His Symphony in B Minor was a treat to hear in close quarters. With sparkling invention and drama, it showed us a unique voice indeed, managing to step away from his father’s legacy while trailing just enough of it like a Peter Pan shadow. So too with the Flute Concerto in A Major. Despite being a younger work, it harbors some of his most mature lyricism in the Largo. From its inward sigh and downright Beethovenian tension in the lower strings, we felt a heart broken and restored. This made the final Allegro all the more cathartic for its implosive double stops. Pahud excelled here most of all, navigating a geography that was jagged but never sharp. The latter was a guiding philosophy for an orchestra that knows how to spike its punch, for even at their most intense, under Labadie’s direction the strings were never grating. Likewise, Pahud’s tone struck rare balance between the shrill and rounded capabilities of his instrument.

It would have been a travesty to have had a world-renowned flutist and Baroque chamber orchestra and not be treated to Father Bach’s famous Badinerie from the B-minor Orchestral Suite No. 2. In this respect they delivered with embellishments galore that had us leaving in the same laughter and lightness of spirit that this delightful encore provided.

Ricardo Villalobos/Max Loderbauer: Re: ECM (ECM 2211/12)

| Tyran Grillo

Re: ECM

Ricardo Villalobos electronics
Max Loderbauer electronics
Soundstructures by Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer
Developed and produced at Laika Studio, Berlin, September-December 2009
Pre-mastering: Rashad Becker
Mastering: Manfred Eicher and Christoph Stickel
Original recordings produced by Manfred Eicher

The term “acousmatic” was first used in reference to the philosopher Pythagoras, who delivered his lectures from behind a screen while his students sat mutely on the other side. Many centuries later saw the introduction of European closed-eye listening practices, blindfolding audiences to ensure a musical experience devoid of visual bias or distraction. Yet it would take musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer to realize the deeper potential of such a situation when he replaced screen with loudspeakers, from which issued sound collages of indeterminable origin. Now the ears wore the blindfold. According to Schaeffer, imaginary sounds are ontologically distinct from the objects that produce them. They begin with an effect and work back to cause. The acousmatic experience, then, fundamentally separates sound from source.

This equation is never foolproof. Once the sound in question has been activated it takes on a familiarity of its own. Where Schaeffer perhaps shortchanged his own convictions was in never turning the mirror around, for the mise-en-abyme of his sonic philosophy indicates not only an external distinction, but also an internal one—namely, that in their solicitation found sounds morph into experiences in and of themselves. The severance is a divided cell, an audible illusion whereby infinity speaks.

Another possibility: that, even in the intimate knowledge of a source, the acousmatic experience may thrive. Acousmaticity depends on spacing of source, case, and effect; on reversibility between inner and outer. At its heart is an aporia. It can never be more than an interpretive effect of the listener. In such a context, our instinct pushes us toward treating sound as material, especially when we can hold recorded art in our hands and manipulate its realization at will. The moment we press PLAY, two temporal realities—that of the recording and that of the listening—share a space. Time collapses.

With this in mind, I turn to minimal techno wunderkind Ricardo Villalobos and experimentalist Max Loderbauer, who were given permission by Manfred Eicher to dip their hands into his label’s unfathomable catalogue and finger-paint a fresh compositional framework of suggestion and inner-space. As a self-styled “synthesis of two musical worlds,” Re: ECM does, in fact, create a third, acousmatic one. Without access to individual tracks, the Berlin-based DJs looked to separable bits for sampling, and to the gaps therein. In so doing, they went beyond effect to aftereffect, charting the ghosts of these pristinely recorded sounds (which, no matter how you splice them, betray their source). Yet in the hands of this artful duo, even the obsessive ECM listener (points to self) will find there is still an enigma to be had. Much of this feeling derives from the fact that Villalobos and Loderbauer took an improvisational approach to layering these loops and elements in the studio. Their acousmaticity goes from the outside in.

At the risk of oversimplifying, I am tempted to separate this recording’s mesh into its classical and jazz streams. Though the genres are not so distant, their approach manifests differently throughout. Looking to the latter first, we find a marked balance of organic and electronic. More than balance, even, is the unity of these two categories—again, not so distant. Said unity comes mostly from the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble, specifically the Fabula Suite Lugano, making adroit use of Giovanna Pessi’s baroque harp in “Reblop” and its counterpart, “Replob.” Both are sparkling odes. Pianos unravel chains of icicles, swaying hand in hand with satellite interruptions and wave distortions. The inevitable nod to Jon Hassell comes in “Requote,” for which a cunning horn winds its way in a bowed expanse of intimate measure. “Redetach” ends the album on a snare- and cymbal-driven journey into the center of a vast digital biome. Gloopy and viscous, this bubbling drone touches feet to ground, its back to sunset. The remaining Wallumrød refraction comes in “Recat,” this time from The Zoo Is Far, for a groovy, if subdued, drum ‘n’ bass vibe. Gut strings wince in self-reflective heartbeats as the ghosts of drums flip from open to shut. With its scattered rhythms, rusty veneer, and granola crunch, this track takes due cue from Boards of Canada. Out of this shadowy enclave we are dropped like buckshot into water for “Retimeless.” Penning its tale from the ink of Timeless, its windblown beats and vocal blips dance their gavotte in moonlight. Miroslav Vitous’s Emergence affords another fond look back at some of the label’s classics, as does “Rensenada,” drawn from Bennie Maupin’s The Jewel In The Lotus. Whereas “Reemergence” lives on the underside of a snare drum, the other lumbers across its top surface before liftoff. Louis Sclavis makes a knotted cameo in “Reannounce.” The raw material this time is his L’imparfait des langues. Metals and reeds flick their throats away like the cigarettes that have destroyed them, leaving a pile of dreams for ashes. Clay percussion trades places with outer contacts, devolving into a contest of morals for the sample-addicted. The Wolfert Brederode Quartet’s Currents finds new life in “Recurrence.” As much a mantra as a challenge to silence, it finds itself flanged for want of a sharper blade. Enrico Rava’s TATI feathers the wings of “Rebird,” a distorted pathway of grace.

From Russian composer Alexander Knaifel comes the bulk of the album’s classical skeleton. As the dark side of this moon, it puts the emotional back into the rhythm-formula of the club, seeking in its body-to-body connections something akin to the heart-to-heart. Much of this pulse comes from Svete Tikhiy and Amicta Sole, giving us soprano Tatiana Melentieva’s otherworldly rise above all in “Resvete.” In such primordial surroundings, she sounds like Cathy Berberian reborn, radiant still through a tintinnabulation of brushes and cymbals. Distant sirens splash through smoke and cloud, each indistinguishable from the other against the Ligeti-like whispers of “Retikhiy.” Where in this ritual passage rhythm remains paramount, sandy and free, in “Resole” it recedes for a spacy vibe reminiscent of Vesptertine-era Björk. BLAZHENSTVA yields its embryonic “Reblazhenstva,” laying choral strains on a bedding of digital beats while a cello spasms and swoons from its own melancholy residue. Swiss violinist Paul Giger’s Ignis makes a morose appearance in “Reshadub.” Its drums tremble before an oncoming train of opaque intentions, crumbling into radio dial anxieties at the moment of death. This leaves only Arvo Pärt, whose Kanon pokajanen inspires the throat-sung drones and sacred curtain of “Rekondakion.”

All of this shares a border with a glitch aesthetic, by which the crust of representation cracks open to reveal something intrepid and uncompromising. Its skin hosts as many nests of reality as there are humans, each a node of anxiety. Whether or not this anxiety yields pleasure has much to do with personal preference, but also with the fact that all sounds are phenomena. Only our allegiance determines their marketability. And so, if we instead let the organic experiments of Villalobos and Loderbauer breathe as they will, if we avoid weighing down their pockets with texts such as this, then the soundness of their message will grow of its own accord, rampant and unbridled in the photosynthesis of blind appreciation.

(My thanks to Brian Kane, whose discussion of acousmatics gave me context for the present review. To hear samples of Re: ECM, click here.)

Terje Rypdal: Odyssey – In Studio & In Concert (ECM 2136-38)

| Tyran Grillo

Terje Rypdal
Odyssey – In Studio & In Concert

Terje Rypdal electric guitar, synthesizer, soprano saxophone
Torbjørn Sunde trombone
Brynjulf Blix organ
Sveinung Hovensjø bass guitar
Svein Christiansen drums
Swedish Radio Jazz Group

Odyssey (ECM 1067/68)
Recorded August 1975 at Arne Bendiksen Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

My first encounter with Odyssey came in the late nineties. Still young in my ECM explorations and having just barely crossed over into Jan Garbarek’s Visible World, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the journey that label stalwart Terje Rypdal (a name as yet unfamiliar) had just taken me on. The CD fell out of rotation quickly, I’m afraid to say, buried under the pile of New Series albums then dominating my attention. Years later, and well into my own listening odyssey, I returned to it, only to find that it had never left me.

Rypdal has, of course, been under the ECM umbrella since almost the very beginning. The release of his self-titled debut in 1971 sparked an intrepid flame that continues to burn through a wide spectrum of colors. As the informative liner notes from John Kelman tell us, the band that was to define Odyssey was the product of circumstance. Drawing on a pool of musicians from previous sessions, including bassist Sveinung Hovensjø from 1973’s What Comes After, he also welcomed unexpected talents into the fold, such as drummer Svein Christiansen and organist Brynjulf Blix, the latter of whom contributed heavily to the album’s well-aged luster. The resulting sound proved a defining one, as inescapable bass lines danced touch-and-go with the guitarist’s unbridled narratives. We hear this most in the solid underpinnings of “Midnite.” Hovensjø lays down the rules for all of its 17 minutes, leaving Rypdal to stretch them to the pathos of his progressive solitude. Those carefully pedaled strings and alluring soprano sax (played by Rypdal himself) careen through its nocturnal billows with humble ferocity as Torbjørn Sunde brings comparable light to the sky with muted trombone. If the plangent cry of “Darkness Falls” that precedes this and opens the album tells us anything, it is that here is a terrain of emotional clarity and immediacy. The magic of this rendering lies in its continual flux, in its refusal to settle into one topographic pattern. The following “Adagio” plunges the album to new depths, even as it raises the bar from which it hangs. Solina strings owe their thickness to the charcoal yet discernible picture into which Rypdal’s guitar spills ether: a shout of autonomy in its coolest disguise. “Better Off Without You” walks in organic circles, occasionally poking its head above the watery depths of Blix’s ostinato haze, keeping an eye trained “Over Birkerot.” In this punchier setting, Rypdal keeps his feet planted amid a chain of horn blasts (think Hans Zimmer’s Inception soundtrack on a smaller scale). His cathartic rock-out midway through is a chance to let hair fly and pulls open the ribbon of “Fare Well.” Along with the final “Ballade,” it finds the musicians in languid suspension, crossing vibraphone-like paths toward elegiac destinations. It may feel blinding, but we can be sure this light comes to us by the force of a distant hope.

Rypdal has an incisive way of building anticipation, of dropping his solos at the most carefully thought-out points, his guitar an endless book of codas. Like the photo that graces its cover, Odyssey captures the life of a nomadic musician in candid monochrome. And while the album had been reissued on CD prior to this New & Old Masters set, the 24-minute “Rolling Stone” sadly did not survive that first digital makeover. An organ-infused underwater symphony of legendary status, its primal bass line and whammy bar ornaments flow like a meeting between Bill Laswell and Robin Guthrie before bringing on the album’s most rock-oriented developments. It also charts Rypdal in a pivotal moment of self-discovery where his tone began to coalesce into the sound for which he has come to be known. What a treasure to have in restored form.

As if this weren’t already enough to celebrate, ECM has gone above and beyond with another gem from the archives:

Unfinished Highballs
Recorded June 1976 by Swedish Radio, Estrad, Södertälje
Recording producer: Bosse Broberg
Engineer: Ola Kejving

This commissioned radio performance from 1976 features a streamlined Odyssey band (sans Sunde) fronting the 15-piece Swedish Radio Jazz Group. At under four minutes, the title track might blow by like the foreword to a novel were it not for its sheer theatricality. Rypdal’s vision cuts the darkness with a film projector’s eye, and blends into the Matterhorn bass of “The Golden Eye.” Icy synths challenge the thaw of Blix’s electric piano as fiery horns uncurl their tongues from the firmament and lick the snowcapped mountains of an unbridled story. Rypdal lifts this image skyward on waxen wings, which, unlike those of Icarus, are impervious to the light on which they feed. Next on this spacy ride is “Scarlet Mistress.” At once sharpened by muted trumpet and rounded by swinging textures, it gives wide relief to Rypdal’s laser etchings. One feels in its background the kick of eras when music’s enervation thrived in proportion to the harshness of its sociopolitical climate, so that the clubs of the 20s and 30s resurrect themselves and dance their ghostly dance. The soprano returns for a spell, for all a moonbeam peeking out from the clouds into a well of chords that pull us into “Dawn.” Melodies unwind, each a snake wrapped around the wrist of a god who whips it free into the glittering sky. Some enticing bass work dances amid Rypdal’s shimmers of water-harp enchantment, lowering us on a fishhook into the depths of “Dine And Dance To The Music Of The Waves,” in which sitar-like sounds pave a Nazca runway for the soprano’s grand coverage of worldly joy. Christiansen is the contortionist’s backbone of “Talking Back.” Sporting also high-flying reeds from Lennart Åberg and Ulf Andersson, its attunement is downright symbiotic. A real highlight. And speaking of which, where else to end but in “Bright Lights – Big City,” closing out the set on a signature dronescape.

With such a full sense of architecture to explore, it’s no wonder this newly unearthed companion has held its shape. In elevating the big band to a level of orchestral aliveness so rarely achieved, Rypdal has left a mark that is not only indelible, but also inimitable. With a nostalgic sound that distinguishes so much of ECM’s output from the decade, Odyssey – In Studio & In Concert shares the pedestal with Keith Jarrett’s Sleeper as release event of the year.

<< Eberhard Weber: Yellow Fields (ECM 1066)
>> Kenny Wheeler: Gnu High (ECM 1069)

 

OM: Rautionaha (JAPO 60016)

| Tyran Grillo

OM
Rautionaha

Urs Leimgruber soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, percussion
Christy Doran guitar
Bobby Burri bass
Fredy Studer drums, percussion
Recorded December 1976 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg
Engineer Martin Wieland
Produced by Thomas Stöwsand

The Swiss quartet of OM, which found just the freedom it needed in ECM’s studios for a good decade, flung open the doors with colorful aplomb on Rautionaha, a rare JAPO release. To this early date the group brings a kaleidoscope of shared experience. The sound is appropriately splintered. Guitarist Christy Doran pens the kick-in-the-gut opener, “For Ursi.” Unable to resist the attraction from the get-go, saxophonist Urs Leimgruber colors the twilight with his heady tenor, chaining ladders of virtuosity with attentive form. His gurgling expositions of momentary abandon give Doran just the break he needs to cast a reverberant magic with tails flying. The superb rhythm work from percussionist Fredy Studer and bassist Bobby Burri completes this wall of light. The latter gives us “Stephanie,” his first of two cuts. This meditation of gongs and electronics coalesces into some fine soliloquies from the composer, while the full drumming and six-string picking shimmer like morning sun on the horizon’s lip. The prickly tenor is a bonus. Speaking of which, Leimgruber puts his writing to the test in “Song For My Lady.” Something of a ballad, in it he becomes a crying wayfarer who walks the same circle of self-reflection until there is only music left of the one that produced it. Lifting this ponderous weight off our shoulders is Burri’s title offering, which grows like weed in a groovy embrace. His bass work glows here. Leimgruber opts for soprano, reaching heights of multi-phonic brilliance that no footstool can reach. The effect is nothing short of extraordinary. The quartet ends on a whimsical punctuation mark: a flag without a country, a star without a sky. In the absence of definite shape, we are free to induce our own.

Lennart Åberg: Partial Solar Eclipse (JAPO 60023)

| Tyran Grillo

Lennart Åberg
Partial Solar Eclipse

Bertil Lövgren trumpet, fluegelhorn
Ulf Adåker trumpet, fluegelhorn
Jan Kohlin trumpet, fluegelhorn
Håken Nyquist french horn, trombone, fluegelhorn
Stephen Franckevich trumpet (VI)
Lars Olofsson trombone
Sven Larsson bass trombone, tuba
Jörgen Johansson trombone (VI)
Lennart Åberg soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, alto saxophone
Ulf Andersson alto saxophone, piccolo, flute
Tommy Koverhult soprano flute, tenor flute
Erik Nilsson baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, flute
Bobo Stenson piano, electric piano
Harald Svensson synthesizer (I, IV)
Jan Tolf electric guitar (I, II, III, VI)
Palle Danielsson bass (I-V)
Stefan Brolund Fender bass (I, II, VI)
Jon Christensen drums
Leroy Lowe drums
Okay Temiz percussion (I, II, III)
Recorded September 5-9, 1977 at Metronome Studios, Stockholm
Engineer: Rune Persson, Metronome
Produced by Håken Elmquist

Swedish saxophonist Lennart Åberg assembles a force to be reckoned with for this out-of-print JAPO release. Fronting a 20-piece ensemble that includes early appearances by pianist Bobo Stenson, bassist Palle Danielsson, and drummer Jon Christensen, Partial Solar Eclipse plays out in a six-part suite of epic proportions. The trumpet-led swell of Part I gives way to a groovy bass line amid big band brilliance infused with Brazilian percussion (courtesy of Okay Temiz). A soaring solo from Åberg flirts with the clouds even as it transcends them in fiery sunset. The twinned bass action from Stefan Brolund and Danielsson impels the spirit toward Stenson’s winding finish. Out of these dense beginnings comes a mosaic of hues and textures. From the flanged ground line and backing horns of Part II, which sound like a warped version of “Baby, You’re a Rich Man,” to the oozing finality of Part VI, the album as a whole bursts with a jazz that squeals, “I made it!” Jan Tolf’s guitar work is the conclusive highlight, along with the florid and soulful tenor work of Åberg himself. Between the two we find the Motown edge of Part III, with its radiant flute and oceanic pianism, and the killer baritone work in Part IV of Erik Nilsson, who also unleashes a fabulous bass clarinet solo over the chalky backdrop of Part V.

This is an album that foregrounds itself by foiling the otherworldliness of all that came before. In so doing, it offers the glare of its namesake without the need for glasses. It’s an intense thrill ride, to be sure, but one that offers choice rewards even (if not especially) for those not tall enough to enter.

Mal Waldron: The Call (JAPO 60001)

| Tyran Grillo

Mal Waldron
The Call

Mal Waldron electric piano
Jimmy Jackson organ
Eberhard Weber electric bass
Fred Braceful drums
Recorded February 1, 1971 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg

Seeing as Mal Waldron inspired Manfred Eicher to put out his first release, Free at Last, on what was to become the legendary ECM label, it is only fitting that his name should also grace the first release of its relatively short-lived companion imprint, JAPO. Through the magic of digital reissue, many of these once elusive albums can now be experienced for the first time, if not anew. Dipping into the waters of The Call (not to be confused with the Charles Lloyd record of the same name) is like tripping on the past as if it were the Here and Now. Over two long takes, averaging 20 minutes each, he and an all-star team transport us to a warm and inviting sound that is equal parts hard bop jam, psychedelic dream, and free jazz meditation.

The title track brings an energizing sound, slick and classic as can be. Bassist and future ECM mainstay Eberhard Weber, along with drummer Fred Braceful, spurs us through some thickly settled spaces, courtesy of Jimmy Jackson on the organ, all led by Waldron’s interplanetary surf. This joyful epic peaks in a glorious bouquet of heat distortion, smooth as it is sere. Lively solo action from Weber and Braceful pushes the band’s sound into delicate relief, throwing us into a dark groove before restoring us to light.

“Thoughts” is an altogether different spoonful. A diary of aural scribblings, it unfolds private wishes with meticulous patience. After a watery intro, Waldron lays down a chalky little vamp. Subtler denouements and a twist of introspection complete the cocktail. You’ll find no miniature umbrella peeking out above this rim…only the curve of a listening ear. Waldron skips us like a stone into heavier grooves, which in return spiral into whispers. Drums curl inward, and in these quiet crawlspaces between the floorboards of the mind, we take our rest, lost among the dust bunnies whose filaments are string and wire and electric current.

This is music that tastes exactly like what it’s made of.


Alternate cover

Marcin Wasilewski Trio: Faithful (ECM 2208)

| Tyran Grillo

Marcin Wasilewski Trio
Faithful

Marcin Wasilewski piano
Slawomir Kurkiewicz double-bass
Michal Miskiewicz drums
Recorded August 2010, Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Technical Assistant: Marco Strigl (RSI)
Produced by Manfred Eicher

For its third ECM outing, the Marcin Wasilewski Trio expands the precious spaces delineated to such patient effect on TRIO and January. A pianist of uncommon insight, Wasilewski brings out the minimal best in bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz, who in turn inspire reflections on those keys that might not otherwise reveal themselves in solitude. Together, they plant the seed of the album’s ever-expanding flower with a curious opener: “An den kleinen Radioapparat.” This song, by German composer Hanns Eisler (so vivaciously immortalized in Heiner Goebbels’s tribute), is meant to evoke the voices of radio, which haunt the now wordless protagonist in exile. After a 4.5-minute wait at this remote station of smooth and translucent contours, we are welcomed aboard the “Night Train To You.” The first of five Wasilewski tunes, its landscapes bleed watercolor beyond our window. We feel at home somehow, despite being so far from it. Yet with such attentive passengers sharing our car, how could it be otherwise? Their erudition is so fully ingrained into the surroundings that they are free to jump on and off these tracks at will, laying their own along the way. A riffling snare pulls us aside and whispers timetables into our ears, while Kurkiewicz supplies the dimly lit lanterns, the art deco screens, and lavish accoutrements of an Orient Express dining car. If we are the serviettes folded so neatly beside those empty plates, then the lush cut of the title track is the main course that awaits our dabbing. Shingled wave lines on the shore are the language of this Ornette Coleman classic, constantly redrawn to the rhythm of the tide. Which is very much like the flip-flopping of rubato and steady cells in “Mosaic,” also by Wasilewski. The rhythm section’s current polishes our ears to the smoothness of river-rolled stones, culminating in a sparkling waterfall finish. The long exhalation of “Ballad Of The Sad Young Man” follows. Its liberation of youthful fears and more mature reflections make for an utterly captivating experience. Then again, the tenderness of “Oz Guizos” (by Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal) makes the last feel like sandpaper in comparison, standing as one of the gentlest and most heart-stilling pieces in the ECM catalogue. Its heartbreak drips like rain from leaves after a quiet storm. The somber piano intro of “Song For Świrek” leads us into the album’s grooviest execution. Written by Wasilewski in memory of Marek Świerkowski, a close friend of the trio, its Ferris wheel pace turns skyward with the breadth of a hang glider. Miskiewicz caresses his kit, appropriately enough, as if it were in need of healing. The pianist’s final offering is “Woke Up In The Desert,” indeed a haze, a dream, a sun pressed into the scrapbook of the sky. Paul Bley’s “Big Foot” finds itself duly revived since its first label appearance on Paul Bley with Gary Peacock. The lively sasquatch of a solo from Kurkiewicz mixes wonderfully with the cameraman’s excitement in the piano. A true delight that reveals also superb detail in the drumming. Wasilewski ends things with his “Lugano Lake,” a protracted gaze through the studio window from one who would rather leave the condensation intact and examine every bead of upturned scenery as it drips into the proportion of something true.

Faithful represents a new direction. It favors protracted treatments and heightened sensitivity. The trio plays as it breathes, knowing just when to pause before moving on. Particularly well recorded, with just the right balance of intimacy and the infinity beyond it, it lives in soft focus. If you wish to know to whom they are being faithful, you need only turn the CD over and look at your reflection.

(To hear samples of Faithful, click here.)

Jörg Widmann: Elegie (ECM New Series 2110)

| Tyran Grillo

Jörg Widmann
Elegie

Jörg Widmann clarinet
Deutsche Radio Philharmonie
Christoph Poppen conductor
Messe and Elegie
Recorded June and July 2008, Congresshalle (Messe) and SR Studio 1 (Elegie), Saarbrücken
Engineers: Thomas Raisig and Thomas Becher
Fünf Bruchstücke
Recorded May 2009, Klaus-von-Bismarck-Saal, WDR Funkhaus, Köln
Engineer: Günther Wollersheim
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

At 39, German composer and clarinetist Jörg Widmann has already established himself as a formidable talent. If his studies under Hans Werner Henze, Heiner Goebbels, and Wolfgang Rihm have left any noticeable influence in his work as composer, it’s the cellular approach at which he is so skillful. His experience as a performer with such ECM regulars as András Schiff, Kim Kashkashian, and Heinz Holliger, not to mention his sister, violinist Carolin Widmann, make him a natural fit for the label in both capacities. Though Widmann has been widely praised for his chamber works, on this survey we get only the Fünf Bruchstücke (1997) for clarinet and piano, and for which he is joined by none other than Mr. Holliger at the keyboard as he explores the extended capabilities of his instrument. His subtle clicks and arcing gestures provide the hum to the piano’s rattle at every turn. We feel these things and more scuttling just beneath the surface, holding on to sounds as idols of whimsy, each blown and deflated like a balloon that refuses to expand and will never know the catharsis of the pop. Among his first published pieces, they give us direct insight into his eclectic flourish…


(Photo by Felix Broede)

…and all the more so for nesting between two leviathan orchestral pieces. Played to astonishing effect by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under the baton of Christoph Poppen, his 2006 Messe buries us with immediate and bone-stressing volume, yet somehow retaining, not unlike the Dies irae from Arvo Pärt’s Miserere, the softness of a petal. This is the first of a handful of references, which would seem to include also Górecki’s Third Symphony (note the Contrapunctus I). These allusions are as robust as they are transient, rising as they do from an ocean of great depth and color. Even in the absence of words, the piece abounds with voices. Widmann’s string writing is patient and awakens by a lone violin, as quiet as the opening was loud. Pastoral cries from winds exhale in watery strains. Bows flicker through consciousness like dragonflies. Each step becomes a window of spiritual reflection, a string of dawns, ferocious as lions jumping from the sun. Swollen joints in the Trinitarian body find unconditional love in the crucifixion, sacrifice rendered divine and tipped by fingers of humility and faith. Shadow masquerades as light, and light blinds itself. Reaching the resurrection at last, a promise of life wraps itself in autumn before unfurling a banner of exodus beneath an all-seeing eye, within and without, everywhere and nowhere, in the glitter of the lachrymose.

The 2005 title composition stretches those tearful remainders into lenses of contact. Peering through contorted sighs and unspoken things, reeds, bellows, and high strings dance across a bridge of burning meteorites, each a needle without thread. An operatic current prevails. One can feel characters ambulating about the stage, hiding behind curtains and whispering erratic secrets into the spotlight, which stays lit even after the music ends.

If Widmann’s landscapes seem not so well defined, it is because his intentions (or so I imagine) forego the platitudes of anticipation in favor of an organic, distilled approach. Poppen brings precisely that feel of ebb and flow, drawing out from these performances a viscous and dynamic energy. Holliger’s involvement, too, is fortuitous, for here is a voice that, given time, might very well prove to be his equivalent.

Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia: Frère Jacques – Round about Offenbach (ECM 2217)

| Tyran Grillo

Frère Jacques – Round about Offenbach

Gianluigi Trovesi piccolo and alto clarinets
Gianni Coscia accordion
Recorded January 21-23 and March 2-4, 2009, Centro Civico Musicale Sant’Anna, Perugia
Engineer: Francesco Ciarfuglia
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In search of Brother Jacques, Mr. Offenbach, the great iconoclast, composer of operettas and wound-bringer to discerning classical minds. Our guides, multi-reedist Gianluigi Trovesi and accordionist Gianni Coscia. The itinerary destroys borders, forges new ones in their wake, and takes every path with more than a grain of salt. The melodies take on an ember glow, gesticulating in the manner of an oil painter’s brush and leaving behind a portrait that is offering and caricature in one. We stumble and marvel at what impedes our feet, knowing that we can only sit this one out and accept the frivolity of its passage. It is the pageant, and we the hapless spectators, ears sharpened to the whim of interpretation.

Scholar Heather Hadlock writes of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann as a “death-utterance,” so concerned is his only (and unfinished) opera with death and its many reflections, to say nothing of its emergence from the pen of a dying man himself. In the course of the work, Offenbach “reviews his own compositional past, drawing its various elements into a musico-dramatic kaleidoscope.” And so, Hadlock concludes, we might better see it as “undead,” for the narrator lives and speaks on even after his symbolic passing. Doubtless, the listener will find in Trovesi and Coscia’s striking reinventions a death-defying vivaciousness on par with their sources. Breath and bellows jump from their digital oven like myriad gingerbread men, running nakedly and wittily through Hoffmann with all the requisite stagecraft such activity would require to convince us of its aliveness. Fitting, too, is the “Epilogue” drawn from the same, which ends the album on a funereal pitch.

Most of what precedes it, however, seats us at a banquet table of delights. The four opéras bouffes—operettas rich in parody and farce named for the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens at which Offenbach premiered them, if not the other way around—sampled here come out of a particularly fruitful tenure, during which time the composer produced some of his most popular work. Of La belle Hélène (1864), La vie parisienne (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), La Périchole (1868), he quipped most characteristically, “I am certainly the Father, but together they are the Son and the Wholly Spirited.” Trovesi and Coscia are more than happy to toss these ingredients almost cartoonishly in their kitchen. With herbs and stalks a-flying, they include whatever comes to mind in the largest pot they can find, only to ladle the resulting concoction with butler-like care into our bowls. It’s all we can do as their guests to not dip our spoons in unison, and join in the after-dinner dancing into which the sheer joy of these flavors bids us welcome.

To be sure, these provide a rich and complementary tasting experience. The truffle of Trovesi’s alto clarinet blends into Coscia’s creamy leeks, each enhancing the other to infinite effect. La vie parisienne provides some of the album’s maddest brilliance, ambulating like feet on a mission to stir up gossip in the village square. From Mozartian prances to fervent declarations, the remainder flies. Yet it is in the improvisatory hands of our fantastic duo where lie the deepest treasures. Among them are the vivid gems of “Tangoffenbach” and “Dedicated to Hélène and her little birds,” each an aperitif of smoothest finish. These are monologues that sing and move, bringing shadow to can-can, and lipstick to statues.

This is a diarist’s playbook, a sincere exploration of passion and obsession that not only pays tribute to but also transcends its namesake, all the while caging the spark of creativity in action. What’s left is an affirmation…and a smile.