John Holloway: Unarum fidium (ECM New Series 1668)

| Tyran Grillo

John Holloway
Unarum fidium

John Holloway baroque violin
Aloysia Assenbaum organ
Lars Ulrik Mortensen harpsichord
Recorded December 1997, Kloster Fischingen, Switzerland
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

“And if you require proof of faith, I’ll show you not fidelity but my fiddle.”
–Johann Heinrich Schmelzer

On Unarum fidium, violinist John Holloway has put together a robust program of Baroque delights and an even more robust assembly of musicians to make them sparkle. For his ECM debut, Holloway wanted to do something special, it seems, and opts for a unique basso continuo of harpsichord and organ, respectively played by Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Aloysia Assenbaum. The two work in tandem—the result of arduous experimentation—to form a breathtaking stage for three demanding technical dramas. The choice is far from arbitrary and has legitimate historical precedent as a later 17th-century configuration. Remarks Holloway, “One of our ambitions with this recording is to demonstrate a case for this extraordinarily rich sound in instrumental music of this style.” Whatever the ambition, this innovative trio synergizes like no other.

The Verona-born Antonio Bertali (1605-1669) was a composer of the Viennese Imperial Court whose posthumous reputation hardly matches that which he enjoyed in his lifetime. The Chiacone on offer is reason enough to restore it. Any doubts about the continuo are immediately quelled as its lush bifurcation spreads warmth throughout every phrase. As for the music itself, it is effervescent and exhilarating. Like a theatrical production that masks all the dramaturgical grunt work with sublime costuming and dance, it enchants not without great effort. Holloway commits himself to a melodic line that is all the fierier for its restraint.

Succeeded perhaps only by Biber’s Mystery Sonatas in complexity and content, the Sonatae unarum fidium of Johann Schmelzer (1620-1680) shine as exemplars of the form. Schmelzer, who may very well have studied with Bertali in Vienna, was a master on another level, as evidenced in his fondness for playful contrasts. Where the First Sonata is languid, almost provincial, the Second Sonata leaps into more spirited reveries. Despite all the flourishes demanded of the soloist, the music remains fairly stationary. The Third Sonata makes use of an enchanting echo technique and allows the organ its broadest strokes, which eventually blend into the arpeggio that opens the Fourth Sonata. And as the violin slowly works its way into the architecture at large, it approaches percussive identities in the faster variations. The Fifth and Sixth Sonatas are markedly different in that they work with negative space, describing the branches of a tree not by the leaves they sprout but by the snatches of sky they delineate.

Holloway closes with an anonymous Sonata for scordatura violin and basso continuo. Found in the same library among the preceding works, its stylistics places it squarely within the Biberian matrix. It may be the shortest piece on the album, but the present company only enlivens its archival significance as a fitting finish.

The music on this disc is refined, but also more contemplative than that of Holloway’s other ECM outings. What it lacks in flair for the programmatic contortions of Biber or the eccentricities of Veracini, it makes up for in directness of heart. This is melodically linear music that leaves an unmistakable crumb trail for us to follow. What he drops is so delectable that we end up eating our way to the destination without hope of return. The beauty of it is that, by the end, we are happy to stay right where we are.

<< Schönberg/Schubert: Klavierstücke (ECM 1667 NS)
>> Giya Kancheli: Magnum Ignotum (ECM 1669 NS)

The Hilliard Ensemble: Lassus (ECM New Series 1658)

| Tyran Grillo

The Hilliard Ensemble
Lassus

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
John Potter tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Recorded November 1993, Boxgrove Priory, Chichester
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Of the more than 2000 works written by the Franco-Flemsih composer Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594), this benchmark recording by the Hilliard Ensemble encompasses two of his most significant. The plainchant that opens our hearts to the Missa Pro Defunctis provides a level foundation from which to rise slowly into vocal awareness. Like all great polyphonists, Lassus treats the word as flesh, stretching it over the skeleton of a life animated by divine breath. Yet within the godly body beats a heart of silence, and within that silence thrives the core faith through which this music is “visibly” recirculated. It proceeds from, and is written in honor of, the same font. Throughout every moment of the Mass’s conception, we are draped in a veil of obscurity, so that by the Agnus Dei we have shielded ourselves enough to handle a glimpse at the face of our Creator. The closing plainchant not only completes the circle, but spins it like a coin that never stops.

The Prophetiae Sibyllarum is Lassus’s ode to chromaticism, and introduces a unique set of textual and tonal colors that he would never visit again. Unexpected harmonic shifts draw straight lines amid a field of curves. At its densest moments, the Prophecies reach the profundity of Gesualdo, as in the inescapably gorgeous Sybilla Phrygia. These are decidedly secular pieces, constructed as they are around Pagan-influenced texts. Never content in staying in one territory for too long, they are constantly shifting between moods and colors, so that by the end one is left with a fractal of musical effect.

It seems that every new Hilliard Ensemble recording outdoes the last, and this is certainly no exception. Gordon Jones truly stands out here, as he brings a distinct airiness to his lines. The interplay between him and Rogers Covey-Crump in the Graduale of the Mass is astonishing, while David James shines through every turn of the Prophetiae. The music of Lassus would be a puzzle, were it not for the solutions etched upon its surface, as if it were glass and one need only turn it to catch the light the right way to see those inscriptions glowing in a litany of scars across the visage of time. Its meanings are the Alpha and Omega of creation, and duly so for the music created in their name.

<< Peter Erskine Trio: JUNI (ECM 1657)
>> Hans Otte: Das Buch der Klänge (ECM 1659 NS)

Giya Kancheli: Lament (ECM New Series 1656)

| Tyran Grillo

Giya Kancheli
Lament

Gidon Kremer violin
Maacha Deubner soprano
Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra
Jansug Kakhidze conductor
Recorded March 1998, Centre for Music and Culture, Tbilisi
Engineer: Mikhail Kilosanidze
Produced by Manfred Eicher

ECM offers some of Giya Kancheli’s most compelling music in Lament (Music of Mourning in Memory of Luigi Nono). This 1994 outpouring for violin, soprano, and orchestra is a requiem, a postlude, a concerto, and homage. It is also more than these, spreading its heavy wings wide across an ever-changing landscape. Kancheli revisits the words of Hans Sahl, whose verses appeared upon the same lips in EXIL, this time through his poem “Stanzas.”

I go slowly hence from the world
Into a domain beyond all distance,

Gidon Kremer’s violin seems to arise from a shadow within a shadow. Soon joined by flute, which acts like a hooded guide through the wilderness, Kremer flirts with his surroundings. The orchestra responds provocatively to these agitations, only to blend back into the woodwork from which its sounds are born. As strings wander toward the horizon, every bowed step seems only to bring them closer to me, as if I were but a projection of a faraway self.

And what I was and am and shall remain
Goes with me hasteless and forbearing
Into a country ’til yet untrod

The wind continues its gentle flight, weaving through orchestral punctuations like a suture through flesh. These satoric bursts never last. Their clarity is brief, their catharsis even briefer. Kremer brings a raw, rustic tone, and with it a certain terrestrial quality to this otherwise stratospheric music. Unfamiliar skies and the mud-stained roads beneath them temper any possible thrill of discovery. And yet, the closer I walk to death, the brighter my surroundings seem to become.

I go slowly hence from time
Into a future beyond the stars,

Kremer’s lilting highs mesh beautifully with Maacha Deubner’s own as both pull the orchestra to a high summit. I leap without hesitation, floating ever so gently back to solid ground. Deubner seems to sing from somewhere not of this world. Her voice becomes a memory, something heard when I let down my mental guard. Kremer gets an equally magical sound from his instrument, leading the orchestra with utter determination.

And what I was and am and ever shall remain
Goes with me hasteless and forbearing,

Deubner sets aloft a high-pitched violin before oboe and orchestra spin their own guiding light out of ether. Familiar material works its way into my mental window: a rare comfort in these tattered vestiges, far enough removed from Kancheli’s motivic staples while also weeping in their shadows. I can only sit on the edge of music like this, never knowing whether to lie back or lean forward. And so I am resigned to the margin, left to wander

As though I’d not, or scarcely, ever been.

<< Arvo Pärt: Kanon pokajanen (ECM 1654/55 NS)
>> Peter Erskine Trio: JUNI (ECM 1657)

Arvo Pärt: Kanon pokajanen (ECM New Series 1654/55)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Arvo Pärt
Kanon pokajanen

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Tõnu Kaljuste conductor
Recorded June 1997 at Niguliste Church, Tallinn
Engineer: Teije van Geest
Produced by Manfred Eicher

I have lived my life wantonly on earth and have delivered my soul to darkness. But now I implore Thee, O merciful Lord, free me from this work of the enemy and give me the knowledge to do Thy will.

Of all the music to have graced the digital grooves of ECM’s ongoing relationship with Arvo Pärt, these settings of the Russian Orthodox Canon of Repentance to Our Lord Jesus Christ in its entirety stand out as the pinnacle of his craft. On second thought, perhaps “stand out” is the wrong analogy, for if anything the music of Kanon pokajanen comports itself through kneeling and supplication. Completed in 1997 in commemoration of the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral, it was premiered the following year by its dedicatees, Tõnu Kaljuste conducting the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, who also perform it here to humble perfection. Sung entirely in Church Slavonic, the Kanon is structured as follows:

Ode I
Ode III
Sedalen
Ode IV
Ode V
Ode VI
Kontakion
Ikos
Ode VII
Ode VIII
Ode IX
Prayer after the Canon

Ode II has no text and drops out as the silent number. The remaining Odes are introduced by an irmos, which acts as a link between word blocks, followed by four troparia, or hymnal stanzas, of which the last is always the Theotokion, or Hymn to Mary. The “intermezzo hymns” between Odes III/IV and VI/VII provide a summary function, not unlike a recap episode in a long-running series, except that here they are full-fledged episodes in and of themselves, each its own hue in the emerging aural ikon. The Kontakion and its Ikos are deeply rooted in the act of reading, as in the ways in which these hymns would normally be chanted, while the final prayer serves to close the circle in preparation for Communion. The lifeblood of the text is its refrain of “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me,” which circulates like an involuntary reflex of the spiritual body.

If there is a more heart-stopping, transportive moment in all of choral literature than the opening proclamation, I have yet to hear it. Sung with such passion in every single voice and rising in a collective exhalation of Godly energies, it never fails to halve me to my core. On the whole, the sound palette of the Kanon varies from barely harmonized periodic elements to full-blown organic compounds. Antiphonal glue holds the most fragile texts together in preparation for glorious leaps of faith, such as the passage in Ode III during which tenors and altos soar over a beautifully sustained drone. Ode VI is another notable moment, featuring cosmic ambulation between women’s voices over a deep cantus firmus. It is a vital motif, rocking between Heaven and Earth with baptismal impact. And one will be hard pressed to forget the doubling male soloists of the Ikos, which always haunts me long after its brief traversal. The tearfully arranged Prayer after the Canon distills the thematic energy even further, drawing with its pigments an image of such careful self-immolation that only silence can offer itself as palimpsest.

The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir is as much a treasure as the one who has provided them such bounty. They handle every note as the holy relic that it is, passed down through the ages and translated in song so that others may touch it without degrading its surface. The altos in particular emit an outstanding richness of tone. The recording space is potently reverberant, drawing out every pause like a comet’s tail. Listening to this music, one comes to appreciate the choral qualities of Pärt’s instrumental pieces as well. And while those have received plenty of deserved attention, Kanon pokajanen is a must-listen for anyone wishing to hear the Estonian visionary in his most enlightened state of grace. The music is almost too powerful, such that listening to the entire album in one sitting can be a draining experience, faced as we are with the prospect of returning to a secular world once its last ghost leaves our ears.

If language is, as the composer himself professes, for him a constant “point of departure,” then nowhere is it so intensely communicative than in the Kanon. Anyone who fears that Pärt’s music was a passing fad in an era craving spiritually minded music for the weary masses need look no further than this heavenly spool from which a thread has tied itself around us before we even press PLAY. You may just find something new that has resided in your soul all along.

<< The Hilliard Ensemble: In Paradisum (ECM 1653 NS)
>> Giya Kancheli: Lament (ECM 1656 NS)

András Schiff/Peter Serkin: Music for Two Pianos (ECM New Series 1676/77)

| Tyran Grillo

András Schiff
Peter Serkin
Music for Two Pianos

András Schiff piano
Peter Serkin piano
Recorded November 1997 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York
Engineer: Tom Lazarus
Produced by Philip Traugott, Peter Serkin, and Manfred Eicher

In his liner notes, Klaus Schweizer describes a unique meeting of minds when pianists András Schiff and Peter Serkin appeared on stage together for a November 1997 concert held at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rather than join forces, these two “protagonists” rubbed those forces together to see what kind of electricity could be produced, so that “the audience had the pleasure of enjoying a contest of temperaments…and may have come away with the impression that such ‘contrapuntal’ music-making can be more stimulating than the harmony of two kindred souls.” The spontaneity of said performance and all its glorious vices have made their way into this subsequent studio recording, for which we are treated to the same sounds that graced the eyes and ears of all who were there for this rare event. As Schweizer so keenly sees it, this is a program of fugal magnificence, each work drawing from Bach’s highest art its own vivid line of continuity.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791):
Fugue in C Minor for Two Pianos, K. 426
Mozart’s fugue may be without commission or context, but we can safely assume it was more than an honorary exercise. As its grinding voices quickly resolve themselves into harmonious contrapuntal weaves, we feel a transformation in every resolution. Through a delightful, if slightly cloudy, game of trills and trade-offs, the musicians pull off a garden-fresh take on this engaging opener.

Max Reger (1873-1916):
Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Beethoven for Two Pianos, op. 86
These variations on a Beethoven bagatelle (op. 119) are like a spindle from which is cast a veritable maypole of permutations. The opening Andante, quoted almost verbatim, brightens with every revolution. With moods ranging from rapture (Agitato) and majesty (Appassionato; Allegro pomposo) to exuberance (both Vivaces) and tearful remembrance (Sostenuto), these colorful miniatures feed like a rainbow into the glowing waterfall of the final Fugue.

Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924):
Fantasia contrappuntistica for Two Pianos,Busoni-Verzeichnis 256b
What began as an ambitious attempt to complete the unfinished final movement of Bach’s almighty Die Kunst der Fuge turned into Busoni’s crowning achievement. Every gesture of this massive organism is rendered with the utmost artistry and given its full breadth in the exponential possibilities of a keyboard squared. The 10-minute introductory movement alone carries the weight of the whole. A series of fugues and variations “drops” like blocks in a Jacob’s ladder toy, of which the third Fugue and the Intermezzo stand out, the former for its overwhelming heights and the latter for its solemnity.

Mozart:
Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos, K. 448/375a
Far removed yet of the same passionate spirit is Mozart’s only sonata for two pianos, which receives here as lively a performance as one could ever hope for. Two no less than thrilling Allegros bookend a scintillating Andante, combining to form one of the composer’s most widely recognized pieces and closing this cohesive double album with a thick wax seal.

Since this release, Schiff has continued a longstanding relationship with ECM. Listen and find out where it all began.

<< Keith Jarrett: The Melody At Night, With You (ECM 1675)
>> Maneri/Phillips/Maneri: Tales of Rohnlief (ECM 1678)

Thomas Larcher: Madhares (ECM New Series 2111)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Thomas Larcher
Madhares

Till Fellner piano
Kim Kashkashian viola
Thomas Larcher piano
Quatuor Diotima
Naaman Sluchin violin
Yun Peng Zhao violin
Frank Chevalier viola
Pierre Morlet violoncello
Münchener Kammerorchester
Dennis Russell Davies conductor
Recorded August 2008 (Böse Zellen, Still), Bavaria Musikstudios, München; July 2009 (Madhares), Liederkranzhalle, Stuttgart
Engineers: Stephan Schellmann and Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

A student of Werner Pirchner, who introduced the prodigious pianist to the many expansions that jazz had to offer, Thomas Larcher was led onto his distinctive compositional path at the encouragement of Heinz Holliger, Dennis Russell Davies, and Manfred Eicher. All the better for us at the listening end of his continually evolving spectrum. In this, the third disc devoted entirely to his music, Larcher’s voice comes into greater focus, even as it further refracts itself in the process.

As if drawing on My illness is the medicine I need from his previous ECM effort, Ixxu, Larcher inoculates us with his Böse Zellen (Malign Cells) for piano and orchestra (2006, rev. 2007). We know its opening siren calls are deathly close, yet they seem so far away as to be harmless. This contradiction of thought and effect curls itself into the melodic helix down which every note slides. Fellow Austrian Till Fellner proves himself to be more than up to the challenge as he navigates the percussive terrain of his prepared piano with unpretentious expertise. Moments of lyrical beauty mesh with decay to wondrous effect, moving like a forgotten Petri dish that has sprouted legs and wandered out into the open world. If an anatomical diagram is the only way of exposing the unseen without killing the organism, then this music succeeds in creating a living model.

Each of the two movements of Still for viola and chamber orchestra (2002, rev. 2004) is marked “Fließend” (Flowing), and that they most certainly are. Kim Kashkashian twists yet another indestructible braid from her instrument as she spins long nocturnal fibers from a cloudless sky. These she ties around us and tugs our minds into deeper dreams, where traumas share an equal footing with their resolutions. And so, what appear to be physiological agitations in the second half begin to take on, at least in retrospect, a catalyst quality, each the doorway to another doorway (ad infinitum). In spite of, or perhaps because of, these disruptions, I find Still to be the most endearing of the selections on this disc. This is due in no small part to the rough-hewn solidity of its performance, but also to its animating spirit. The strings speak at every moment, not so much conversationally as descriptively, and in so doing open a linguistic trap door into which this listener is more than happy to jump.

Before knowing that Larcher’s Third String Quartet (2006/7), from which the album borrows its title, referred to the so-called White Mountains of Crete, my mind was filled with images of mentally unstable rabbits. And while the music is anything but insane, I like the image, if only for its fragmentary implications. It would seem the composer means us to take even its allusive location with a grain of salt: having only visited the Madhares through word of mouth while vacationing in Crete, he forgoes its sharp contours in favor of “a utopian place, somewhere far away from where I am—possibly completely beyond reach.” Those last two words, “beyond reach,” characterize the music far more accurately than my own initial juvenile assumptions, as it constantly skirts the edge of cognizance with its ecstatic outbursts of moonlight amid a host of meditative shadows.

Larcher’s fondness for extended techniques, which include anything from musician-determined time signatures to coins threaded between violin strings, reflects a mind respectful of instrumental architecture. His is a direct, heart-to-heart sound. Walking a not-always-so-clearly-delineated line somewhere between Helmut Lachenmann and Alexander Knaifel, Larcher plots the rare distinctive curve among countless straight lines. Equal parts stimulant and sedative, his music averages out into an ultimately neutral equation, where value is determined only by deployment, or else left to fade in its own bondage to time.

Recorded with ECM’s bar-raising clarity, this album also marks the label debut of the immensely talented Quatuor Diotima, whose commitment to contemporary music shows in every moment of this raw performance. Let’s hope we’ll see them again soon.

Arvo Pärt: Symphony No. 4 (ECM New Series 2160)

| Tyran Grillo

Symphony No. 4

Arvo Pärt
Symphony No. 4

Los Angeles Philharmonic
Esa-Pekka Salonen conductor
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Tõnu Kaljuste conductor
Symphony No. 4:
Concert recording January 2009, Walt Disney Hall, Los Angeles
Engineer: Fred Vogler
Producers: Bruce Leek and Fred Vogler
Kanon pokajanen:
Recorded June 1997, Niguliste Church, Tallinn
Engineer: Teije van Geest
Produced by Manfred Eicher

…grace and pardon are all the more necessary as the laws are absurd and the sentences are cruel…
–Cesare Beccaria

Arvo Pärt’s Symphony No. 4 “Los Angeles” (2008) was the result of a Los Angeles Philharmonic Association joint commission. The symphony is dedicated to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian political prisoner in whose moral steadfastness Pärt found inspiration for the present work. Says the Estonian composer, “The tragic tone of the symphony is not a lament for Khodorkovsky, but a bow to the great power of the human spirit and human dignity.” Compared to his earlier symphonies (an almost 40-year gap separates this and the Third), the Fourth is transparent in being scored for string orchestra, harp, timpani, and percussion, and all the more transcendent for it. That being said, there is a certain weightiness here not to be found in the others, achievable only through the modest means by which he breaches its many sound barriers. Here, Pärt has taken seeds from his more recent works for strings and cultivated them into a near-silent, looming forest. In the capable hands of Esa-Pekka Salonen, conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in this premier live performance, we can be sure that we are hearing every leaf of that forest humming with fervent ceremony.

The symphony takes a tripartite structure. “Con sublimità” opens us to a stretch of high strings, at once stratospheric and subterranean. A struck triangle drops like a feather onto this cosmic pond. Rather than evoke such an image and leave it at that, Pärt traces each ripple outward to the very fringes of our ken. Timpani introduce a mournful strain for the movement’s latter half. “Affannoso” is brought to life by deeply resonant pizzicato clusters, which recur like insistent memories that never quite materialize. At times, these interrupt more protracted bowings, while at others they ride a tectonic shift of mallet percussion. The metallic sheen of a brushed cymbal arcs over a bowed reinstatement of the pizzicato theme. A quote transposed from Psalom makes a ghostly cameo, bleeding into the rumbling of a distant storm and its attendant tubular bells. More plucked strings etch their thoughts across sheets of glassine chords in “Deciso” before a martial rhythm (echoing Pärt’s Te Deum) rides in sideways. The violins stand on their tiptoes, reaching for a cloud that isn’t there, only to realize that in this new space there is infinite possibility.

Based on the Russian Orthodox “Canon to the Guardian Angel,” the Fourth Symphony is Pärt’s first major engagement with canonic texts since 1997’s Kanon pokajanen. Hence, its pairing with fragments from the selfsame work. If the inexpressible repentant beauties of the Kanon were almost too potent to bear in their entirety, in this 15-minute redaction we find ourselves no less overwhelmed by the force of their texts, which push us into a chasm of divine trust like no other. Still, the Fourth Symphony is as much an invocation as this vocal counterpart, for it takes the same air into its lungs and blows it across the fields in all of us.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall is one of the world’s finest acoustical achievements, and its benefits are put to fullest advantage here. Every echo resolves itself with the smoothest dissolution in a delicate balance of fire and ice. Blessedly, the applause on this recording is elided in favor of a seamless transition from one “choir” to another, lest the spell be broken.

Terje Rypdal: Undisonus (ECM 1389)

| Tyran Grillo

Terje Rypdal
Undisonus

Terje Tønnesen violin
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London
Christian Eggen conductor
Grex Vocalis
The Rainbow Orchestra
Carl Høgset director
Recorded September 1986, St. Peter’s Church, Morden, London (Undisonus) and November 1987, Rainbow Studio, Oslo (Ineo)
Engineers: Arne Akselberg (Undisonus) and Jan Erik Konghaug (Ineo)
Produced by Arne-Peter Rognan

For as long as I’ve been listening to Terje Rypdal, I’ve known him to skirt idiomatic borders without presumption. I can only admire him for his dedication to jump headlong into such projects as this pairing of two classical pieces. As one who is so often present in the realization of his works, allowing the music to take on its own life isn’t always easy. Rypal, however, takes this step gracefully and with melodic integrity intact.

Undisonus, op. 23 is set for violin and orchestra, but it’s the brass section that first catches our attention with its subterranean rumblings. First seeded in 1979, the present version represents years of additions and fine-tuning, which one can hear throughout Terje Tønnesen’s fine playing. His tone is declamatory without being overbearing, lyrical yet more acrobatic than romantic, but always with the feel of a sketch running off the page. This puts the orchestra in a precarious position, taking on the role of caretaker at its haunts the aura of the soloist’s imagination. Silences are always heavy and felt like a remembered drone, ending on a shadowy slide in which double basses and violin circumscribe the entire musical space in a beautiful gesture of completion.

Where Undisonus skirts a dichotomy of call and response, Ineo, op. 29 (composed 1983) transcends that dichotomy into a more noticeably unified sound. Originally featuring Rypdal on guitar for its Danish Radio premier, here it has been reworked for choir and chamber orchestra. Lush writing for woodwinds and brass lends deeper poignancy to the choir’s memorial intonations. Constructed in gorgeous little cells drawn by near-silent threads, every utterance spreads into an overarching whole. A lyrical oboe solo recalls Rypdal’s formative meditations in his self-titled debut and in What Comes After, foreshadowing a glorious Alleluja that is as close to the spirit of Giya Kancheli’s Prayers cycle as I have ever experienced in another’s work.

Averaging 20 minutes each, these pieces make for a modest album in length that is anything but in scope. Rypdal clearly has nothing to prove, as the music drapes a blanket of sonic comfort over our prog rock expectations. It is best appreciated in half-slumber, where judgment is but a stepping-stone toward broader skies.

<< Ralph Towner: City Of Eyes (ECM 1388)
>> Abercrombie/Johnson/Erskine: s/t (ECM 1390)

The Hilliard Ensemble: In Paradisum – Music of Victoria and Palestrina (ECM New Series 1653)

| Tyran Grillo

The Hilliard Ensemble
In Paradisum: Music of Victoria and Palestrina

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James counter-tenor
John Potter tenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Recorded September 1997 at Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In Paradisum is a trinity within a trinity. Shuffling the works of Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611) and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina(1525/26-1594) between plainsong selections from the Toule Graduale manuscript of 1610, the ever-attentive Hilliard Ensemble offer us one of their finest recordings yet. Ivan Moody duly reminds us in his accompanying essay that the prolific Palestrina and the younger, more reclusive Victoria lived primarily by and of the Spirit. As composers, they have grown into stars of a Renaissance music niche market, but in the Hilliards’ throats they are votive candles whose flames remain alive in our hearts as we listen, as evidenced by the liturgical surroundings in which we encounter their music here. Embracing every note with humility and grace, these performances chart a significant shift from monophony to polyphony.

Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum, his last published work, was written in memory of Dowager Empress Maria, for whom he served as personal chaplain until her death in 1603. Whatever thorns of sadness are to be found in this music are filed to rounded points by the fluid voices of this recording. The delicate changes of register in the opening “Taedet animam meam” set a plaintive model for all that follows. The effect of the “Libera me Domine” farther in, with its broad strokes and tender embraces, seems to percolate into the entire program. Those who appreciate the subtle complexities of both plainchant and polyphony will appreciate their being juxtaposed in the “Peccantem me quotidie,” which alternates between the two in a seamless responsory. We are humbled by another swath of responsorial humility in a second, 13-minute “Libera me Domine,” this time by Palestrina, who is further represented by a selection of motets, including the flowering Domine quando veneris (which almost comes as a soft shock to the senses in the company of Victoria’s denser invocations) and the resplendent Heu mihi Domine. Palestrina works with unsteady lines and favors weaving the lower voices into a deeper foundation, as in his Ad Dominum cum tribularer clamavi.

The chant that fleshes out the rest of the album is some of the most affecting one is likely to find on disc, and allows us an even more visceral understanding of our own mortality. And while all of this music deals with the darker sides of mortality (the Victoria and Palestrina being drawn from texts for the Office of the Dead, and the chants comprising an anonymous Requiem Mass), it steps outside of time, reminding us that death is something we all share, and that in being so it is holy.

<< Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge – Keller Quartett (ECM 1652 NS)
>> Arvo Pärt: Kanon pokajanen (ECM 1654/55 NS)