Oleg Malov piano Tatiana Melentieva soprano Piotr Migunov bass Lege Artis Choir Boris Abalian conductor
Recorded February 2002 at The Smolny Cathedral, St. Petersburg
Engineer: Victor Dinov (St. Petersburg Recording Studio)
Recording supervision: Alexander Knaifel
Mastering: Boris Alexeev (engineer)
An ECM Production
Release date: April 20, 2018
As the fourth ECM New Series album dedicated to the music of Alexander Knaifel, Lukomoriye is both continuation and departure from previous discs. In the former sense, it pulls us deeper into the recesses of his faith; in the latter, it engages with more secular—though no less inspired—material. The program’s pillars rise from prayers to the Holy Spirit. Both O Comforter (1995) and O Heavenly King (1994) are written for choir, the second adding to that foundational grammar the punctuation of vibraphone and piano. Like Jeremiah in the pit, they look upward for grace. Their bead-like structure welcomes a thread of spiritual seeking, marking the passage of voices from firmament to soil as if to show us that the opposite trajectory is possible.
This Child (1997), played by pianist Oleg Malov, follows the Gospel of St. Luke. It opens with a single chord, played as if at a far corner of the room, before proximate notes finish the sentence. This sets up the Godly call and prophetic response, articulating questions that can only be answered by salvation. O Lord of all my life (2006), sung by bass Piotr Migunov to Malov’s electronically processed accompaniment, bonds itself with stillness. Through its 16 minutes of rewarding intimacy, Migunov sings with a vulnerability that recalls Sergey Yakovenko in Valentin Silvestrov’s Silent Songs. A prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, wherein humility is preached, and a poem from Pushkin, wherein idealism is crushed into a sinner’s prayer, render the sonic equivalent of a two-way mirror.
From the Word to the World, we are invited to A mad tea-party (2007), in which a heavily reverbed piano breaks its own suspension by the delicate play of a more immediate instrument, evoking both the frustrations and excitations of this pivotal scene in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Such contrasts might be counted as child-like impulses were it not for the conscious use of silence, touches of percussion, and whispers. Kindred details abound in Bliss (1997), wherein the composer’s wife, soprano Tatiana Melentieva, revives Pushkin. Her voice masterfully captures every shade of mythological revelry at hand with barest support from Malov at the piano.As in the title composition (written in 2002 and revised in 2009), even fully formed sentences flit through trees like birds in search of a new dawn, taking on the magic of their surroundings as they travel ever inward.
The ghost of Pushkin lingers in Confession (2003/04). Here Malov intones the words inaudibly, exploring love, carnality, and desire through the keyboard instead, every note as delicate as the balance of flesh and glory that every composer faces, yet few of which channel with such humility.
Carolin Widmann violin, direction Chamber Orchestra of Europe Recorded July 2014, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden
Engineer: Rainer Maillard
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: August 26, 2016
Until now, violinist Carolin Widmann has reexamined mostly chamber territories on ECM. For this disc, recorded in 2014 and released two years later, she leads the Chamber Orchestra of Europe as both director and soloist in a program of two marquee-worthy concertos by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Robert Schumann.
The opening theme of Mendelssohn’s Opus 64, composed in 1844, in addition to being one of the most recognizable in the Romantic violin repertoire, shines from Widmann’s interpretative sun like the dawn. What follows in this monumental movement, marked “Allegro molto appassionato,” is more than fiery sermon of the bow, but a full narrative rich with character development, conflict, and hyperrealism. As Jürg Stenzl writes in his liner notes, Mendelssohn was caught between something of a rock and hard place, unsure of whether to continue in the virtuosic fashion of Paganini or follow the orchestral persuasion of Beethoven. If anything, he struck an unprecedented balance between the two, allowing the soloist to shine while also giving the orchestra something lyrical and texturally relevant to say. The central movement—an Andante leading into a transitional Allegretto—is a lyrical bridge to the famous finale, across delicate leaps of intuition turn into robust statements of purpose. Playfulness undergirds every chromatic arc and emboldens Widmann’s benchmark performance with a subtle combination of grit and fluidity. That each of these three movements is shorter than the last is indicative of a distilling approach, whereby the composer peels away one unnecessary layer after another until an unblemished fruit remains.
(Photo credit: Lennard Rühle)
Schumann’s concerto of 1853, unlike Mendelssohn’s widely heralded masterpiece, went unpublished until 1937, dismissed as it was along with his late works as insubstantial. How much of that perception was due to musicological analysis and how much to a growing mythos around his mental downfall is difficult to quantify. Following in the immediate wake of his Opus 31 Fantasy, the concerto is both a return to form and an eschewing of it. If Mendelssohn’s first movement was a short story, then Schumann’s is a novella. Yet despite it gargantuan form, taking up nearly 16 minutes of duration in the present performance, it leaves more than enough room for the listener to find solace, reflection, and understanding. And despite its many colors, there’s a certain trustworthiness to its flow, as emphasized by Widmann’s choices of tempo and dynamics. The second movement, designated “Langsam” (slow), nevertheless speaks with urgency, while the restrained third dances but always keeps one foot on the ground. With bolder, more jagged lines, Schumann expands his vocabulary in and through the score. Widmann’s translations thereof make it understandable in any language.
If a story is determined by its beginning and ending, then this Selected Signs boxed set, specially curated for the “ECM: A Cultural Archaeology” exhibition held at Munich’s Haus der Kunst in 2013, is a narrative of frayed edges. Put another way: an open circuit waiting for the listener’s magnetic field. Whereas the first sounds are from Heiner Goebbels’s Der Mann im Fahrstuhl, a multimedia drama born from technological anxieties, the last shape the lips of bard-among-us Robin Williamson, whose unaccompanied song “The World” examines the flesh’s place in endless creation.
Between these two extremes, as distant as they are connected by the six-CD spectrum they delineate, ECM Records founder and producer Manfred Eicher has gathered 85 sonic beacons all lit within his creative purview. Unlike Selected Signs I and II, both plucked from a younger catalog, the present collection feels more like the conspectus those predecessors never could have been. As such, it’s as close as the label has ever come to representing itself under one title.
The first disc maps its genetic profile from ECM’s New Series, exploring a variety of topographies, from the temperate zone of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians and Joseph Haydn’s The Seven Last Words to the peaks and valleys of Arvo Pärt’s Tabula rasa and C.P.E. Bach’s Fantasie für Klavier fis-Moll, while beyond those contrasts tapping into the connective tissue of Tigran Mansurian’s Testament, Betty Olivero’s Neharót Neharót, and Meredith Monk’s Scared Song. The latter, taken from the 1987 portrait Do You Be, is equally concerned with the storytelling impulse to which all humanity is connected by nature. It’s also a neurological masterpiece that realizes an intersection of freedom and intention such as only ECM could forge.
Disc 2 returns to decidedly German territory with a foray into the Hörstücke of Goebbels. This gnarled talisman of voices, orchestra, and saxophone is a jarring yet somehow logical lead-in to Giya Kancheli’s arresting Vom Winde beweint, the first movement of which floats Kim Kashkashian’s fleshly viola on a bodiless current of strings. This is followed by an excerpt of the Funeral Canticle by John Tavener, a composer who has yet to appear on the label. Despite being an outlier (this performance is taken from a 1999 Harmonia Mundi recording by the Academy of Ancient Music), it feels right at home and transitions seamlessly into the String Quartet No. 15 of Dmitri Shostakovich, as played by the Keller Quartet, which in turn opens a doorway onto the Hilliard Ensemble, whose renderings of Arvo Pärt’s Most Holy Mother of God and the 16th-century Spanish song “Tres morillas m’enamoran” (for which they are joined by saxophonist Jan Garbarek) are sandwiched by the Largo of Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony op. 110. Echoes of that ashen, somber beauty blossom in slow motion throughout two Postludiums of Valentin Silvestrov.
Disc 3 is dedicated almost entirely to composer Eleni Karaindrou. Her music has been a reliable way station along the New Series path for decades. Twelve of the fourteen selections are grafted from Concert in Athens, while the last two are emblematic excerpts from The Weeping Meadow. The sheer depth of feeling in both the writing and the performances prove Eicher’s vision and its ability to embolden others in kind. The most compelling transition comes next via Garbarek’s Dis, the title track of which treats an Aeolian harp as a moving canvas for wooden flute. Closing out this intimate color shift are two songs from Jon Balke and Amina Alaoui’s multicultural Siwan, including the hedonistic “Ashiyin Raïqin,” in which Alaoui sings: “How lucky we are to find this spot for our sojourn.” No sentiment could be truer here. That project’s Iberian roots are echoed in the Passacaglia andaluz II and kindred smattering from Rolf Lislevand’s Nuove musiche.
Things get decidedly cinematic on Disc 4, wherein the ambient touches of Andrey Degatchev’s soundtrack to The Return trace their utterances across physical and metaphysical waters alike. Even the pastiche of Nils Petter Molvær’s seminal Khmer—every track of which, save the last, is preserved—feels like imagery in sound. “Song of Sang II” is transcendent in this and any context, an anthem for all time keening from a past without walls. A new outro is suggested in the spidery “Close (For Comfort)” from Eivind Aarset’s Dream Logic.
As if all of that didn’t already feel like a full-body dip into the ECM font, Disc 5 adds rays to the widening dawn from a range of jazzier persuasions. The Stefano Battaglia Trio regales us first with its 12-minute “Euphonia Elegy,” providing an oceanic set-up for the electronic groove of Food’s “Celestial Food” and the Tord Gustavsen Quartet’s acoustic “Prelude.” What follows takes us all over the ECM map, tracing a red line from the solo guitar of Egberto Gismonti’s “Memoria e Fado” (as well as his magical collaboration with Garbarek and Charlie Haden, “Carta de Amor”) and the vocal honesty of Norma Winstone’s “Like A Lover” to the freer language of the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble and trumpeters Ralph Alessi and Tomasz Stanko. Along the way we also find sacred geometries in the Byzantine renderings of pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos and cellist Anja Lechner and the Colin Vallon Trio’s appropriately titled “Telepathy.”
Disc 6 chambers the oldest relics, starting with the Jimmy Giuffre 3’s premiere take on the Carla Bley classic “Jesus Maria.” Other archival gems in this final reckoning include “Time Will Tell” (Paul Bley, Evan Parker, and Barre Phillips), “Lonely Woman” (off the 1979 self-titled debut of Old And New Dreams), “Voice from the Past” (title track to Gary Peacock’s outstanding excursion with Garbarek, Stanko, and Jack DeJohnette), and “Kulture Of Jazz” by Wadada Leo Smith. Giving contrast to these precious diamonds are the worldly ores of “Langt innpå skoga” (Sinikka Langeland) and “Psalm” (Frode Haltli). In their dialogue, new orders are suggested, imagined, and liberated.
Because these selected signs, at the exhibition itself, were heard only through headphones or in walk-in listening stations, a strange balance of privacy and openness hovered in the background of their presentation. But like the field recordings interspersed throughout the sequence suggest, they were but itinerant souls in search of a home. And in this box they have found just that, waiting to become a part of yours.
Anja Lechner violoncello Kadri Voorand voice Tõnu Kõrvits kannel Tallinn Chamber Orchestra Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir Tõnu Kaljuste conductor
Recorded February 2013, Methodist Church, Tallinn
Recording engineer: Tanel Klesment
Mixed December 2014 in Tallinn by Maido Maadik, Manfred Eicher, Tõnu Kõrvits, and Tõnu Kaljuste
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: March 18, 2016
Meticulously, motionlessly, secretly, he wrought in time his lofty, invisible labyrinth…. He eliminated certain symbols as over-obvious, such as the repeated striking of the clock, the music. Nothing hurried him. He omitted, he condensed, he amplified.
–Jorge Luis Borges, “The Secret Miracle”
Mirror documents a specially curated performance of music by Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits given on February 6, 2013. From a composer of great variety, here we find a microscopic array built around Estonia’s choral heritage. With particular emphasis on the music of Veljo Tormis, whom Paul Griffiths in his liner notes affirms “was evidently a father figure for Kõrvits, and there is something in this recording of a tradition being received by one generation from another,” the program treats human voices as expressions of soil and soul. Griffiths goes on to describe Tormis’s instinct to fortify what makes Estonia’s choral music unlike any other—a politically subversive move in a country wrapped in Soviet chains for much of the elder composer’s life. Such independent spirit peeks through the veneer of history in Peegeldused Tasasest Maast (Reflections from a Plainland). Written in 2013 for cello and choir, it is a fantasy on a song by Veljo Tormis with words by political poet Paul-Eerik Rummo. With a transparency as only the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir can evoke, the voices weave a tapestry of shimmering shadows while the cello of Anja Lechner keeps them tethered like a prayer to earth-hugging flesh. A touch of kannel, an Estonian zither played her by Kõrvits himself, at the end foreshadows the instrument’s foregrounded presence in Tasase Maa Laul (Song of the Plainland). Cushioned in the forested voice of Kadri Voorand, this 2008 composition’s cries for peace and stability, planted in distant plains, reflect upon the suite for strings between them. Dating from 2010, Labürindid (Labyrinths) is as intimate as it is wide-ranging in feel and color, and shares a possible affinity with Erki-Sven Tüür, if in a more delicate vein. Over the course of seven parts, the last of which is like the watering of the preceding six seeds, Kõrvits paints with every bow in compound strokes of emotional transference.
Seitsme Linnu Seitse Und (Seven Dreams of Seven Birds) for cello, choir and strings, sets words by Maarja Kangro and Tõnu Kõrvits. Dating from 2009 and revised in 2012, this textural wonder, rightly described by Griffiths as “at once a choral suite and cello concerto,” finds voices stretched like a sky-blue page for Lechner’s avian cursive. Also in seven parts, it opens with fully formed life. The third part, which features a cello cadenza amid the whistling choir, is a dawn chorus in reverse, while the seventh shows unity through variation. Lechner’s playing, as always, is thoroughly considered, free yet controlled. As a translator, she understands what Kõrvits has not written into the score and draws out that subtext with utmost respect.
The last choral work is the Tormis-inspired Viimane Laev (The Last Ship). From 2008, its scoring for male choir, bass drum and strings, with words by Juhan Smuul, elicits a somber drama. Like Tormis’s finest oceanic excursions, including 1979’s Songs Of The Ancient Sea and 1983’s Singing Aboard Ship, it describes through the process of being described. Our postlude comes in the form of Laul (Song). Originally composed in 2012 for cello and (mostly pizzicato) strings, then revised for this performance, it is a fully contoured channel from light into darkness.
As in the Borges quote above, Kõrvits is one who reduces rather than elaborates. His notecraft is smooth as bone, given tendons and nerves through the listening.
Rolf Lislevand Baroque guitar, theorbo
Recorded April 2012, Auditorio Stelio Molo, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: May 20, 2016
Featuring music by Robert de Visée (ca. 1655-1732/33) and Francesco Corbetta (ca. 1615-1681), guitarist-composers in the employ of Louis XIV, this under-the-radar gem from ECM’s New Series finds Rolf Lislevand charting the divergent territories of the theorbo and Baroque guitar in a cross-hatched program.
De Visée’s sense of tactility is evident not only in Lislevand’s interpretations, but also in the writing itself. In Les Sylvains de Mr. Couperin and, especially, the piece from which the album derives its name, the theorbo’s emotional reach is fully examined. Their sounds are intimately connected to speech. “The dominant linguistic elements of French,” the performer writes, “are all there: the length of the musical syllables, the accents, created artificially by the ornaments, and above all the short, gestural, interleaved phrases constructed in a very clear rhetorical logic.” In this tongue he speaks semi-conversationally—never debating in the interest of affirmation but rather walking hand-in-hand around a question that chooses not to define its existence by an answer. The Chaconne en sol majeur is a masterstroke in this precise regard, laying down sonic sentences across a bridge of charm.
Corbetta, who served as de Visée’s teacher, flits above his own reflection in relatively whimsical yet philosophically inflected journeys. In the brilliant Partie de Chaconne en ut majeur, one can hear shades of the Iberian Peninsula, flamenco-like drama, and heart palpitations in a single strum. The focus on chording over individual voicings lends a dream-like quality. Indeed, whereas de Visée seems concerned with waking fantasies, here the colors are drawn from a whimsical font such as only closed eyes could contain. In this sense, the Caprice de Chaconne manifests the album’s most corporeal interests. Rooted as much in past as in future, it smiles as if to confirm the present moment as a magic of its own making. Not unlike the briefer Folie, it shines most when pausing for effect.
Here and there, Lislevand adds his own tasteful pieces, such as the “Intros” to Corbetta’sPassacaille en sol mineur and de Visée’s Passacaille en si mineur. They exist to strengthen an underlying sense of architecture, as indicative of a meticulous attention to time and its relationship to space. In service of that assessment, engineer Stefano Amerio went to great pains to recreate the halls of Versailles, where every inner detail of these instruments would likewise have blossomed like the hearts of those hearing them. Let those reverberations till the soil of yours in kind.
Kim Kashkashian viola Irini Karagianni mezzo-soprano Tassis Christoyannopoulos baritone Vangelis Christopoulos oboe Stella Gadedi flute Marie-Cécile Boulard clarinet Sonia Pisk bassoon Vangelis Skouras French horn Sokratis Anthis trumpet Maria Bildea harp Katerina Ktona harpsichord ERT Choir Antonis Kontogeorgiou choirmaster Camerata Orchestra Alexandros Myrat conductor
Concert production: The Athens Concert Hall
Recorded live November 19, 2010 at Megaron (Hall of the Friends of Music), Athens
Recording engineer: Nikos Espialidis
Assistants: Bobby Blazoudakis, Alex Aretaios, and George Mathioudakis
Edited and mixed March 2016 by Manfred Eicher and Nikos Espialidis
Mastering engineer: Peter DePian
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: November 18, 2016
The theatrical text of Davidcomes to us by way of an anonymous poet from Chios Island. After its rediscovery, it was published in 1979 in a critical edition by Thomas Papadopoulos of the Bibliotheca Vallicelliana, and premiered with music by Eleni Karaindrou the following year. Here it is documented in full from a performance in November 2010, given as part of a three-day celebration in honor of Karaindrou and her work.
Despite a Catholic sheen, Davidis sprinkled with comic touches, popular locutions, and lyricism, as many such stage dramas would have been in the 18th century when it was written. The “Overture” opens the door into a characteristically three-dimensional world. Between the pointillist harp (Maria Bildea) and legato viola (Kim Kashkashian), it describes enough space for the orchestra, flute, harpsichord, and oboe to leave their traces across the sky in a message—as yet wordless—that renders the world beneath it a tesseract for moral transfigurations. From this garden emerges the instrumental flowers of “Repentance” and “Compassion,” which together reveal a pasture dotted with the footsteps of our titular protagonist. The first blush of song comes in the form of “Devils.” In this indulgent tune, baritoneTassis Christoyannopolous frolics through an itinerary of exuberant accomplishments, thus shoring up a house of words against the winds of change about to blow. Through deft use of choir, which magnifies his self-inflation, Karaindrou mirrors the feel of an opera buffa, rifling through scenes as if in an emotional flipbook.
“David’s Entrance” softens the landing of mezzo-soprano Irini Karagianni, whose rounded tone offers solace by contrast in “The Good Things in Life,” a somber reflection on the fleeting nature of our existence. Of all the good that passes by, she sings, may hearts latch on the residue and other virtues let go so calm and slow. This is followed by the beauties of “When I See,” in which Karagianni’s voice reveals a deeper, more dramatic palette that eerily recalls the soundtracks of Zbigniew Preisner. Equally concerned with ephemeral things, its tenderness reverberates in “David’s Lament,” wherein Christoyannopolous and choir link a chain of calls and responses, dripping with regret: Hear my dirge, o woods, listen and sorrow. And at my funeral, trees, grieve and wilt.
In “Psaltes,” the climate darkens into a vesper. Sounding like a Gregorian chant, its concern with wonders balances the depressions that precede it: May these fires burn the spirits; may the arrogance of fear now cease. After a trumpeted “Procession,” we find ourselves swaddled in the beauty of “Angel,” wherein divinely personified virtue takes flight in harp and strings: May your sweet trills make mortals awaken and studiously your company take pains to follow. Even more processional, however, is the grand “Finale.” Here the Holy Trinity is invoked as the choir marches to Jerusalem in search of grace and calmer breezes.
Although one needn’t have the translations at their disposal to enjoy its pastiche, David is best appreciated with the CD booklet in hand, so that its finer nuances leap forthright into the very place where its sounds begin and end: the center of the heart.
John Potter voice Anna Maria Friman voice Ariel Abramovich alto, tenor and bass vihuelas Jacob Heringman tenor and bass vihuelas Lee Santana alto and tenor vihuelas Hille Perl viola da gamba
Recorded February 2011 at Propstei St. Gerold, Austria
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: August 25, 2017
Not knowing a man, the virgin mother bore without pain the savior of the world, the king of angels himself suckled only by the virgin, her breasts filled from heaven
So begins Secret History, an album once buried in the ECM vault, recorded as it was in 2011, and brought to light six years after the fact. In this song, composed by Jean Mouton (1459-1522), we understand through the intertwining voices of John Potter and Anna Maria Friman the blessings of divine and fleshly life, wherein flowers a contradiction so mysterious that unity can be its only gift.
In his liner note, Potter outlines the project’s philosophical genesis: “Music history is traditionally written in terms of composers and the first appearance of their significant works,” he writes. “Performance history doesn’t work like that: it’s the story of what happens to music after it has been written down.” So saying, he has assembled for the fortunate listener a series of tunes that survive in the tablature of lutenists and vihuelists who recast sacred polyphony into barer mosaics.
The two supports of this thrumming loom are Josquin Desprez (c. 1455-1521) and his Spanish successor, Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611). Although not typically linked in the manner they are here, both composers belong to a nexus of musical ideas that, while rooted in the church, took on lives of their own when itinerant string players arranged them as standalone vocal pieces. And while such “corruptions” might be seen far removed from their sources, they are in fact part of a larger, breathing organism that subsists on the spiritual food of interpretation. Potter and friends make this outward progression as clear as the notes have been resilient to the passage of time.
Victoria’s Missa “Surge Propera” is a tender spine, the separated vertebrae of which find cushioning in Josquin’s expansions of anonymous chants, thereby expressing the inchoate ability of melodies to shed their composers in favor of the God in whose honor they were penned. The mass, for its part, is so deeply intertwined with the Spirit that it cannot feel like anything but a benediction, even when its choral setting is condensed into the chamber of a single vihuela, played by Jacob Heringman. Other pieces by Josquin, such as the heartrending “Absalon fili mi” and “Nymphes de Bois,” brush gently against Victoria’s “O magnum mysterium,” which closes its eyes like the doors to a vestry, wherein rest sacraments of infinite musical possibility.
Heringman’s own Preludes, sprinkled throughout, are like the punctuation of a grammar that makes itself known gradually, intimately. The larger context, however, is still being written, and stalwarts like Potter are key voices in the conversation. His passion for innovation reveals an innovation already within; his attention to detail an openness of expression already active. Whether alone or with Friman by his side, matching every call with a response, he shows us that words once holding hands in circles now release their grip from ages past in favor of an unknown future.
Absalom my son, would I had died for you; I can live no longer but descend into hell, weeping.
On 10 February 2010, I began this blog with the goal of reviewing every album issued by ECM Records proper and its New Series imprint. Four years ago, I achieved said goal. Within hours of announcing this milestone, I was approached by Raúl Zea of Rey Naranjo, a publisher of fine books based in Bogotá, Colombia. As it turned out, Raúl was a huge ECM fan and had been reading my blog from almost the beginning. His proposal: To publish a book of selected reviews. My answer: When can we start? Fast-forward to 27 April 2019, and I found myself boarding an airplane bound for the annual Bogotá International Book Fair (a.k.a. FILBo) to hold the volume in my hands at last and present its contents to fans and newcomers alike over the course of five days.
As the book evolved into its present form as Between Sound and Space: An ECM Records Primer, my editors and I felt it necessary to marshal the reviews to speak to a variety of audiences. True to its designation as a “primer,” it is first and foremost intended as a doorway into the label’s manifold wonders. For that reason, inclusion of such classics as The Köln Concertwas absolutely necessary. On the other hand, I wanted to highlight albums that even seasoned listeners might have overlooked. Out of those two extremes emerged 100 specially curated and recrafted essays, rounded out by a smattering of personal favorites: a journey through ECM’s ongoing history that I hope will inspire readers in new directions of listening.
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Upon arriving at my hotel, I was draped with my FILBo credentials and guided to my publisher’s table. Yet before I could even marvel at a product years in the making, I had to take in the sheer scale of the fair and its throngs of passionate attendees—many of whom, I would discover the next morning, would be lined down the block three hours before opening time.
As I waded through cliques of voracious readers, I at last came face to face with the editor who had made this trip a reality, and with the work of art he and the Rey Naranjo team had labored to print in time for this event.
After a round of introductions, and a sampling of local cuisine (including my first bowl of ajiaco), I was ready to succumb to the toll of travel knowing that my love letter to a life-changing record label now had a life of its own.
The next few days were a promotional whirlwind, including two interviews for Colombian radio, two book talks, an interview with The Bogotá Post, and a video shoot at my publisher’s bookstore, Santo & Seña, for an upcoming crowdfunding campaign in anticipation of the book’s international version (to be released in early 2020). While it was exciting to be the center of so much attention, I also knew that none of it would have taken place without the vital music that had brought me into that center to begin with. Being able to share my knowledge with ECM fans in another country felt like the first step toward a larger conversation that I can only hope my book will provoke and sustain in the future.
Before leaving the city, I rode a cable car to the top of Monserrate, where Bogotá’s wider embrace became at last apparent.
The long stairway to the very top was a sobering reminder that no journey is possible without the steps required to bring its destination into view. And, like the gradations of mountain and concrete that bid me farewell, nothing we do is possible without the input of untold lives, laboring through cycles of sun and moon until our blessings are indistinguishable from all others.
For those blessings, I would especially like to thank Raúl Zea and John Naranjo for believing in me from day one, Andrea Salgado for the gracious invitation, Aurélie Radé for navigating the complexities of airline politics, Dulce María Ramos for coordinating interviews and rushing me to every venue on time, Luisa Martínez for her gentle kindness (and the flower), Guillermo Concha and Liladhar Pendse for proving that strangers should never stay that way for long, Juan Carlos Garay and David Roa for enlightening conversations in front of vastly different audiences, and the interpreters, including Ale Bernal, who rendered those conversations into Spanish under tight circumstances.
Anja Lechner violoncello, tam-tam Agnès Vesterman violoncello
Recorded December 2013, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 22, 2017
Hieroglyphs are visual music. They imply movement, tell stories, and reflect human and spiritual connections. In the hands of composer Valentin Silvestrov, standard notation becomes a hieroglyphic language unto itself. Throughout the sequence of this program, most of it penned in the present century, language fills spaces in absence of utterances. Each composition is a planet orbiting an unspoken sun, thus illustrating the richness of silence as a resonant, vibrational constant. In the same way that zero gravity isn’t the absence of gravity but equal attraction from all directions simultaneously, silence acts upon chamber instruments until their voices emerge as one. The Drei Stücke for two cellos (2002/09) that open the program are proof of that very concept. Two bows move like arms attached to the same body, trailing lines of communication in sand: powerful in meaning yet susceptible to the tide. This dynamic resurfaces in the Serenaden (2002), also for two cellos, which return the evening sky after a day’s borrowing, threading stars like beads on a necklace, while the Lacrimosa for solo cello (2004) pulls them off one by one until their light becomes individual again.
Elegie for solo cello and two tam-tams (1999) treats air as writing surface, exploring layers of impermanence against the idealism of capture. In the first two parts of this tripartite composition, the cello tracks movements of branches with the naked ear, and in the third introduces the metallic breath of struck tam-tams. In this context, the relationship between contact and decay is somehow reversed, so that beginnings prune their wings with conclusive beaks. Lechner thus splits voices in unifying them, yet achieves the reverse in Augenblicke der Stille und Traurigkeit (2003), trading arco and pizzicato dialects with the ease of inhaling and exhaling.
8.VI.1810…zum Geburtstag R. A. Schumann for two cellos (2004) realizes the composer’s goal for a “cello four-hands,” expanding the instrument’s possibilities by turning it inward. A feeling of euphoria locks flesh with shadows. Dances flit by like opportunities for melodic escape, while their after-images seek reciprocation in the listening. Lechner and Vesterman accordingly hang their spirits on easels and mark them with every brushstroke of the bow. Although not sequential, the companion piece 25.X.1893…zum Andenken an P. I. Tschaikowskij (2004) folds twilit landscapes into lyrical dough, kneading the earth until it no longer sticks to the hands.
All of which funnels into the harmonic vessel of Walzer der Alpenglöckchen for solo cello (2004), in which the clicks of stick on string open mountainous doors, behind which smolder long-forgotten hearths, aglow with the possibility of slumber. And yet, while the album may feel like a dream, it’s no more susceptible to the blade of waking up than the nameless figure wielding it.
Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond 