Contemporary Classical

Dobrinka Tabakova: Sun Triptych (ECM New Series 2670)

| Tyran Grillo

Dobrinka Tabakova
Sun Triptych

Maxim Rysanov viola
Dasol Kim piano
Roman Mints violin, hurdy-gurdy
Kristina Blaumane violoncello
BBC Concert Orchestra
Dobrinka Tabakova conductor
Fantasy Homage to Schubert, Organum Light, Sun Triptych
Recorded July 2021 at Watford Colosseum
Engineer: Neil Varley
Assistant engineer: Joe Yon
Whispered Lullaby, Suite in Jazz Style, Spinning a Yarn
Recorded August 2020 at Meistersaal, Berlin
Engineer: Rainer Maillard
Mixed January 2025 by Manfred Eicher, Dobrinka Tabakova, and Michael Hinreiner (engineer) at Bavaria Musikstudios München
Cover: Fidel Sclavo
Album produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 26, 2025

British-Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova returns to ECM with her second full program, following String Paths. That 2013 debut left an indelible mark, establishing her voice among many new listeners as one of immense humility intertwined with fortitude. Selections from the album were even included in the films Adieu au langage (Goodbye to Language) and Le livred’image (The Image Book), both directed by longtime ECM affiliate Jean-Luc Godard. But beyond these connections, it was clear that Tabakova was creating a world unto itself, a parallel dimension of sorts where chance operations and heartfelt intentions danced with graceful strength. All of which leaves someone in my position with the not-so-graceful task of trying to capture the breadth of her sound in the confines of the screen you are reading now. Not coincidentally, she begins her liner note for the present recording as follows: “Writing music and writing about music are distant cousins at best.” And yet, her melodies have a way of bridging the gulf between them with purposeful unfolding.

Violist Maxim Rysanov and pianist Dasol Kim open with two distinct chamber pieces. From the indrawn breath of Whispered Lullaby (2005), the viola opens its octave as a pathway into the piano’s flowering spirit. What starts as a whisper, however, develops into a robust expression of lucidity. Having been originally written for a children’s opera titled Midsummer Magic, it takes on that feeling of an incantation—a clue, perhaps, into its evocative intensity. Suite in Jazz Style (2009) represents the third suite written for Rysanov, following Pirin and Suite in Old Style, the latter of which appeared on String Paths. It’s also a natural homecoming, if you will, for a composer who started her journey as a child improvising on the piano. Its tripartite structure begins with “Talk,” a prime showcase for Rysanov’s mastery that proves him to be one of Tabakova’s most fervent interpreters, having known her since their shared time as students of the Guildhall School. There is a delightful freedom to the interpretation, which, despite its precision (if not because of it), makes the proceedings feel spontaneous. In the interplay between him and Kim, listening and speaking become one in the same.

After this upbeat introduction, “Nocturnal” spreads the charcoal dust of its balladry in thicker strokes. There is, nevertheless, a continuation of that same playfulness, a wry smile in the viola that is self-aware, if now a touch mournful. As the bow travels between sul ponticello and sul tasto gradations, it opens itself to fresh meanings in the piano’s embrace. Kim is the ever-attentive partner, rendering context as faithfully as a saxophonist wandering the streets of a rainy city after a gig. And in “Dance,” which eases into eartshot with percussive tapping, the impulse to move takes on a desire of its own to love and be loved. There is a vibrant microtonal approach here that feels sinewy and thoroughly connected, stepping into folkish territory one moment as easily as it leaps into modernism the next. Rysanov navigates these gymnastics with a rooted sense of architecture, swaying with every tectonic movement to protect the structural integrity at hand.

The Fantasy Homage to Schubert (2005) for strings presents a recontextualization of Schubert’s Fantasy in C major for violin and piano, transfigured and otherworldly. The metaphor is not arbitrarily chosen, either. One could easily imagine it as a lost soundtrack selection from 2001: A Space Odyssey, each shift of light and celestial body revealing both the alien and the familiar. Tempting as it is, I hesitate to call this “haunting,” as this would imply there was someone around to be haunted. Rather, it feels disembodied, having nowhere to go but outward, forever echoing into the depths of the universe. And yet, somehow, we are privy to its secrets. The appearance of violin and cello (soloists Nathaiel Anderson-Frank and Benjamin Hughes, respectively) is a slow-motion transmission from an extinct Earth finding its way to us in hypersleep.

Organum Light (2000), also for strings, places Tabakova at the helm of the BBC Concert Orchestra. Originally for five singers, it takes its inspiration from the viol consort pieces of Gibbons and Purcell. Despite a deep, rich pulse, sliding harmonics in the strings open our hearts to its truths.

Spinning a Yarn (2011) for solo violin and hurdy-gurdy features its dedicatee, Roman Mints, on both instruments. A ligament between past and future, it leaves us to walk the present on the resulting tightrope. The playful unpredictability of the hurdy-gurdy provides a tactile foundation for the violin’s storytelling. All of it feels incidental to some scene from centuries ago brought to life in moving pictures. One can almost see the fields being planted, the animals being kept, the children being raised. It also has a rocking motion that makes its consonances sing all the more sweetly.

Last is the album’s title piece for violin, violoncello and string orchestra. Composed in 2007, it first took life as “Dawn,” which Tabakova wrote for the 10th anniversary of Kremerata Baltica and in celebration of Gidon Kremer’s 60th birthday, later adding two further movements. Mints is retained here alongside cellist Kristina Blaumane, fronting the BBC Concert Orchestra under the composer’s hand. The sheer depth of sonority is wondrous, at once frightening and comforting. “Day” is an arpeggiated crystal of which each facet reveals a slightly different perspective. A Philip Glass-like architecture opens itself to adventurous harmonies, ending in a hush that slides without pause into “Dusk.” Here, the mood is more meditative, stretched to reveal the spaces in between the notes. Even in slumber, it knows the sun will return to give life once again, even if there is no one around to enjoy it.

At the end of her liner note, Tabakova writes: “I’d like to think that in the silence that follows music, there may be a fleeting sense that the internal world has spoken – not in certainty, but in presence, however fragile or incomplete.” And if there is anything to be found in the silence that follows this album, it is surely the need to fill it once again with what we have just heard, lest the linearity of time remind us that, one day, we will all stop singing.

Arvo Pärt: And I heard a voice (ECM New Series 2780)

| Tyran Grillo

Arvo Pärt
And I heard a voice

Vox Clamantis
Jaan-Eik Tulve conductor
Recorded 2021/22
at Haapsalu Cathedral, Estonia
Engineer: Margo Kõlar
Cover: Fidel Sclavo
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 5, 2025

For we [are] strangers before thee, and sojourners, as [were] all our fathers: our days on the earth [are] as a shadow, and [there is] none abiding.
–1 Chronicles 29:15

Building on more than 25 years of working alongside Arvo Pärt (whose relationship with producer Manfred Eicher spans nearly twice that length), Vox Clamantis and conductor Jaan-Eik Tulve present a new recording of choral works drawn from sacred texts. Their last recording, The Deer’s Cry, was a watershed moment in the Estonian composer’s discography, as it simultaneously narrowed the frame and opened up wider possibilities of interpretation.

Although the program is varied in direction, it is wholly centered around a theme of humility, and nowhere more so than in the opening Nunc dimittis (2001). Its setting of Luke 2:29-32 tells the story of Simeon, who holds the baby Jesus in his arms, knowing that God’s promise to see Christ revealed before his death has been fulfilled. What begins as an intimate supplication, however, turns into a vast theological chordscape of meditations on the openness of God’s grace freely given to all. What is so striking about the voices is not only the shapes through which Pärt guides them in the score but also the depth of power in their fragility. When alone, they waver ever so slightly; when aligned with others, they fix their gazes heavenward. 

O Holy Father Nicholas (2021), taken from the Orthodox Prayer Book, was written for the opening of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine at Ground Zero in New York City. Like the Bible itself, its covers grow worn with time; words wear off from handling yet remain unchanged, living and without contradiction. In seeking intercession, the choir allows the light of forgiveness to shine upon human depravity. The singing walks two distinct paths, each passing through like a pilgrim to destinations promised yet unseen. Such tensions reveal the shape of our sin, beautiful from a distance but gnarled and festering at close inspection. This contrast is a sobering one that places life at the center of an infinitely complex structure, of which belief lays the cornerstones.

Each of the Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen (1988), recently heard arranged for strings on Tractus, speaks to a different manifestation of Christ. From the tender “O Weisheit” (O Wisdom) to the highs of “O Schlüssel Davids” (O Key of David), a full range of vocal and incarnational possibilities is examined through the lens of sound. Buried among them is “O König aller Volker” (O King of All the People), in which rhythmic circles reveal caesurae for glory to slip through like a quiet legion of angels. The stepwise movements that characterized the Nunc dimittis are to be found here in denser but no less translucent configurations.

Für Jan van Eyck (2019) is a rendering of the liturgical Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) based on the same section of the Berliner Messe and written for the restoration of the altarpiece of the van Eyck brothers’ Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, which was reopened in the Ghent Cathedral. Accompanied by Ene Salumäe on organ, it allows us a spell of awe before the magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice. So begins a sequence of shorter yet no less rich works that continues with Kleine Litanei (2015), which pays respect to Irish Benedictine monk, theologian, and philosopher St. Virgil (c. 700-784). Its fragments of traditional prayers shift between harmony and dissonance, evoking the tension of seeking spiritual comfort in a secular world. Last is the album’s title composition, And I heard a voice… (2017). It is, so far, the only Scripture that Pärt has set in his mother tongue. Based on Revelation 14:13, it concludes appropriately on an eschatological note, where the promise of eternal rest—a life without pain and suffering—is offered amid the wrath of the end times, leaving us with a most undefiled sense of hope.

Faith is not determined by the strength of one’s convictions but rather by the truth and integrity of what it worships. We can assert all the faith in the world in thin ice, but it will inevitably crumble beneath our feet. By the same token, we can have little faith in thick ice, and it will hold as we make our way safely across. Much of that truth comes alive in this music. As Christ says in Luke 17:6, “If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.” Let these choral works each be a mustard seed waiting to be watered by the listener’s tender regard.

Meredith Monk: The Recordings (ECM New Series 2750)

| Tyran Grillo

In November of 2022, ECM released this boxed edition compiling all 12 of Meredith Monk’s New Series discs to celebrate her 80th birthday. The set also includes a 300-page book reprising the original liner notes, along with new texts and interviews, photographs, archival documents, press quotes, and more. The result is more than a commemoration but a testament to the strength of the human spirit to make itself heard even in the face of inevitable entropy.

Manfred Eicher speaks of two important organs in the composer and singer’s oeuvre: their inspiration and their visual quality. In both, she finds a perfect partner in the producer, who has honed this approach across the territories of other singular artists, though none with quite the same combination of whimsy, ritual, and universalism.

In his essay, “The Worlds of Meredith Monk,” Frank J. Oteri characterizes the music as follows: “It paradoxically feels as if it was created at the very beginning of time and yet sounds completely new.” And while the works recorded here are scores in their own right since so much of her output defies standard notation, there is, he observes, a consistency that transcends the frameworks of their articulation. As part of a “living repertoire,” they seek out our ears as if they were extensions of themselves, thoughts on opposite sides of the brain spinning a seemingly impossible neural connection across oceans of time.

In an artist statement titled “The Soul’s Messenger,” Monk speaks of what the voice was able to reveal to her in the absence of its cultural reference points:

“Sometime in the mid 1960s, as I was vocalizing in my studio, I suddenly had a revelation that the voice could have the same flexibility and range of movement as a spine or a foot, and that I could find and build a personal vocabulary for my voice just as one makes movement based on a particular body. I realized then that within the voice are myriad characters, landscapes, colors, textures, ways of producing sound, wordless messages. I intuitively sensed the rich and ancient power of the first human instrument and by exploring its limitless possibilities I felt that I was coming home to my family and my blood.”

In other words, the voice was no longer an expression of the physical; it was physicality incarnate. “I began playing with what a vocal gesture would be,” she continues. “How would the voice jump, spin, spiral, fall? How would I abstract the sound of a laugh, of sobbing, of shouting, into a musical phrase?” Since then, her ”daily work” has not been to refine her singing so much as open it to its unadulterated imperfections, for in them are veins of possibility. These “gifts from a larger and wiser realm” are dug up like archaeological discoveries after long periods of waiting, each an old world made new.

At the age of three, Monk was diagnosed with strabismus, whereupon her mother enrolled her in a Dalcroze eurhythmics program, a technique that integrates music with movement. This experience, she recalls, “influenced everything I’ve done. It’s why dance and movement and film are so integral to my music. It’s why I see music so visually.” It’s also why the body has figured so viscerally in her live performances. Movement, dance, and shaping of sound all come across in the studio, not least of all because of Eicher’s attention to detail and Monk’s willingness to see where it leads. Without the shadow of infirmity hanging in the balance, questions of perfection become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Nowhere is the beauty of being off kilter expressed with such genuine poetry as in 1981’s Dolmen Music. In an excerpt from an interview by Ingo Bierman for his video series ECM50 | 1969-2019, Monk describes working with Eicher on this seminal session and how, after laying down Gotham Lullaby, she recorded a second take after concerns over her voice cracking in the first:

“It was technically perfect, but it really didn’t have that spirit, the kind of magic that the first take had. I have always respected Manfred for recognizing that, because you can edit yourself out of existence and get everything right, but there is something about the emotional continuity that communicates more deeply.”

The chamber program of which it is a part is quite varied and offers as full a portrait of Monk as you’re likely to find in one place. From the koan-like humor of The Tale to the 24-minute title piece, a larger narrative unfolds in almost liturgical fashion, each a step toward mortal awareness, with dashes of urban morbidity thrown in where it counts.

A touching piece of ECM lore worth mentioning is that Collin Walcott was a dear friend and frequent collaborator of Monk early on. He was, in fact, responsible for introducing her to Eicher and served as co-producer for Dolmen Music (playing violin and percussion on the album as well), which, along with Turtle Dreams, was thus shepherded into the ECM New Series stable after the imprint was created.

Speaking of Turtle Dreams, it makes for an enchanting companion. Although Monk’s performances used to confuse critics for their equal incorporation of dance, theater, and music, this 1983 follow-up shows her ethos to be based in the sounding body. Where this album’s predecessor regarded primordial realities, this one reflects the dissonance of living in the city through what she calls “Manhattan folk music.” Its intimate combination of keyboards and voices is nonetheless grand in its emotional scope, a dance with silence that sustains itself on contradictions and their resolutions and leaves room for what she calls “places to breathe, live, and play.”

All of this feels like a prelude to Do You Be. Released in 1987, Monk’s third album for ECM contains a melange of pieces from The Games: a science fiction opera and Acts from Under and Above, while the album’s title piece is from Vessel: an opera epic. Its incorporation of explicit words rather than the liminal spaces of and between feelings with which she was normally concerned places us at the center of a quiet storm of communication. The culminating effect is one of the voice as an instrument of memory, a beacon of futures that come to us as warnings.

Not coincidentally, Book of Days (1990) expands on that metaphor with even greater intensity in reimagining the incidental music to Monk’s film of the same name. Having seen the film, I can confirm its sense of dislocation and engagement with the human condition writ large. The story, set in Medieval times, tells of a young Jewish girl named Eva who is transfixed by visions of the modern world. Finding little comfort in her grandfather’s Torahic interpretations, she seeks solace in a local madwoman before her entire village succumbs to the plague. At the end, workmen who inadvertently unearth the village centuries later find Eva’s clairvoyant drawings of humanity’s demise. More than a soundtrack, the album is cinema in and of itself, morphing into weighted pathos.

Such ruminations of desolation were even more firmly on Monk’s mind when, at the end of 1989, while in residence at the Leighton Artists Colony in Banff, Monk found herself looking out her window at the Canadian Rockies. Despite being there to work on her opera ATLAS, she took inspiration from the scenery and produced a set of a cappella pieces that would become Facing North (1992). Conceived as a duet for her and Robert Een, it is a reflection of a place of cold uncoverings. The opera itself also made its way onto ECM. Over the course of three acts, ATLAS (1993) tells the life of Alexandra Daniels, an explorer who learns that the real journey is internal. This ambitious piece shows a transparent approach to instrumentation. Unlike the bombastic walls of sound that can dominate canonical opera, its accompaniment emerges from within instead of being forced from without. Interestingly, Eicher and Monk decided to cut the opera’s conclusion. “In the live performance,” she admits, “it was a crucial part of the whole. In the audio form, it became more of an epilogue, which seemed to both of us to make too much of a closure instead of letting the listener remain in motion at the end of the journey.” Such is the quintessential expression of movement through music, and how the soul breaks through the cracks in our voices is indicative of the necessity of imperfection to reveal self-worth.

Said cracks run even deeper in Volcano Songs (1997). As manifestations of human archetypes, these metaphysical pieces pay deference to Monk’s ongoing ethos of “always trying to explore forms that balance rigor with freedom.” Her melding with singer Katie Geissinger is astonishing to behold. Another program of strong variety, it includes such vital works as New York Requiem and Three Heavens and Hells, both of which deal with the transience of life and our regard for human suffering. Similar themes are explored in mercy (2002) and Songs of Ascension (2011), both of which represent collaborations with sculptor and installation artist Ann Hamilton. Whereas the former is built around the idea that the mouth can harm as much as heal, the latter was originally performed in an eight-story tower designed by Hamilton. In both, the instruments are just as vocal as the voices (and vice versa) in their explorations of fragility. As I wrote in my original review of mercy, “Monk’s is not a world in which the voice is primary but rather a voice in which the world is primary.” I stand by that statement and would point to these as Exhibits A and B. Nestled between them is 2008’s impermanence. A distinctly chromatic work, it eschews standard narrative in favor of a feeling, a connection to somewhere beyond the immediacy of experience.

Piano Songs, released in 2014, is a remarkable cross-section of Monk’s life and career, with purity and sameness through difference in mind, containing such touchstones as Paris, a piece from 1972 that marks her return to the piano after focusing intensely on the voice, and Ellis Island from 1981, which ties history and memory into one inexorable package. Last is On Behalf of Nature (2016), which speaks for the voiceless, the abused, and the forgotten. It has the most connective tissue of all, bleeding as much through the leaves as from the soil in which they are born.

If any red thread can be said to run through the above tapestry, it is that selves were made to expand. However, part of being human is realizing that with that expansion comes the responsibility of charting our way through all the extra space. With Monk at our side, we can feel sure of placing our feet on loving ground.

Arvo Pärt: Tractus (ECM New Series 2800)

| Tyran Grillo

Arvo Pärt
Tractus

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Tõnu Kaljuste conductor
Recorded September 2022
Methodist Church, Tallinn
Engineer: Tammo Sumera
Design: Sascha Kleis
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 25, 2025

“Fear not that thy life shall come to an end,
but rather that it shall never have a beginning.”
–John Henry Newman

The title of Tõnu Kaljuste’s lovingly curated program of works by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt comes from its leading composition, Littlemore Tractus. Like much of what is presented here, it is somewhat older (dating from 2000) but newly arranged by the conductor (in 2022). Scored for mixed choir and orchestra, it dramatizes words from the 1843 sermon “Wisdom and Innocence” preached by John Henry Newman in Littlemore, Oxford. In it, the English cardinal seeks refuge in the Lord, set apart from a world turning circles around its self-interest. Like a tornado in reverse, Pärt’s rendering transitions from destruction to the calm before the storm, serving listeners with something intangible. Even in the seven Greater Antiphons I-VII, a 2015 string arrangement of the Seven Magnificat-Antiphons from 1988, we can feel the tension between that which is touched and that which is felt. Each is a stained glass window, allowing us insight into that one place where light can only reach by grace: the heart. The last of these, “O Emmanuel,” is the magnificence of holiness distilled.

Cantique des degrés for mixed choir and orchestra (1999/2002) is a dynamic setting of Psalm 121, in which David looks to the Lord, ever sustaining and filled with life. Its parabolic structure, from internal to external and back again, ascends the steps to the Temple of Solomon, but casts a final look backward for want of other souls to save. The choir is recessive, never dominating the foreground even at its most glorious. This is followed by Sequentia for string orchestra and percussion (2014/2015). Originally written as part of the Robert Wilson production, Adam’s Passion, it offers a subliminal meditation on Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. These Words… (2008) is scored for the same combination of instruments. No less expressive for its lack of text, it quotes Pärt’s own Psalom (last heard on 1996’s Litany) as an inward-looking catalyst.

L’abbé Agathon for soprano and string orchestra (2004/2008) is reprised from its appearance on Adam’s Lament in 2012, led by soloist Maria Listra in a much more intimate and contemplative interpretation. Based on a legend from the fourth century regarding an encounter between the Abbot Agathon and a leper (who is really an angel in disguise come to test his faith), it tells the story with programmatic flair, replete with a string-heavy transfiguration as the angel ultimately ascends heavenward.

The album ends with two supplications. Where Veni creator for mixed choir and orchestra (2006/2009) is a deep cry for forgiveness, Vater unser for mixed choir, piano, and string orchestra (2005/2019) sets the Lord’s Prayer. Thus, wisdom and innocence are shown to be things that none of us possesses except by the cross.

This is not music that one discovers but that one welcomes as a gift. From depth to depth, it anoints with the oil of understanding that God is indeed with us, wrathful yet forgiving of the harm we have inflicted upon his creation.

Veljo Tormis: Reminiscentiae (ECM New Series 2793)

| Tyran Grillo

Veljo Tormis
Reminiscentiae

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Tõnu Kaljuste conductor
Veiko Tubin reciter
Annika Lõhmus, Triin Sakermaa soprano
Maria Valdmaa soprano
Iris Oja mezzo-soprano
Indrek Vau trumpet
Madis Metsamart percussion
Linda Vood flute
Recorded October/November 2020 at Methodist Church, Tallinn
Engineer: Tammo Sumera
Cover photo: Mari Kaljuste
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: September 8, 2023

“I do not use folk song. It is folk song that uses me.”

The above words, famously spoken by Veljo Tormis (1930-2017), ring truer than ever in Reminiscentiae, the first album under conductor Tõnu Kaljuste devoted to the Estonian composer since his passing. The program guides listeners through a chain of foundational works, many of which receive their world premiere recordings here. None speaks to the ethos at hand quite like Tornikell minu külas (The Tower Bell in My Village). Scored for choir, two sopranos, reciter, and bell, it is the result of a commission by Kaljuste in 1978, who noted that many church bells were silent in Soviet Estonia, rendering houses of worship little more than empty shells. Because the tower bell signaled to all, regardless of age or creed, to take pause and know that the divine was watching over them, it was anathema to a self-interested secular government. And so, Tormis incorporated native folk songs to amplify the voice of the people, along with verses by Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, whose evocations (spoken here in Estonian by reciter Veiko Tubin) set a profound precedent: “I can see as much of the universe from my village as can be seen from anywhere on earth.” Through the tolling bell dotting the music as it unfolds, this sentiment reveals an underlying philosophical refrain that teeters between the sacred and the profane. As it continues to resound, only the soul can sing in return without fear of being heard by the wrong ears.

Mure murrab meele (Worry Breaks the Spirit) for choir and orchestra (1972/2020) is among a handful of works arranged by Kaljuste that also include Helletused (Herding Calls) for choir, soprano, and orchestra (1982/2020) and Hamleti laul I (Hamlet’s Song I) for choir and orchestra (1965/2020). Whereas the former intertwines memories of childhood with rural traditions, the latter sets the work of Estonian poet Paul-Eerik Rummo. This dark and brooding piece finds Hamlet confronted with discomforting repetitions and images he would much rather escape in favor of a self-sufficient world. As time and tide march on without him, he is left in stasis, pacing circles around his regrets.

Longtime listeners will rejoice to hear “Lauliku lapsepõli” (The Singer’s Childhood), reprised from 1999’s Litany To Thunder, in the full context of Kurvameelsed laulud (Melancholy Songs) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (1979). This tripartite work cuts into the night like a knife into dark wood, leaving behind a distinct array of melodic shapes. It mixes youthful naivety with geriatric wisdom, while the orchestra adds selective commentary along the way.

All of these songs are spokes to the hub of the Reminiscentiae for orchestra. Composed between 1962 and 1969, they represent a cycle of all four seasons in a series of vignettes, of which Sügismaastikud (Autumn Landscapes) is the most cinematic. Of particular note are “Üle taeva jooksevad pilved” (Clouds Racing Across the Sky), which sweeps us up in its delicate urgency, and “Tuul kõnnumaa kohal” (Wind Along the Heath), with its tense drama. I dare say either would fit perfectly into a Hayao Miyazaki film. Talvemustrid (Winter Patterns) slows its heartbeat to the rhythm of hibernation. It rewards us with a view of the Northern Lights, while a trumpet resounds below in appreciation. The wind returns in Kevadkillud (Spring Sketches), only much smoother and more accommodating to changes in direction. As flora make themselves known in “Lehtivad pungad” (Buds Leafing Out), we feel the shift in the air before dances leap across the landscape, resting in the cuckoo’s call. Suvemotiivid (Summer Motifs) moves from arid climates, through a thunderstorm, toward a tender evening. Also included in the cycle is Kolm mul oli kaunist sõna (Three I Had Those Words of Beauty), which features Lina Vood on flute. It is a pastoral masterpiece that, along with the rest, allows us to appreciate Tormis anew through an instrumental lens.

Although Tormis’s music was rarely heard outside his native land until ECM opened the door, now that it has become a part of the global landscape, how privileged we are to sit at its feet and contemplate its observations at a time when people and places are burning at the stake. If anything, this is the album’s purpose: to unfold our memories until they are big enough to fit more of our thoughts, musings, and written words. Like time itself, it holds only as much as it is given.

Signum Quartett: A Dark Flaring (ECM New Series 2787)

| Tyran Grillo

Signum Quartett
A Dark Flaring

Signum Quartett
Florian Donderer violin
Annette Walther violin
Xandi van Dijk viola
Thomas Schmitz violoncello
Recorded March 2022, Sendesaal Bremen
Engineer: Christoph Franke
Design: Sascha Kleis
An ECM Production
Release date: July 18, 2025

A Dark Flaring marks the second ECM New Series appearance of the Signum Quartett, following their renditions of Erkki-Sven Tüür’s chamber music on 2020’s Lost Prayers. With an even more evocative title through which to guide our listening, they present a singular program of selections from South Africa. In her liner notes, journalist and music critic Shirley Apthorp sets the stage for us most vividly:

“In both Xhosa and Zulu tradition, a healthy relationship with your ancestors is a prerequisite for wellbeing in the present; modern psychology is still catching up with much of what older cultures have known for centuries. While it remains a challenge to find a common thread between South Africa’s many and diverse cultures, this awareness could be said to knit together both the rainbow nation’s populace and the works on this recording.”

And in Komeng (2002), by Mokale Koapeng (b. 1963), we begin to understand just how wide the gap between mind and body can be. The piece takes its inspiration from “Umyeyezelo,” a celebratory song by Thembu musician Nofinishi Dywili (1928-2002). Dywili was a master of the uhadi, a single-stringed bow played with a stick akin to the Brazilian berimbau (an effect replicated here con legno). The song’s title means “ululation” and refers to a Xhosa coming-of-age ritual, the circular nature of which is organically expressed in the music’s structure. A play of sunlight on a child’s face, a swaying reed, a tree standing tall on the horizon: images of past and future comingle in the present, rendering such divisions of time meaningful beyond measure (to say they do away with them would be to undermine the music’s committed sense of time). A rocking motion in the cello, fragile pizzicato, and other liminal gestures from the higher strings add vital details.

Next is (rage) rage against the (2018) by Matthijs van Dijk (b. 1983), which begins innocently enough before imploding. It is directly connected to loss (the composer having lost his mother when he was 18) and personal trauma, paying homage to both the Dylan Thomas poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and the band Rage Against the Machine. Toeing the line between fury and dark resignation, it exploits the limits of the string quartet’s capacity for depth and breadth. Stomping feet add necessary punctuation. The piercing sirens of its final act are thrilling, like a rock song being fed through the meat grinder of Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima until the bleeding slows to a trickle. A subliminal drone woven into the ending gives hope of a life beyond the chaos.

From the newest to one of the oldest of the program, we switch to the Five Elegies for String Quartet (1940-41) of Arnold van Wyk (1916-1983), who, in the late 1930s, became the first South African composer to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He also knew loss, having suffered the death of his mother and oldest sister by age 17. Despite being his first compositions for string quartet, these elegies immediately evoke Shostakovich in their fiercely shaded lyricism and were among a handful of early works that earned him great renown in his day. The balance of fluidity and razor-sharp insight is immediately apparent in his examination of war. The lively second movement, marked Allegro feroce, grabs the hem of joy but never manages to defrock the dark zeitgeist that flaunts it. The central Adagio is the mournful heart of it all, a forlorn viola solo against a backdrop of aftereffect: bomb smoke, fire ash, and tear stains. Only toward the end does the cello answer the call as if from the grave. And in the final movement, we encounter the most lyrical motifs, which build into a Beethovenian drama before ending in a near whisper.

Péter Louis van Dijk (b. 1953) is the father of Xandi van Dijk, violist of the Signum Quartett. His iinyembezi (2000) draws from John Dowland’s “Flow My Tears” (1596), as indicated by the Xhosa title (meaning “tears”), refracting the theme until it becomes a chain of half-starts and unrequited remorse. At one point, pizzicato playing evokes the mbira (African thumb piano), and the musicians even tap their instruments in kind. Over the course of 16 and a half minutes, it traverses continents’ worth of terrain, giving itself over to jubilation but always falling back into a bed of tentative truth claims. Despite the expressive depth at hand, it draws an ever-tighter circle of influence around itself until, like an ouroboros, it must stop just shy of self-extinction. 

Robert Fokkens (b. 1975), who also studied at the Royal Academy of Music and has lived in the UK ever since, gives us Glimpses of a half-forgotten future (2012). An elegy to deaths in his own life, it too evokes the uhadi but bears further imprints of Cage, Feldman, Bach, and the French spectralists. Spaced out in three movements, the second of which leaps as if in an attempt to escape the clutches of grief, it finishes with microtonal contemplation, seemingly at odds with its surroundings.

The finale is an astonishing discovery in the form of the Quartet for Strings (1939) by Priaulx Rainier (1903-1986), another Royal Academy of Music graduate who studied with Nadia Boulanger, among others. Inspired by the music she grew up with in Zululand, she stayed on at the Academy as a professor of composition. Being a relatively early work, the Quartet for Strings eschews some of the technical challenges that would beset much of her later pieces, but it’s no less challenging for its emotional demands. Its opening movement, for one, teeters between lyricism and skepticism—or, if you will, between looking us straight in the eye and askance—while the trembling second movement dances at the edges of a fading memory. The third movement, marked Andante tranquillo, makes artful use of pizzicato cello and moves in flowing chords attached at the hip. Finally, a spirited Presto chews hard until it reaches bone in the viola. Sliding strings share the air with muted harmonics, a textural quality that makes me wonder whether she didn’t make an impression on composers like Boucourechliev later on.

If A Dark Flaring has a soul partner there in the universe, it is the Kronos Quartet’s seminal Pieces of Africa from 1992. If you admire that album as much as I do, then you’ll find plenty to savor in this one as well. Although born of a different stripe and spirit, it holds equally deep roots in its hands and refuses to let go of them from start to finish.

Erkki-Sven Tüür: Aeris (ECM New Series 2784)

| Tyran Grillo

Erkki-Sven Tüür
Aeris

Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
Olari Elts conductor
German Hornsound
Christoph Eß
Marc Gruber
Stephan Schottstädt
Timo Steininger
Recorded September 2022
Estonian Concert Hall, Tallinn
Engineer: Tammo Sumera
Cover photo: Jan Kricke
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: May 23, 2025

If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.
–Psalm 130:3-4

In the book of 1 Samuel, the Bible records the birth and rise of the eponymous prophet who becomes a great mouthpiece for the God of Israel, only to end up appointing his two sons as judges at a time when such roles were divinely chosen in times of need, not by bloodlines. Seeing how his progeny are swayed by bribery and other improprieties, their subjects seek kingship instead. Although God warns that this will bring about nothing but bigger government and restricted freedoms, they double down on their decision. For that kingly role, he chooses Saul, who eventually crumbles under the weight of so much power—a tale all too familiar to us today and proof that there is indeed nothing new under the sun. And yet, none of this has stopped others from letting their faith speak through art in the face of regimes bent on crushing it underfoot.

A case in point is the Soviet empire, during which the inherent impulse to create was channeled into the service of the state. Echoes of this history are implicitly examined here by Erkki-Sven Tüür on Aeris. In his liner notes for the Estonian composer’s latest ECM New Series program, musicologist Kerri Kotta situates the importance of the symphonic form in the USSR, where the genre came to be upheld as high art. “If the motivation was largely propagandistic,” he writes, “composers still found opportunities in the symphony’s complex but abstract musical semantics to express their worldview and even be covertly critical of the authorities.” Such statements were worlds unto themselves, each a circle of birth, life, contemplation, and death. Tüür’s symphonies, Kotta goes on to say, “are musical journeys towards a wholeness which does not overlook the conflict of its parts but rather glimpses in them a means of moving forward towards greater inclusiveness.” In that respect, we can read his sonic language as one of liberation, to be sure, but also of substantiation. We must regard the sacraments of these offerings reverentially, knowing that they are as ephemeral as the words uttered over them yet as eternal as the resurrection to which they ping our internal compasses. Thus, even in the face of supremacy, music manages to speak more freely than (and in place of) those who compose it.

Tüür’s Symphony No. 10 “ÆRIS” (2021), which forms the centerpiece of this album, may be best read not as an expansion of all that came before in earthly majesty but rather as a reckoning of the shadows lurking within its rafters. Scored for a quartet of French horns and orchestra, it follows nature from creation to unity to dispersion. Opening with the low hum of darkness giving way to light, it separates the water from the firmament and cuts the Earth from its tether, like a newborn from its umbilical cord. A single piccolo sounds the first fowl of the air, and others join it to enliven the scene. Land animals open their eyes and hearts. Forests and gardens tangle into life. Bright slashes of light in the percussion and strings reveal open wounds of sin, while the horns blend even at their most commanding, ever the voices of prophecy. The clopping of a mule brings us into an era of agriculture, while martial tendencies hover all around. Rhythmic cross-cuts and tubular bells speak of the responsibility of kingship we were never meant to handle. Quiet passages of high mist and deeper contemplations funnel into a climax of harmonic flute, stretching out the heavens like a piece of paper on which the names of every believer are written before ending with a shiver and giving way to the inevitable entropy of time.

On either side of this juggernaut are two major orchestral works. Phantasma (2018) is an indirect homage to Beethoven, featuring time-traveling echoes of the Coriolan Overture. It sings in timpani and tremors, a veil through which one can see just enough of reality to believe it’s still there. As a leitmotif, these constitute a darkness that doesn’t oppress so much as float just beyond reach in dreams. As the atmosphere builds, and fluid runs of vibraphone and winds skirt the edges of our perception, climbing strings only make the fall that much harder. The piano haunts the background like a vestige of the past seeking physical contact in the present but never finding a body to inhabit.

De Profundis (2013) is based loosely on Psalm 130. The English horn introduces its arid theme before patterns of leaves imprint themselves on the ground as if to memorialize the trees that shed them. As a monument to fear (the beginning of all wisdom), it is the epitome of ashes to ashes.

This is Tüür’s most mature program to date, even without pulling on the theological threads running through it. Its power is self-sufficient enough to carry the full weight of its life force. In the end, however, it’s hard to avoid its piercing eyes, asking, “Has the proof of hindsight yet convinced you that God was right all along?”

Zsófia Boros: El último aliento (ECM New Series 2769)

| Tyran Grillo

Zsófia Boros
El último aliento

Zsófia Boros classical guitar, ronroco
Recorded March/April 2022, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Cover photo: Fotini Potamia
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 14, 2023

Guitarist Zsófia Boros returns with her third program for ECM’s New Series. Pairing selections from Argentina with those of French composer Mathias Duplessy, the result may just be her most meticulously constructed dollhouse yet. Indeed, it’s as if every track were either a room or a piece of miniature furniture placed artfully within it.

We begin at the entrance with Duplessy’s “De rêve et de pluie.” The use of harmonics here, alternating with liquid arpeggios, evokes an architectural awareness of the surroundings. Boros traces the contour of the doorway, takes her shoes off in the foyer, and steps carefully inside to take it all in. Next, she tiptoes up the stairs built by Joaquin Alem, whose “Salir adentro” cradles a brief rhythmic tapping in its tenderness. It breathes almost dramatically despite the near-stillness, burrowing as an animal preparing for hibernation. From this dreamy escape, we enter the reality of the nursery, in which Quique Sinesi’s “El abrazo” crochets its lullaby. For this, Boros wraps a rubber band around the guitar strings—a muting technique she developed to allow her to practice while her children were sleeping. The effect is warm and familiar.

From there, Boros recedes into the kitchen, where Alberto Ginastera is cooking lovingly at the stove. His take on the “Milonga” is a spider-webbed tango, as savory as it is sweet. Moving on, we are led into the study, where two books bound by Duplessy lie open for our scrutiny. Whereas “Le secret d’Hiroshigé” recalls the sound of the Japanese koto, moving through paper screens as if they were made of air, “Perle de Rosée” is more botanical. With an understated quality that eschews the pitfalls of virtuosity in favor of its grace, it navigates fields of crops on the verge of being harvested. Meanwhile, a fire burns softly in the fireplace, where the kindling of Sinesi’s “Tormenta de ilusión” leaves us to regard some more unexpected turns of phrase. Played on the ronroco (the 10-stringed instrument for which it was originally written), it destroys memories of the past the tighter it tries to hold to them.

As we wander into the gallery, Duplessy treats us to a modest yet captivating private collection. In “Le labyrinthe de Vermeer,” we can sense oils, pigments, and brushstrokes coalescing into a coherent image. Each section has its own fragrance and distinct perspective. His “Berceuse,” the album’s pinnacle, draws a poignant ebb and flow, while “Valse pour Camille” expresses childlike wonder, coming of age in resonant strums.

We end in the greenhouse, where the album’s title piece by Carlos Moscardini casts its light on a bonsai tree. As a marvel of curation, it doesn’t so much mimic its larger cousins but shows what music is capable of at its most cellular level.

Vox Clamantis: Music by Henrik Ødegaard (ECM New Series 2767)

| Tyran Grillo

Vox Clamantis
Music by Henrik Ødegaard

Vox Clamantis
Jaan-Eik Tulve conductor
Recorded March 2021 at St. Nicholas Dome Church, Haapsalu
Engineer: Margo Kõlar
Recording supervision: Helena Tulve
Cover photo: Jan Kricke
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 2, 2023

O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth.
– Psalm 96:1

Gregorian chant was the experimental music of the medieval era. Here, filtered through the work of Norwegian organist, choir conductor, and composer Henrik Ødegaard (b. 1955), it blends into the folk music of his own country, all tied together by a contemporary classical idiom that takes two steps back for each one forward. In the throats of Vox Clamantis under the direction of Jaan-Eik Tulve, his sound feels as inevitable as the faith that binds it at the molecular level.

The Genesis of this musical Bible is Jesu, dulcis memoria (2014/15). Its dialogue of darkness and light draws from the liturgy of the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus to establish the grandest of all dichotomies. As a drone appears underneath, followed by shifting chords, it opens itself to new shades of the text. Such is Ødegaard’s respectful approach to spiritual building, leading to an interwoven “amen.” From here, we get an even deeper dialogue in the inner heart work of Alleluia, Pascha nostrum. Its tender monophony speaks of Christ’s death, while O filii et filiæ(2015/21) offers Ødegaard’s examination of the resurrection. At its core is a 15th-century paschal hymn, building polyphonically through its refrain. Men’s and women’s voices make contact and separate, each a flock of birds gracing the sky with its murmurations. The Gregorian section concludes with a Kyrie and a Pater noster, the latter from a 13th-century Madrid codex, containing some surprising friction and sound colors.

Antiphons from a Scandinavian manuscript of the same century are the basis of the eight-part Meditations Over St. Mary Magdalene’s Feast in Nidaros (2017), which occupies the album’s largest portion. In her liner notes, Kristina Kõrver writes of the work, “It is as if the composer were literally sitting in front of a fragmentary manuscript, filling in the gaps and adding the missing lines, not as a scholar-restorer, but as a poet, a co-creator.” Whether working in tension or harmony with his sources, Ødegaard always seems to be exploring the material as one might repair a piece of old furniture, knowing that even the most seamless integrations will reveal themselves with subtle differences in hue, texture, and quality. The first and last sections are the most personal, revealing the composer’s penchant for unsettled yet cohesive harmonies. Their flow is always restrained so that our ears might be directed inward and our eyes upward.

When encountering Psalm 62 in the antiphonal “Mini osculum non desisti,” we find ourselves not torn but made whole, as if two parts of ourselves walking away from each other have turned around to meet in fellowship. Meanwhile, Canticum Trium Puerorum emerges organically from the chant of “Oleo caput meum non unxisti” as steam from boiling water. As Ødegaard continues to open our hearts to these possibilities, they begin to feel as natural as the souls rendering them. The choir shapes these with such grace as to be stilling in effect. In the setting of Psalms 148-150, a shushing sound feels like the rasp of pages being turned from the pulpit: a reminder that the Word was indeed made flesh. The deepest font is in the Magnificat, merging with “O, Maria, mater pia.” The resulting flow is so alluring that anything floating upon its waters would seem out of place. And that it does—at first. But something transformative happens as the women’s and men’s choirs align to illustrate the gospel’s power to seek, find, and restore unity.

If I were to compare the Meditations to a stained glass window, it would be analogous to the solder that holds together the panels rather than the panels of color themselves. It is a skeleton enshrouded by centuries of worship, made animate by the power of the lungs and the breath of life that fills them with the oxygen of salvation.