Contemporary Classical

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.

Thomas Larcher: The living Mountain (ECM New Series 2723)

| Tyran Grillo

Thomas Larcher
The Living Mountain

Sarah Aristidou soprano
Alisa Weilerstein violoncello
Aaron Pilsan piano
Luka Juhart accordion
André Schuen baritone
Daniel Heide piano
Münchener Kammerorchester
Clemens Schuldt conductor
The Living Mountain / Ouroboros
recorded June 2021
Bavaria Musikstudios, München
Unerzählt
recorded May 2022
Gemeindezentrum Weerberg
Engineer: Christoph Franke
Cover photo: Awoiska van der Molen
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 6, 2023

“At first, mad to recover the tang of height, I made always for
the summits, and would not take time to explore the recesses.”
–Nan Shepherd

The Living Mountain is the fourth ECM New Series album dedicated to the work of Thomas Larcher, whose previous programs have proven the Austrian composer to be, much like his mentor Heinz Holliger, a human magnifying glass. His attention to detail grows only more precise as his instrumental forces increase. Meanwhile, the chamber works unfurl in grand (but never grandiose) imaginings of times and places that we would never experience except through the filter of his awareness of the past. The eponymous song cycle for soprano and ensemble is a particularly vibrant example. Composed between 2019 and 2020, it sets selections from the memoir by Scottish poet Nan Shepherd, whose own penchant for highlighting the intimate in the vast suits Larcher’s sensibilities hand in glove.

From an introductory heartbeat, the landscape pulses with the music of blood flow, visceral and true. Larcher articulates this anatomy with surgical precision on his way to Part II, where we feel ourselves on the verge of falling over. That sense of vertigo—at once glorious and terrifying—sweeps through every crevice. Singer Sarah Aristidou expresses Shepherd’s words as if they were her own. Whether in brief expulsions of accordion breath or the hammering of piano strings, the diurnal reigns supreme. The final movement’s evocation of snow, as sparkling and wind-roused as it is blinding, runs down the text’s spinal cord.

At the other end of this proverbial tunnel is another song cycle, Unerzählt (2019-20), this one for baritone and piano based on the poetry of W.G. Sebald. These vignettes turn stills into moving pictures. Moods range from the programmatic (e.g., “Die roten Flecken,” which evokes the red spots on Jupiter in dramatic fashion, and the prepared piano rattlings of “Wenn die Blitze herabfuhren”) and the morose (“Am 8.Mai 1927”) to the contemplative (“Gleich einem Hund”) and painterly (“Blaues Gras”). One highlight is “Es heißt daß Napoleon,” from which we get this wry piece of historical revisionism:

They say
that Napoleon
was colorblind
& blood for him
was as green as
grass

The delicacy of Larcher’s setting brilliantly toes the line between mockery and empathy. Another standout is the final song, “So wird, wenn der Sehnerv zeerreißt”:

And so, when the optic nerve
is torn, the silent airspace
turns as white as the snow
on the Alps.

Thus reconnected to the snowy expanse in which we began, we can take strange comfort in its inhospitable nature—which, in the end, makes us all the more human. Pianist André Schuen and baritone Daniel Heide mesh beautifully, allowing bell-like sonorities to percolate through deeper gravel.

Stretching out the darkness between these is Ouroboros (2015). Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and the Munich Chamber Orchestra navigate three movements, opening with a dance of slow-motion detections. Despite the nominal instrumentation, the piano plays a vital moderating role in this relationship. Neither call nor response, theirs is a symbiosis that implies an eternal path to nothingness. The tempestuous middle movement deals in fear with a squealing, unrelenting grind. The conclusion reveals an ethereal balancing act, Weilerstein reaching the most pristine high notes I’ve heard on a cello in a long time before a frenzied crackle of fire and ash consumes itself. As the flame goes out, it moans one last time, just before comprehension and death become one and the same.

Alexander Knaifel: Chapter Eight (ECM New Series 2637)

| Tyran Grillo

Alexander Knaifel
Chapter Eight

Patrick Demenga violoncello
State Choir Latvija
Riga Cathedral Boys Choir
Youth Choir Kamēr
Andres Mustonen conductor
Concert recording, March 2009
Jesuitenkirche Luzern
Engineer: Charles Suter
Assistant Engineers: Urs Dürr, Ruedi Wild
Executive Producer (SRF): Rolf Grolimund
Cover: Eberhard Ross
Co-production ECM Records/Radio SRF 2 Kulture
Release date: March 14, 2025

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
–Song of Songs 8:6

The music of Alexander Knaifel (1943-2024) is a chain of lakes in the ECM New Series landscape. In this latest release, consisting of the slow-motion embrace that is Chapter Eight (1992/93), we encounter his setting of the eighth chapter of the Song of Songs. Conceived as a “community prayer,” it places a cello (played here by Patrick Demenga) at the center of three choirs arranged crosswise in a cathedral, itself listed among the instrumentation in the score.

Demenga is the welcomer whose song leads the way as the voices emerge from the wood- and stonework of the space itself, where human hands have left behind forms we can hear, see, and touch. Such tactility is at the heart of everything Knaifel composed. By stretching words and images to their breaking point, he showed how fragile our relationship to sound really is. For that reason alone, we should not be surprised that Chapter Eight is not a straightforward rendering of its source text, as verses are reordered, and not every one is accounted for. Some are also repeated (verse 1 appears six times, verse 6 appears five times, etc.), and by the time we get to the last of the piece’s 32 stanzas, we are reduced to fragments thereof. In that reduction, however, lies the key to understanding the truth we are being given: Scripture is nothing without its orality. And so, by favoring these far-reaching suspensions in his choral writing, the composer is redefining transcendence not as overcoming of the physical but as a manifestation of the liminal. The world seems to stop spinning, the clouds are no longer moving, and the sun is held in its dial. Through it all, the cello is a thread pulled through a veil not of our own making.

Although the passionate dialogue of Song of Songs is often read as a metaphor between the Jewish and Gentile churches at a time when Christ’s reconciliation had yet to be born out through the new covenant, Knaifel goes one layer deeper to highlight such tensions in every believing heart. While the cello and choirs become more unified in vision, they turn rapture into capture, whereby the body-solvent spirit is held gently in place by God’s plan. The repeated verses remind us that we must never leave others behind in our spiritual walk and that salvation is never ultimately about the self but is a means of glorifying the one who bestows it. The lover’s jealousy, therefore, is that of a God who hopes that all of us might lay our heads in his bosom. We feel this when Demenga’s bow falls from its perch (high notes like lasers through the mind) and scrapes the bottom of its fleshly allegiances (low notes like rusty chains through the heart). The singers move methodically, each syllable becoming a verse unto itself, the roles of call and response gradually reversing.

Thus, the pace of time becomes distorted, like seeing the world through a window down which drips a quiet rain. The storm is the language of faith, a test of our immaterial resolve against the material. And when we fail, we are ready to be lifted again and remade in the image of what we are meant for. And as these forces meet in the middle, they stand at the intersection of all things, whispering, “The unfinished statement is where life begins.”

This is music you can leave on to exist on its own terms until it becomes a part of the architecture you call home.

Gidon Kremer: Songs of Fate (ECM New Series 2745)

| Tyran Grillo

Gidon Kremer
Songs of Fate

Gidon Kremer violin
Vida Miknevičiūtė soprano
Magdalena Ceple violoncello
Andrei Pushkarev vibraphone
Kremerata Baltica
Weinberg/Kuprevičius
Recorded July 2019
Plokštelių studija, Vilnius
Engineers: Vilius Keras and Aleksandra Kerienė
Šerkšnytė/Jančevskis
Concert recording July 2022
Pfarrkirche, Lockenhaus
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Cover photo: Thomas Wunsch
Album produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 19, 2024

The word fate comes from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to speak, tell, say.” In its Latinate forms, it took on the nuance of that which was spoken by the divine. Both senses give us doorways into the present disc, in which Gidom Kremer leads his Kremerata Baltica through the works of Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) by way of living composers from the Baltic states. “This program,” Kremer notes, not coincidentally, “is meant to speak to everybody, reminding us of tragic fates along the way and that we each have a ‘voice’ that deserves to be heard and listened to.” In his brilliant liner notes, Wolfgang Sandner speaks of Kremer as an artist of multiple voices, having a “Jewish first name, German surname, Swedish ancestors, Latvian birthplace, three mother tongues, a love of Russian culture, and an imposed Soviet socialization.” And yet, these categories, he observes, dissolve the moment we utter them, for they are creatively inferior to the music that constantly defines (and redefines) the violinist and conductor’s sense of self.

For the past decade, Kremer has been a fervent champion for Weinberg via ECM (see, most recently, his traversal of the solo violin sonatas). Now, he reveals more obscure works by the Polish composer whose fragmentary yet coherent identity mirrors the interpreter’s own. From the dream-laden Nocturne (1948/49), arranged by Andrei Pushkarev for violin and string orchestra, to the dancing Kujawiak (1952) for violin and orchestra, a tapestry of sounds and textures blesses the ears. Between them are the tempered joys of Aria, op. 9 (1942), for string quartet, and three selections from Jewish Songs, op. 13 (1943), for soprano and string orchestra, on Yiddish poems by Yitskhok Leybush Peretz. The latter, originally published as Children’s Songs to avoid Soviet detection during the war, constitute a moving picture of thought, life, and action translated through the weakness of the flesh. Soprano Vida Miknevičiūtė navigates their pathways—by turns folkish and dramatic—as a needle in the dark.

Giedrius Kuprevičius (*1944) yields an equally substantial sequence bookended by two movements from his chamber symphony, The Star of David. The Postlude thereof is a duet between Miknevičiūtė and Kremer, in which David’s mourning for Saul and Jonathan funnels itself into introspection, connecting and gathering the soul. Between them are two refractions of the Kaddish, or Jewish prayer for the dead. In both, the mood implodes even as the heart struggles to contain every last molecule of sadness.

Before all this, we begin with the tremors of This too shall pass (2021) for violin, violoncello, vibraphone and string orchestra by Raminta Šerkšnytė (*1975). In listening (and we mustlisten) to Kremer’s lone voice emerging from an expanse that threatens to swallow us whole, we find cellist Magdalena Ceple joining not as an ally or hero but as a fellow questioner, one who throws kindling of doubt into the fireplace of mortality. Vibraphonist Andrei Pushkarev speaks of snow at first but soon reveals the language to be that of ice, thin and prone to breaking should one dare to overstep. By the time the orchestra shines its light, Kremer’s recitative has already laid bare the foundations of a story dislocated by memory. The world tries desperately to lock it into place, but it refuses—not through violent resistance but through the peace that comes from knowing who one is.

Concluding this fiercely intimate mosaic is Lignum (2017) by Jēkabs Jančevskis (*1992). Scored for string orchestra, svilpaunieki (ocarinas), chimes and wind chimes, it bids us to listen again, no longer to the instruments themselves but to the materials of which they are made. The violin’s dissonant entrance is the friction of leaves in an orchestral forest. Much like Erkki-Sven Tüür’s architectonics, Jančevskis looks to nature as a source of internal dialogue. As chimes grace our periphery just beyond the treeline, he reminds us that every word lost to the wind has a place to return to.

Evgueni Galperine: Theory of Becoming (ECM New Series 2744)

| Tyran Grillo

Evgueni Galperine
Theory of Becoming

Evgueni Galperine electronics, sampling
Sergei Nakariakov trumpet
Sébastien Hurtaud violoncello
Maria Vasyukova voice
Recorded 2021/21, Studio EGP, Paris
Engineer: Aymeric Létoquart
Mixed November 2021, Les Studios de la Seine, Paris
by Evgueni Galperine, Manfred Eicher, and Aymeric Létoquart
Cover painting: Lorenzo Recio
Album produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 21, 2022

If a composer is an author, then Evgueni Galperine is one who allows characters, actions, and places to speak themselves into logical corners, then breaks those corners to let the vacuum of space have a say. Based in Paris since 1990, the Russian/Ukrainian composer cites the language of cinema as his creative crucible. His first project in that regard was Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, a soundtrack he wrote sight unseen. (ECM listeners may remember another Zvyagintsev film, The Return, and its music by Andrey Dergatchev.) In the present program, Galperine tears his mise-en-scène from the pages of life itself. Whether reworking prerecorded material or responding to instruments in the moment, this “augmented reality of acoustic instruments” connects events of importance in his life. Aided by the contributions of Sergei Nakariakov (trumpet), Sébastien Hurtaud (cello), and Maria Vasyukova (voice), he breaks the electro-acoustic mold as he defines it, careful not to step on any shards left by the process to regard the partial reflections they offer.

Much of the work is personal, giving us glimpses into the experiences that have shaped his movements in the world. The most poignant is “This Town Will Burn Before Dawn,” for which Galperine imagined himself combing through the rubble of a destroyed futuristic city. “This simple idea took on a whole new meaning with the invasion of Ukraine,” he says, “the land of my father and of my childhood.” And while hope is found, it is unreachable. A cello stretches its arms but finds no contact in return, only an imagining of light amid ringing bells. Like “Soudain, le vide” later in the album, it is a requiem as much for the living as the dead. The flesh, it seems to whisper, is inseparable from shadow. “Oumuamua, Space Wanderings” is a more ambitious but no less intimate self-examination. Inspired by the oblong asteroid that enchanted the world with possibilities of interstellar contact in 2017, it writes its origin story with a Jon Hassell-esque morphology, nestled in an overlay of bright digital signatures and a seeking spirit.

With other influences ranging from Claude Debussy and Dmitri Shostakovich to György Ligeti and Arvo Pärt, a listening mind is clearly at work. Having such a list at hand prompts me to seek other paths of connection. The bellowing of low horns in “Cold Front” evokes the dawn-kissed expanse of Hans Zimmer, while the trumpet of “After The Storm” exhales like the foggy tropes of Ingram Marshall. To be sure, the high strings and beautiful dreams of “La lettre d’un disparu” make for an easy parallel with Pärt’s Tabula rasa. But they also bring me back to my first encounter with Three Pieces in the Olden Style by Henryk Górecki. If anything, my deep kinship with the Polish composer’s broad oeuvre rings truest for me throughout Theory of Becoming. I feel it in the translucent veil of “Kaddish” and the unrelenting textures of “The Wheel Has Come Full Circle”—not simply in terms of structure but in Galperine’s sense of time. It’s like he stretched out Old Polish Music thin enough to see the sun through without letting it rip, giving us a diffuse lens through which to regard the precariousness of our existence.

Even when the inspirations are of a more imaginative persuasion, they feel no less real. A childlike wonder reigns supreme in “Don’t Tell.” This melange of whistling, percussive clicks, trembling strings, and celesta is a record spinning backward. It cradles a flute like a newborn sibling, ending in a unified song of well-being. Lastly, “Loplop im Wald” refers to the magical bird solely capable of traversing Max Ernst’s mysterious painted forests. Tenser and moonlit, its Morse code trails ever outward into a calling of escape, hoping nature won’t come crashing down on itself before the journey can be completed.

With such a profoundly familiar sense of imagination to regard, we are left with only ourselves as companions, conversing until we implode as sound itself.