ECM Records

Nicolas Masson: Renaissance (ECM 2846)

| Tyran Grillo

Nicolas Masson
Renaissance

Nicolas Masson soprano and tenor saxophones
Colin Vallon piano
Patrice Moret double bass
Lionel Friedli drums
Recorded November 2023 at Studios La Buissonne
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Mastering: Nicolas Baillard
Cover photo: Nicolas Masson
An ECM Production
Release date: March 14, 2025

A quiet sparkle, a pebble thrown into the water, and a band that regards every ripple with their art—so begins “Tremolo,” the first of 10 new tunes from saxophonist Nicolas Masson. With partners Colin Vallon on piano, Patrice Moret on double bass, and Lionel Friedli on drums, he crafts melodic prose poetry that opens its borders to the freedom of in-the-moment interpretation. His tenor has the quality of a dream struggling to maintain its form in the face of impending wakefulness. The tension between the two is where so much of this music lives: at once allied with the night while yearning for daybreak. Stretching its neck from the opposite direction is the title track. Speaking as much in the idiomatic language of feet that walk as in that of hands that create, it conveys its autobiography in linked verse. All the more appropriate that his previous album with these fine musicians should be called Travelers, for they all contribute their own stamps to this passport.

What makes the group’s interplay so endearing is the grace of their seeking spirit. In “Anemona,” for instance, they give themselves to the flow of Masson’s organic writing selflessly and not without a significant quotient of charm that lets childlike impulses come to the fore. In “Tumbleweeds,” the free improvisational bonus that follows, we encounter the deepest expression of their atmospheric capabilities. Like the equally brief “Moving On,” which finds Masson and Moret duetting in the half-light, it embraces uncertainty. That said, even in the more artful punctuations of “Subversive Dreamers” (a highlight for its under-the-skin them), we are never coerced into experiencing something outside the realm of lived experience. Such comforts are harder to come by in a world caged by division. And how can one not feel like a messenger bird with a broken wing, mended and set free by the soprano saxophone-driven “Forever Gone”? Tied to our foot is the message ciphered in “Practicing The Unknown,” where hope reigns. At the risk of belaboring the analogy, I wonder whether “Basel” isn’t the terminus of our flight. Its percussive tracery, soaring piano, and unforced sopranism show us the quartet’s heart.

If all the above is the body, then “Spirits” is the blood working its way through the veins. But despite the intimations of kinetic energy that it whispers, it all points to the conclusion in “Langsam,” which challenges the listener to find a better word to describe the mood of what we’ve just experienced.

When listening to Renaissance, it becomes obvious why songs on an album are called “tracks.” It’s because each leaves something physical that we can touch and follow, knowing the journey will be its own reward.

Nils Økland/Sigbjørn Apeland: Glimmer (ECM 2762)

| Tyran Grillo

Nils Økland
Sigbjørn Apeland
Glimmer

Nils Økland Hardanger fiddle, violin
Sigbjørn Apeland harmonium
Recorded January and March 2021 at ABC Studio, Etne, Norway
Engineer: Kjetil Illand
Mixed January 2023 at Bavaria Tonstudio, Munich
by Manfred Eicher and Michael Hinreiner (engineer)
Cover drawing: Lars Hertervig, Sailing Boat, 1858
Album produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 16, 2023

Representing nearly three decades of collaboration and exploring a repertoire that spans the gamut from traditional to improvised music (if not one and the same), fiddler Nils Økland and harmonium player Sigbjørn Apeland present Glimmer. The program takes inspiration from their native Western Norway, where Apeland has spent years collecting folk songs preserved by local singers. The duo also includes originals inspired by Lars Hertervig (1830-1902), whose drawing graces the album’s cover.

Most of the tunes survive in the living archive of their homeland, starting with “Skynd deg, skynd deg,” the melody of which melts like ice in the first dawn of spring. In this and its successor, “Gråt ikke søte pike,” Økland’s bow is a root plucked from the ground. The fiddle pulses with life beneath it, strands of potential others sprouting from its central branch, while the harmonium is the sunlight giving it sustenance. After this is “Valevåg,” the first of only two by Apeland (the second being the harmonium-only pulse of “Myr”). Dedicated to Norway’s first atonal composer, Fartein Valen (1887-1952), it is a snaking and mysterious piece that evacuates every mold it creates. This serves as a surreal prelude to “O du min Immanuel,” in which moments of far-reaching breadth wield navigational instruments of great intimacy. Such vacillations are what make the album so compelling.

Much of Økland’s writing favors the brief and the introspectional. Whether in the crystalline beauty of the title track or the haunting, rounded tone of “Dempar,” he draws with a potent pen across thickly fibered paper. And in “Rullestadjuvet,” for which he shares credit with Apeland, he brings forth an understated drama. With so much evocation practically dripping from their palette, they render every contour in three dimensions.

Among the traditionals that flesh out this curation, highlights include “Hvor er det godt å lande” for its dreamy splendor, “Se solens skjønne lys og prakt” for its cinematic charge and magical harmonics, and “Nu solen går ned” for reaching farther than it seems two instruments can. All of these are hymns to something, somewhere.

This is one of those special combinations of instruments that belongs in the same category as Inventio or Ojos Negros, resulting in music that leaves its shadow behind as a reminder of where it has yet to roam.

Billy Hart Quartet: Just (ECM 2748)

| Tyran Grillo

Billy Hart Quartet
Just

Mark Turner tenor saxophone
Ethan Iverson piano
Ben Street double bass
Billy Hart drums
Recorded December 2021
Sound On Sound Studios, NY
Engineer: Roy Hendrickson
Mixing: Gérard de Haro
Supervision: Thomas Herr
Cover photo: Thomas Wunsch
An ECM Production
Release date: February 28, 2025

Saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Ben Street join forces with drummer Billy Hart for a flight of 10 in-house originals. These experienced souls, each distinct in their own way, mesh without losing their sense of individuality. If anything, they strengthen it by allowing voices to be heard, listening to be spoken, and legacies to be honored.

Iverson contributes four tunes, including “Showdown,” which opens the set with a somber kiss. If this album is a city, here are its outskirts, where a certain lucidity immediately distinguishes the quartet’s unforced hands. Turner’s soloing is fluid, embracing the affections that compel it to survive adversity. The chord changes get under the skin, letting us go only when it is safe to land. And speaking of landing, “Aviation” throws its paper airplane high and far. Basking in fresh flavors with a swinging aftertaste, Turner digs deep into his roots to pull out some robust bulbs of inspiration. “Chamber Music” establishes a darker, more intimate sound, beautifully cross-pollinated by piano and bass. “South Hampton” is another evocative gem with nothing to hide. Delicate yet raunchy, it finds Hart matching Iverson tit for tat.

The classic “Layla Joy” is the first of three from the bandleader, loosely rendered. The composer’s malleted drums chart a tender undercurrent while his allies fold one cellular piece of origami after another until an abstract whole is revealed. Iverson’s scratching of the piano strings and Street’s downward spiral give plenty of ink for Turner’s pen. The title track is a nostalgic tune that lays down its royal flush one well-worn card at a time. Like a burnished handle on the outer door of an old walkup, it bears the traces of decades of contact and human stories. “Naaj” is another nod to the Hart songbook. The drumming is as detailed as the reedwork is raw.

The saxophonist himself offers three tunes of his own. “Billy’s Waltz” glides on ice and is a highlight for its flexibility, seamless construction, and organic development. Iverson’s solo is pure gold. “Bo Brussels” is the freest tune, giving way to improvisational splendor. Rounding out the session is “Top of the Middle.” Turner weaves between the traffic of this urban groove without batting an eyelash. The sheer naturalness of the band’s collective sound is a splash of cold water in the face on a hot summer day.

Each musician is a star in a sky of ancient constellations. Turner carries much of the melodic weight. Meanwhile, Iverson casts the widest net. Despite not contributing any tunes, Street is an equal composer in the sound. And Hart is ever the chameleon, roaming wide while always keeping home within sight.

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.

Duo Gazzana: Tõnu Kõrvits/Robert Schumann/Edvard Grieg (ECM New Series 2706)

| Tyran Grillo

Duo Gazzana
Tõnu Kõrvits/Robert Schumann/Edvard Grieg

Natascia Gazzana violin
Raffaella Gazzana piano
Recorded November 2021, Reitstadel Neumarkt
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Cover photo: Luciano Rossetti
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: November 18, 2022

A new recording from the Gazzana sisters—Natascia on violin and Raffaella on piano—is always something to celebrate. But what they now present may be their finest in terms of programming, thoughtfulness, passion, and self-control. Making a special case for this assertion are the subtle shades of Tõnu Kõrvits’s Stalker Suite (2017), one of two pieces written for the duo by the Estonian composer. Despite being an homage to Andrei Tarkovsky’s eponymous masterpiece, the music occupies a world unto itself, not least because of its performers’ unobfuscated humanity. From the soft metallic pianism that introduces “Into The Zone,” we relive at least some of that journey, which seems to go deeper vertically the more it proceeds horizontally into abandoned areas of non-existence and timeless looping.

Kõrvits doesn’t so much describe the imagination of cinema but rather the imagination incinema. When the film’s characters, for instance, enter “The Room,” their musical equivalent doesn’t seek to recreate those dilapidated walls, the waterlogged detritus of lives unlived, or the ringing phone. Instead, it lives in the quiet unrest of a mind led by the hand to a mirror in which images disappear as quickly as they manifest.

As the Stalker notes in his “Monologue,” what we call passion is the friction between souls and the lives of the bodies they inhabit. Weakness, he goes on to say, is the companion of birth, whereas strength is the accompaniment of death. Thus, every note wavers in the delicate metaphysical tension between the two. Rich and pliant yet fiercely resolute against the blinding light, it touches the periphery that is no periphery. If anything is programmatic here, it is “Waterfall,” but even this comes with an implied proviso: You must not treat the image as an idol, for faith comes by hearing, not seeing. The Zone has been internal all along.

Notturni (2014), also in four parts, delineates another porous architectural enclosure. Kõrvits’s penchant for brevity is philosophically and hermeneutically suited to these pieces, which take ideas not as excuses for grand expounding or soliloquizing but as poems in miniature. And if a nocturne is supposed to be about the night, then these modern examples of the form show us that a darkened sky reveals what the daylight obscures with its glare. The relationship between piano and violin is especially profound in the third piece, where fluttering high notes in the keys mesh genuinely with lower voicings in the bow.

Between these modern ores lies the polished gemstone that is Robert Schumann’s Sonata No. 1 in A minor, op. 105, of 1851. In its flowering opening movement, the violin’s G string resounds like an alto in the forest. In the Gazzanas’ hands, it feels as natural as sunrise. Although formally divided into three movements, the central one being the most searching in its cautious approach, it finds resolution in the recession of its character. The folk-like qualities of its final act are a testament to the inner struggle of a composer wanting to look to the soil without having to trip over those buried therein.

Finishing out the program is the Sonata No. 3 in C minor, op. 45 (1887) by Edvard Grieg. For this rendering, they default to the composer’s own copy, which differs from the first published edition. The differences accentuate the Norwegian character, drawn by flowing brushwork and sometimes-gnarled textures. If the first movement is a robust ode to origins, then the second, marked “Allegretto espressivo alla Romanza,” is a contemplative gush of loving kindness. Moving in slow motion, it calms us before the storm of the final dance revels in a palette’s worth of colors. The Gazzanas masterfully navigate every twist and turn in this lush and yielding landscape. At once songlike and exuberant, they allow every glint of meaning to shine through to the rousing end.

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.

Lucian Ban/Mat Maneri: Transylvanian Dance (ECM 2824)

| Tyran Grillo

Lucian Ban
Mat Maneri
Transylvanian Dance

Mat Maneri viola
Lucian Ban piano
Recorded live at CJT Hall in Timișoara, October 29, 2022
Recording engineer: Utu Pascu
Mixing: Steve Lake and Michael Hinreiner (engineer)
at Bavaria Musikstudios, Munich
Cover photo: Romania farm scene, 1919 (courtesy Library of Congress, Washington)
Album produced by Steve Lake
Release date: August 30, 2024

Transylvanian Dance is the long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s Transylvanian Concert. The latter ECM debut of pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri’s collaboration was a landmark showcasing the duo’s ability to immerse and blend in a partnership written in the stars. The present program, recorded live in October 2022 in the context of the Retracing Bartók project in Timișoara, is based entirely on songs and dances collected by Béla Bartók in Transylvania. And yet, the recapitulation of this music is more than a gesture of preservation; it’s an act of solidarity. If Ban and Maneri are archaeologists, they regard every artifact on its own terms. Rather than dust off the caked sediment, they appreciate it as a part of what the object has become.

In his liner notes for the album, Steve Lake invokes the “treasure-house,” a term used by Bartók and fellow composer Zoltán Kodáldy to describe the folksongs that may have gone lost without their efforts and one that feels duly appropriate to label the container built by these four hands. Drawing from his own experience growing up in Transylvania, Ban stains the wood with an ancestral quality, while Maneri carves adornments patterned after the imprints of far-reaching histories from within.

Open the door and take any interpretation stored a few steps beyond it, and you’re sure to find something to connect to. That being said, “Poor Is My Heart” is about as sparkling an introduction as one could hope for into this archive of still photographs come to life. To be welcomed into this space so freely is more than a privilege; it speaks to the human right of free expression against tyrannies of silence. Appropriately, the pianism is lithe yet strong, while the viola is a pliant voice that speaks of reeds and winds from bygone eras, its harmonics turning shafts of recollection into particles of real-time action. Like the title track later in the program, it keeps no secrets from us. However near or far the musicians feel, their balance of extroversion and introversion is superbly rendered. If Ban is the earth, then Maneri is the tiller of its collective memories. “Romanian Folk Dance” is another ripe harvest. Through disjointed yet natural movements, it breathes with an unsettled (but never unsettling) quality. The instruments circle each other, closing but never tightening the knot past the point of loosening.

What might seem to be a discerning focus on revelry is the oxygen for the darker flames of “Lover Mine Of Long Ago,” which treats its garments as layers of skin to be shed at will. Ban’s exploration of the piano’s inner strings, whether by plucking or muting, polishes a dowry of coins and other trinkets to be left behind with it. Meanwhile, “The Enchanted Stag” is a keening hymn in which bluesy accents bend to the will of the compass’s needle. Both “Harvest Moon Ballad” and “The Boyar’s Doina” turn the concept of the soul into a playing style. Wavering yet never faltering, each is a house creaking in the night, reminding us of the fragility of what we call home. Settling ever deeper into the ground, their candlelit windows beacons for wandering dreamers, they create a breezeway for the final song, “Make Me, Lord, Slim And Tall.” Not a single note feels wasted: percolating, germinating, and fragrant as a forest floor after the rain. With so much fertility, we can only wonder at the gifts it will yield with repeat listens.

András Schiff: J. S. Bach – Clavichord (ECM New Series 2635/36)

| Tyran Grillo

András Schiff
J. S. Bach: Clavichord

András Schiff clavichord
Recorded July 2018
Kammermusikssaal H. J. Abs,
Beethoven-Haus, Bonn
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Cover photo: Jan Jedlička
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: January 27, 2023

“When I’m at home, my day always begins with Bach. It used to be on the piano, now it’s on the clavichord, even before breakfast. After a few of the Inventions I feel reborn. My ears, my mind, soul and spirit are cleansed.”

Few keyboardic constructions feel as tangible as the clavichord. If only for that reason, it takes getting used to. Yet if you are willing to meet it on its own terms, its internal resonances and breadth of character soon become apparent. As the go-to of Johann Sebastian Bach, it deserves a spotlight in this music—not only for its sound but also for its spirit. For while its intimacy is a given (allowing as it did the luxury of private interpretation for both composers and enthusiasts), and its history and Bach’s relationship to it are well documented, there’s something about letting it sing for itself, and I can think of few hands more capable of doing just that than those of pianist András Schiff, whose humble admission crowns this review.
 
The six-part Capriccio sopra la lontananza del fratello dilettissimo (Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother) is a delightful inauguration to the instrument’s flavor. Though lesser known than the Inventions and Sinfonias (a.k.a., the Two- and Three-Part Inventions, split between this album’s two discs), they speak nakedly and with the programmatic lucidity required of them. The bigger, canonical collection after them dons new garments (if not sheds old ones) in the present recording. Knowing that Bach likely intended them for the clavichord gives us a renewed understanding of their provenance. The faster movements (cf. Invention No. 4 in d minor, Sinfonia No. 15 in b minor) sparkle, while the slower ones (cf. Invention No. 2 in c minor, Sinfonia No. 4 in d minor) feel more robust than ever. The middle realm (cf. Invention No. 15 in b minor, Sinfonia No. 11 in g minor) gives us the best of both worlds. Such is the magic of the clavichord: Despite its slimmer character and build, it holds its own and then some in a basket woven of lower pitch (a’ = 404 Hz). One highlight in this regard is the lutelike Sinfonia No. 9 in f minor, which walks up a flight of stairs, making the pull of gravity palpable.
 
Between these are the Four Duets (of which No. 3 in G major is especially wholesome) and the Ricercar à 3 from Das Musikalische Opfere, which, along with the concluding Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, is the biggest revelation herein. Whereas the orchestral sensibilities in one are still very much alive, albeit refracted and distilled, the other shows the subtlety of the “Bebung” technique, whereby the performer adds vibrato with vertical pressure of the fingertip. Thus, these pieces’ complexities become more apparent because they cannot hide within the piano’s cavernous architecture. The fugue is a wonder. Feet to ground, it knows where it stands and how to take joy in the life it has been freely given.

Danish String Quartet: PRISM V (ECM New Series 2565)

| Tyran Grillo

Danish String Quartet
PRISM V

Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen violin
Frederik Øland violin
Asbjørn Nørgaard viola
Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin violoncello
Recorded June 2021
Festsal, KFUM/KFUK, Copenhagen
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Cover: Eberhard Ross
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 14, 2023

The Danish String Quartet concludes its nearly eight-year journey pairing Ludwig van Beethoven’s five late string quartets with works by Johann Sebastian Bach and later composers. Looking back, I can’t help but smile at how deeply and patiently the DSQ has fertilized the soil of this project to yield the richness of spring harvest.

As the musicians humbly observe, “Micromanagement is rarely a successful strategy when it comes to late Beethoven.” Therefore, if the music feels almost fiercely detailed, it’s because the relationships between the notes speak up for themselves at every turn. Indeed, it’s impossible to encounter the initial stirrings of the String Quartet No. 16 in F major, op. 135, wherein the composer returns not only to the quadripartite form but also to his astonishment of the past, without blushing. And what, you might wonder, is immediately apparent this time around? Nothing less than the undeniable realization that the late Beethoven deviates from other “standard” quartets of the repertoire (including his earlier own) in how inevitable it feels. Whether in the lucidity of the second movement or the dark pastoralism of the third, every sound takes on a physical appearance. The sheer grit the Danes bring to these contrasts is wonderous. Whereas the faster rites of passage would give little room for personal interpretation in less capable hands, in the present context, they are vessels in which the pudding of proof is artfully mixed. In the final stretch, which begins in gentler territory while also expressing great urgency, the call and response between cello and violins opens the door into a run across an open field where life itself becomes the map leading the way to the other side.

Anton Webern’s String Quartet of 1905 (the second of two he wrote that year) brought about a sea change in the genre. Although played in one continuous 18-minute stretch, it takes on a nominal structure in three sections (“Becoming,” “Being,” “Passing Away”) based on the work of painter Giovanni Segantini. Its shifts between darker and lighter keys, between exhalations and holdings of breath, would seem to mirror Beethoven, while its central fugue casts a shadow further back to Bach. The more one immerses oneself in it, the more fragmentary it becomes. As with the canvases that inspired it, one is tempted to isolate a mountain from land and sky, all the while missing out on the benefit of zooming in further on individual plants, puffs of cloud, and rocky imperfections that can only be described as “hymnal” in shape.

The setting for these diamonds consists of Baroque prongs. Whereas Bach’s chorale prelude, Vor deinen Thron tret ich hiermit, opens the program as one would wake up from a coma only to realize how much the world has not changed, the Contrapunctus XIV from The Art of Fuguereleases its pollen by the light of the moon, windswept in evening breezes to places we cannot touch until our bodies wither. Being unfinished, it ends mid-statement, leaving the remainder to toss about in the waves of our unworthy fancy. Sometimes, the best way to answer a question is by posing another.