ECM Records

Stephan Micus: Darkness And Light (ECM 1427)

| Tyran Grillo

Stephan Micus
Darkness And Light

Stephan Micus dilruba, guitar, kortholt, suling, ki un ki, ballast-strings, tin whistle, balinese gong, sho
Recorded January/February 1990 at MCM Studios and Studio Giesing, München
Engineer: Tom Batoy

Listening to a Stephan Micus album is always like taking a journey through darkness and light, and so it is no wonder that his fourth album for ECM should bear that very title. The sarangi-like tones of the dilrubi of Part 1 open up a pathway that is indeed by turns bright and shaded. The path is circular, leading forever back to where it began, as if to say, “Birth and death issue from the same step.” From this mouth agape we get the insular sutras of guitar. Its chain of arpeggios carries in its arms a bouquet of memories and rests it in the crook of a tree, where it plays for the sake of Nature. From that whispered cove arises a mermaid holding a bow at the edge of a string. With every splitting of voice we are veiled in deeper solitude. Mournful songs shape a still heart, hanging on to certain threads longer than others. The guitar helps us to nourish ourselves with what remains in its chamber, stenciling the periphery with every pluck and unearthing in the afterlife all that is yet to come. Even in the absence of a bow, we feel our voices continuing to spin novel draws in the ether.

Part 2 takes a rawer approach to the dilrubi, giving rise to the call of the ki un ki, the Siberian cane trumpet pictured on the album’s cover. Played by inhaling, it sounds like a combination between a Theremin, a split and blown grass blade, and an elephant calling out to the cosmos. Part 3 scrapes the edge of darkness on its climb toward a trembling song. A flute cries as if in dialogue, two lovers parted on either side of the Milky Way unifying at last in a hopeful vein, tracing light back to the nebula that birthed them both.

Darkness And Light is as fleeting as its message, transparent as water and betraying its presence only through reflections. Still, its elemental forces sweep us away in the depth of Micus’s human touch, such that when they stop, one feels they might linger forever.

<< Paul Giger: Alpstein (ECM 1426)
>> Egberto Gismonti Group: Infância (ECM 1428)

Keith Jarrett Trio: Tribute (ECM 1420/21)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Keith Jarrett Trio
Tribute

Keith Jarrett piano
Gary Peacock bass
Jack DeJohnette drums
Recorded October 15, 1989, Philharmonie, Köln
Engineers: Jan Erik Kongshaug and O. Fries
Produced by Manfred Eicher

No one makes live records quite like the Keith Jarrett Trio, whose inimitable skills and synergy ensure us that every tune breathes with all the life it deserves. As one of the few groups that can draw in a crowd thousands of miles and years away into that indefinable moment of expression, it transcends the confines of the concert hall, of the jazz club, of the audience’s adoration. All of these recede the moment you put this music on and let it fill your own space and time with the love and passion what bore it. We hear this especially in the balladry, of which Jarrett proves an adept exponent in “Lover Man.” Dedicated (as all pieces on Tribute are to those who once performed them, hereafter in parentheses) to Lee Konitz, the piece expands such notions of genre to begin with, unraveling from characteristically somber piano intros a world of sentiment. Peacock is especially notable in his first solo of the night, tracing an outline that DeJohnette is more than happy to color in. Jarrett maintains enviable subtlety in his improvisations, working in a clever nod to “The Girl from Ipanema.” He dances on air, even as he plunges his hands into a watery keyboard and mixes the sediments until they shine. DeJohnette, meanwhile, works wonders with his snare, unfolding a ponderous yet somehow buoyant solo: a drop of melancholy in an otherwise joyful sea. All this in the opening number? Yes, it’s that good.

Such things are de rigueur in Jarrett Land. One could expound at great length, for example, on “I Hear A Rhapsody” (Jim Hall). From the fluid intro and swinging groove it dovetails to DeJohnette’s popcorn bursts, there’s so much to acknowledge for fear of doing the music injustice. DeJohnette and Peacock generally keep the flame low and steady as Jarrett turns all manner of somersaults, each a storm cloud waiting to burst, yet which instead couches rainbows. Down one of these Jarrett slides into a pot of golden applause. “Little Girl Blue” (Nancy Wilson) turns with the grace of a plumed bird bowing into the wind. Peacock again walks that fine line between heartbeat and fluster. The more up-tempo “Solar” (Bill Evans) finds Jarrett working his usual eddies into relief. One really notices the acoustics of the concert space, linking Jarrett’s submissions to the rhythm section’s stellar flip-flopping and moving us seamlessly into the exhilarating, sparkling piece of music-making that is “Sun Prayer.” A quintessential Jarrett tune if ever there was one, one feels in its shape a musical life lived to its fullest. DeJohnette flashes his powers as Jarrett weaves some of his densest pianism yet before baying into a translucent cove, where floats the detritus of a promise so enormous that it cannot help but embrace the world. “Just In Time” (Charlie Parker) delights with its odd timing, which sends Jarrett on a simply unstoppable journey as Peacock rides the DeJohnette train to Smoothville. The trio digs even deeper in quiet stunners like “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” (Coleman Hawkins), “All Of You” (Miles Davis), “It’s Easy To Remember” (John Coltrane), and “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men” (Anita O’Day), the latter graced by DeJohnette’s steam-engine brushes. A highlight in the album’s second half.

From the buoyant piano intro, “All The Things You Are” (Sonny Rollins) puts one in mind first of Gary Burton at the vibes before unleashing a rhythm section aflame, making for one of the trio’s most exhilarating tracks anywhere. More pure Jarrett follows in “U Dance.” This joyous romp seems porous, but would withstand even the sharpest bullets of criticism. A spirited turn from DeJohnette bridges us into the tune’s closing half, where we find ourselves still dancing even as the music recedes into the distance from which it spoke.

I typically don’t read other reviews before writing mine, but in my gathering of information for this one I took a look at the comments on Amazon, only to be shocked at one customer who proceeds to tell us how, listening to “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men” while driving, he (?) became so fed up with DeJohnette’s drumming that he rolled down his window and threw the CD onto the highway. Everyone is, of course, entitled to personal opinion, and my reviews are never meant to be prescriptive, but I find it baffling that anyone could react against DeJohnette so strongly on the basis of such an exhilarating album. Chalk it up to my drumming ignorance, but I daresay that DeJohnette’s is some of the best around. Among other things, on this recording he seems to have upped his snare work to something special in the grammar of his kit. I underscore this point only to prevent potential listeners from missing out on a tremendous experience.

Gorgeous to the last drop.

<< Jan Garbarek: I Took Up The Runes (ECM 1419)
>> Gesualdo: Tenebrae (ECM 1422/23 NS)

Jan Garbarek: I Took Up The Runes (ECM 1419)

| Tyran Grillo

Jan Garbarek
I Took Up The Runes

Jan Garbarek soprano and tenor saxophones
Rainer Brüninghaus piano
Eberhard Weber bass
Nana Vasconcelos percussion
Manu Katché drums
Bugge Wesseltoft synthesizer
Ingor Ántte Áilu Gaup voice
Recorded August 1990 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher

By 1990, Jan Garbarek had for decades been searching for that one key, navigating a landscape of peaks and valleys, only to find it slumbering within the runes which, with this album, he eponymously took up. A snaking version of Mari Boine Persen’s “Gula Gula” outlines the album’s perfectly proportioned ritual space for a sound that has come to define the Norwegian saxophonist’s output since. With Runes his tone had achieved a luminescence that fell like liquid onto the keyboard of Rainer Brüninghaus.

Balancing note and movement, Garbarek hones something truly special in the five-part “Molde Canticle,” which draws out the album’s deepest anatomies. Above all, the piece is about time. It speaks in a language that moves us. The gyroscopic quality of Part 2 hums around the centrifugal force of Garbarek’s lyricism as he scales ever higher. Part 3 features a singsong solo from bassist Eberhard Weber, who elicits bird-like harmonics from the soft glide of his bow. These enchantments are but a prelude to a round of wind and pianistic musings. Part 4 is a more rhythmic showcase (percussionist Nana Vasconcelos’s influence is also clear on tracks like “Buena Hora, Buenos Vientos”), and features some heavy blowing from Garbarek, at once whimsical and weighty, while Part 5 finds him weaving a simple wave over a harp-like ostinato.

These melodies all have the makings of folk songs (sometimes the other way around, as in “His Eyes Were Suns”), so vivid is each in its evocation of peoples and traditions. The title track is a more groove-oriented spectacle and finds Garbarek freeing himself even further. This leaves only “Rahkki Sruvvis,” another chanting piece with some overdubbed saxes for a final skyward glance.

Many have criticized Garbarek for going soft. I Took Up The Runes proves that he has simply channeled that dynamic energy through different rivulets of intensity. Like smoke, they need fire to soar, but fire in its natural state requires time and care to catch.

A masterpiece.

<< John Surman: Road To Saint Ives (ECM 1418)
>> Keith Jarrett Trio: Tribute (ECM 1420/21)

The Dowland Project: Romaria (ECM New Series 1970)

| Tyran Grillo

 

The Dowland Project
Romaria

John Potter tenor
Miloš Valent violin, viola
John Surman soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, tenor and bass recorders
Stephen Stubbs baroque guitar, vihuela
Recorded January 2006 at Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The atmosphere of Romaria, the Dowland Project’s third album for ECM, is exactly like its cover: monochromatic, with a splash of cloud over a stretch of scored earth. Stripping down its ethos to barest elements, the Project takes up plainchant, anonymous monody from the Carmina Burana manuscript, and Iberian folk songs, spinning from them a lush improvisatory world sprinkled with troubadour songs and motets from, among others, Orlando di Lasso and Josquin Desprez. The new addition of Slovak violinist Miloš Valent makes for a sustained and burrowing sound that blends uncannily with Stephen Stubb’s strings.

Got schepfer aller dingen starts us off with a brood, setting the tone for a somber yet somehow vigorous album. Where this vigor comes from is hard to say. Could it be in John Surman’s hopeful bass clarinet in Veris dulcis? Or perhaps in Stubb’s plucked accompaniment in Ora pro nobis? Yet further in John Potter’s aching vulnerability in Lá lume? Whatever the source, it’s clear that the versatility and depth of songcraft here is as delicate as a moth’s wing in a lantern’s flame.

Potter, it must be said, is the heartbeat of this album, drawing out from the instrumental surroundings a most thorough vocal line. The instruments seem to grow from his soil, particularly in Dulce solum, seeming to constitute the touch of breath through lips and mind. Similarly, Der oben swebt sways like the wind in the barley, carrying up in its wisps of recollection the promise of a lively day.

Much of the album is free-flowing and at times so organically realized (note, for example, In flagellis) that one wonders if the original melodies didn’t also arise in this unscripted fashion.The instrumental Saudade is another highlight that showcases the inspiring talents of Surman, whose soprano enlivens the darkest corners of Kyrie Jesus autem transiens and Ein iberisch Postambel to mesmerizing effect. Sometimes, the instruments recede just slightly, as in O beata infantia, allowing for Potter’s voice to carve its own tracks.

Listening to an album like this, one realizes the potency of the songs chosen, existing either in fragments or thicker sketches. Freedom is given to the performer, allowing new voices to come through. Each is but a drop in a larger body of water, necessary yet invisible in its surroundings.

Heinz Holliger: Lieder ohne Worte (ECM New Series 1618)

| Tyran Grillo

Heinz Holliger
Lieder ohne Worte

Thomas Zehetmair violin
Thomas Larcher piano
Ursula Holliger harp
Recorded June 1996 at Radio DRS, Zürich
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

After an already healthy representation of the compositional prowess of Heinz Holliger, ECM decided to put out this disc pairing some of his earliest work from the sixties with that of decades later, thereby providing an engaging survey of a musical mind that turns like a kaleidoscope: holding tight to symmetries so that it might fragment their interiors in ever-novel, I would say linguistic, combinations. For indeed, language is what Holliger is all about. From the poetry that inspired him as a youth to the poetry that he creates as an adult, the Swiss composer revels in every portion of his mental reserve to fish out some of the most heartfelt music of the twentieth century.

The tactility of Holliger’s instrumental renderings always seem to have something of the human voice about them. Every cell is marked by the potentially vulnerable transfiguration of form, a breaking down or “clearing of the throat” by which the musical moment is rendered chalk-like in the face of its own palimpsestial illusions. The two sets of Lieder ohne Worte that embrace this disc turn the standard violin/piano duo inward, ever refracted toward a conversation comprised entirely of afterthoughts. Although generally light, it sometimes dips into urgent proposals to which the only desired answer can be a heavy silence. Both instruments become frames. The two Intermezzi recall Holliger’s 1982 Duo for violin and cello, linking adverbial phrases with descriptive trails. Songs without words, yes, but aren’t they always, for once they escape the lips they have already transcended the limitations of their shaping toward more distant reverberations.

In the Sequenzen über Johannes I, 23 for harp (played to perfection by wife Ursula), Holliger’s trademark fractures are filled by the plasma of fingertips, while the Präludium, Arioso und Passacaglia for the sameblush with savory dexterity. With the restrained ferocity of a classical guitarist, Ursula evokes an elastic space in which the life of any single note is determined by its distance from the body.

Two solo pieces fill in the eye sockets of this sonic skull. On the left is the winking Trema in a version for violin. Anyone used to the original for cello is sure to be caught up in the stark new textures. Where the cello draws that trembling forth from deep within its bowels, here it issues from the nostrils of a head animated by vehement denial. Yet in that denial is an unspoken (and unspeakable) commitment to self-reformation, to the idea that within the brain there is enough room to squeeze in all life experience into a single synapsial firing. The expediency of the lie is betrayed by its brevity. On the right are the three drowsy piano miniatures that make up Elis. In these vibrant fits there are only dreams. Rather than try to smooth them into a unified narrative, Holliger allows their worth to come clambering into our attention at whatever pace it chooses. A few extended techniques, like the hitting of a dampened string, emit flashes of color in an otherwise monochromatic field.

Holliger is notable for being a composer duly aware of the importance of space: between notes, between pieces, between selves. The stillness thereof is so heavy that, rather than falling like a stone, every note floats like a particle of windblown pollen. And in the hands of such astute performers, we begin to feel windblown ourselves.

<< Joe Maneri Quartet: In Full Cry (ECM 1617)
>> György Kurtág: Játékok (ECM 1619 NS)

Alexei Lubimov: Messe Noire (ECM New Series 1679)

| Tyran Grillo

Alexei Lubimov
Messe Noire

Alexei Lubimov piano
Recorded May 1998 and December 2000 at Radio Studio DRS, Zürich
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Messe Noire was the second ECM recital debut for Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov, following his enigmatic debut, Der Bote. It remains one of his freshest and most luminous programs, forging from the composers of his homeland what Reinhard Schulz describes in his liner notes as “a cosmos in which free spirits gather together.” The image is apt, for in the “Hymn” of Igor Stravinsky’s Serenade in A (1925), which opens the disc, we do indeed encounter a galactic ocean of impressions. From the gentle reverie of lost love to the grumbling belly of despair, it encapsulates Stravinsky’s penchant for emotional directness, as in the processual Romanza that follows and all the way through to the frayed Finale. The Sonata No. 2 op. 61 (1943) of Dmitri Shostakovich rather chooses ebullience as its quill, and marks with it a playful inter-relationship between the left and right hands in a volleying of motifs. An off-kilter Largo leads us to a plaintive Moderato, which provides one of the more sustained, gloomier contractions on the album.

Sergey Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7 op. 83 (1942) introduces characteristic buoyancy before quickly fading into a quieter spell, inhabiting the after-effect with the oral passion of a missionary. This ebb and flow of pensive dips is the sonata’s overall modus operandi, epitomized most movingly in the Andante. This dynamism is only strengthened by Lubimov’s mature sense of syncopation. The boisterous reverie that is the final Precipitato brings that same play of weight and lightness to bear on more wistful statements. After this rousing feast, we are treated to desert in the form of Alexander Scriabin’s Sonata No. 9 op. 68 (1913). Marking time with seemingly reserved energy, its gorgeous contours actually build toward an arresting resolution.

What connects these four towering works is precisely what separates them. Over a spread of personal and social politics three decades in the making, they remain unscathed (if somewhat neglected), breathing with vibrant life at Lubimov’s fingertips.

<< Maneri/Phillips/Maneri: Tales of Rohnlief (ECM 1678)
>> Tomasz Stanko: From The Green Hill (ECM 1680)

Michelle Makarski: To Be Sung on the Water (ECM New Series 1871)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Michelle Makarski
To Be Sung on the Water

Michelle Makarski violin
Ronald Copes viola
Recorded March 2004, Radio Studio DRS, Zürich
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Like the blade of light on the album’s cover, Michelle Makarski draws luminescence through the darkness with her bow. For her third ECM recital disc, the violinist further hones both her craft and her sense of programming, constructing a Jacob’s ladder of Giuseppe Tartini and American composer Donald Crockett, the latter of whom offers two works in Makarski’s honor. Of these is the album’s 1988 title work, for which she is joined by violist Ronald Copes. Its lush double stops create a virtual quartet. From these arise steady pulses, slowly lobbed between the two instruments. Even as the narrative fragments midway through, the other always picks up the action in one, as if looking in a mirror that shows the distant past. Open strings prevail in this meeting of voice and translucent surface, a conversation between opacity of the instrument and transparency of the voice.

Hugging this piece are two sonatas by Tartini. The Sonata IX in A Major achieves an intimacy on par with Bach’s solo works. Yet where Bach inscribes the waking world with his solitary thoughts, Tartini crams that same world into the depths of his dreams in order to salvage what might otherwise remain unseen. The inaugural Largo sways with the same flexibility, as might a dream in which the parameters of one’s immediate reality are just as indecipherable as those beyond it. This renders the Allegro that follows a negation of self. Hence the echoes in the third movement, softer in the anchored line of the double stop, weaving its way like a caduceus into the frantic trills of the final proclamation. With its ponderous dissonances and looming double stops, the first strains of the Sonata II in d minor sound closest to Crockett. And while the middle movement is far more exuberant, filled with dancing diversions, the final Allegro marks a sinuous organism, its lines curling like fingers beckoning from behind a curtain.

All of this makes of Crockett’s mickey finn (1996) an urgent crawl to a bygone era, a literary and geographic aside wrenched from the ether with reluctant precision. Crockett’s tantalizing grasp of language makes for a delectable passage into Tartini’s  Sonata XIII in b minor. Makarski articulates the ground lines most strongly here, drawing them out to allow their resonance to overtake the lead. This is clearest in the stunning Andante, which finds its second self reinvigorated in the arousing Giga.

These works by Tartini, despite their bare construction, ask of the musician a certain depth of expression that Makarski handles with intuitive linearity. The music of Crockett similarly draws out the violin’s potential as songstress, shedding the husk of programmatic arbitrariness in favor of direct communication. Both write music without masks, and both are given the ideal mouthpiece in a violinist whose touch is supreme.

Johann Ludwig Trepulka/Norbert von Hannenheim: Klavierstücke und Sonaten (ECM New Series 1937)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Johann Ludwig Trepulka
Norbert von Hannenheim
Klavierstücke und Sonaten

Herbert Henck piano
Recorded April 2005, Festeburgkirche, Frankfurt am Main
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The ever-adventuresome pianist Herbert Henck returns for another dip into obscure waters, this time with a wholehearted survey of the music of Johann Ludwig Trepulka (1903-1945) and Norbert von Hannenheim (1989-1945). Both were twelve-tone composers (both also died in WWII), though one would hardly know it by assuredness of their writing in these austere interwar pieces. Of Trepulka’s surviving piano music we get the entirety here, and his Klavierstücke mit Überschriften nach Worten von Nikolaus Lenau, op. 2 (1923/1924) is especially vital in this regard. For decades, it was his only published work. Fortuitously, three years after recording a performance of these pieces for Radio Bremen, Trepulka’s grandson saw his grandfather’s name on Henck’s website. Henck was then given access to a small fortune of unpublished scores (such coincidences would seem to set Henck apart from many contemporary performers and interpreters). We can only hope these will be documented on ECM in the future. As for Hannenheim, he lived in dire poverty for most of his life, breathing his last in a sanatorium. Praised by teacher Schönberg for his ingenuity, the fiercely prolific young composer could find no publishing outlet for his music at a time of great economic and sociopolitical hardship. His work, along with that of his teacher, would be banned under the Hitler regime.

Despite the tortured climates surrounding both composers, Trepulka’s Klavierstücke mit Überschriften nach Worten von Nicolaus Lenau op. 2 (1923/24) welcome us with an almost Debussean charm. Their resolution of hard realities speaks in pointillist stirrings and turgid harmonies wrought somewhere between lyricism and oppression. The brevity of these pieces (only two go over five minutes) compresses continents of emotion into single counties, each a wellspring of action.

Hannenheim’s territories are no less sweeping, but seem to press their feet more deeply into the ground along the way. The Klaviersonate No. 2 (ca. 1929) is like two jagged lines struggling for synchronicity, only to find that their destination is the same. Other sonatas, like No. 4 (ca. 1929), are even more convoluted, while the jolting ponderousness of the No. 6 (ca. 1929) Andante awakens us to stillness. Intensely effective, if not effectively intense, the staggered rhythms of the Vivace betray an essentially simplistic heartbeat of musical integrity. The resoluteness of No. 12 (ca. 1929) makes brave way into the Konzert Nr. 2 für Klavier und kleines Orchester (ca. 1932), which exists only in this fragment, unwinding itself from a small pool of desperation.

This music represents an interesting confluence of impressionism and hardened interpretation, and behooves the curious listener to wrap her or his cochleae around its fascinations time and time again.

Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica: Gustav Mahler/Dmitri Shostakovich (ECM New Series 2024)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Gidon Kremer
Kremerata Baltica
Gustav Mahler/Dmitri Shostakovich

Gidon Kremer
The Kremerata Baltica
Yulia Korpacheva soprano
Fedor Kuznetsov bass
Recorded October 2001 in Riga (Mahler) and November 2004 at Musikverein, Vienna (Shostakovich)
Engineers: Niels Foelster (Mahler) and Martin Leitner (Shostakovich)
Album produced by ECM

All-powerful is death.
It is on guard
even in the hour of happiness.
In the moment of our highest life it suffers in us,
it waits for us and thirsts—
and weeps within us.
–Rainer Maria Rilke

As Inna Barsova has noted, the two symphonies on this massive disc both “share a concern with parting and death.” Each was written in its respective composer’s twilight, and unfolds in varying shades of darkness. Appropriate, then, that we should begin in the throes of the Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony (1910). Although originally scored for larger orchestral forces, in this 1971 string version by conductor Hans Stadlmair the young musicians of the Kremerata Baltica find themselves admirably well off. It begins more like a concerto than a symphony, a mournful solo echoing across time. That same quality prevails as the orchestra lifts off its fleet into darkened harbors. This wave repeats itself, each time with greater deference to the tide. “Lush” doesn’t even begin to describe the overwhelming beauty of the strings in full cry. Some crackling moments do crop up, each like an insect dying gracefully on the sands. And as dusky violins streak jade skies with their trembling light, a bold cry issues from the lower strings, pushing ever upward the ether upon which our spirits rest. Cosmic forces spread in earthly tones, leaving behind the faintest traces of an aurora borealis in anticipation of the coming dawn. This music may be unfinished, but it surely lingers.

Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony (1969) for soprano, bass, and chamber orchestra sets texts by Lorca, Apollinaire, Küchelbecker, and Rilke along the contours of some powerful soloists. In this crystal clear live recording, marred slightly by a persistent cough during the most pregnant pauses, Shostakovich’s sense of playful morbidity shines through. This piece may not have the same concentrated sense of narrative (here, more spliced) as his masterful Execution of Stepan Razin, but its effect is still engaging. The operatic slant gives it flair, and the excellent percussion is a joy to behold. The voices are fully invested in their roles, each a fine example of method singing at work.

The music on this disc is about as far from background listening as one can get. It requires us to face the finitude of our mortality, to look closely into its eyes and see ourselves reflected, craning our necks across the gap of time into the infinity that awaits.