ECM Records

Arnold Schönberg/Franz Schubert: Klavierstücke (ECM New Series 1667)

| Tyran Grillo

Arnold Schoenberg
Franz Schubert
Klavierstücke

Thomas Larcher piano
Recorded July 1998 at Radio DRS, Zürich
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Consummation. This is what the piano music of Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951) and Franz Schubert (1979-1828) have in common, the bridge that Thomas Larcher brings to this welcoming solo recital, his first for ECM. To underscore this point, he shuffles Schönberg’s Klavierstücke op. 11 with Schubert’s posthumous Klavierstücke D 946. By turns halting and didactic, the opening pairing opens into the fresh air of Schubert’s precisely syncopated revelry. The contrasts between the two composers are obvious to the ear, but to the heart Schönberg is an extended exhalation to Schubert’s inhalation. Where Schönberg plots slow, jagged caverns, Schubert runs furtively above ground in the sunshine. Yet both seem so urgent to tell their stories, offering lifelong journeys from relatively young minds.

Similarly, the subtle miniatures that make up the Sechs kleine Klavierstücke op. 19 of Schönberg unfurl scrolls upon scrolls of experience, far into the future, where Schubert’s rolling Allegretto c-Mollo D 915 reads like a thrumming postscript.

One need not expound at great length in order to capture the spirit of this music. Its connections are fierce, their execution nimble as a dancer’s feet. Close your eyes, and let it show you a different sort of light.

<< Keith Jarrett Trio: Tokyo ’96 (ECM 1666)
>> John Holloway: Unarum fidium (ECM 1668 NS)

Arvo Pärt: In Principio (ECM New Series 2050)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Arvo Pärt
In Principio

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Tõnu Kaljuste conductor
In principio; La Sindone; Cecilia, vergine romana recorded June 2008 at Estonia Concert Hall, Tallinn
Engineer: Teije van Geest
Recording assistant: Thomas Gärtner
Digital editing: Kohei Seguchi
Mixed by Teije van Geest, Manfred Eicher, Arvo Pärt, and Tõnu Kaljuste
Da pacem Domine, Mein Weg, Für Lennart in memoriam recorded May 2007 at Niguliste Church, Tallinn
Engineer: Margo Kõlar
Recording assistance and editing: Helena Tulve
MIxed at Rainbow Studio by Manfred Eicher, Arvo Pärt, and Jan Erik Kongshaug (engineer)
Produced by Manfred Eicher

In the beginning was the word, and in the word was sound, music, life itself. Such are the sentiments behind In principio, the title work of Arvo Pärt’s eleventh album for ECM. The label that started it all has been charting the Estonian composer’s work with devotion since 1985, when producer Manfred Eicher introduced his New Series with Tabula rasa. Because of him, we’ve been privileged to witness Pärt’s evolution as a musical thinker in a devolving world.

The eponymous 2003 work for mixed choir and orchestra bursts with a dramatic edge that sounds fresh to these ears. Its choral blast and ascendant strings seem to leap into the firmament, yet with such restraint that one hears order in every movement. The orchestral writing and performance are on point throughout, especially in the third movement, which introduces an atmosphere of lamentation. Voices spread, melting into brass chords, sustaining themselves through the nourishment of the fourth movement, in which the orchestra flashes through the darkness like a lighthouse. In this regularity one hears a touch of Philip Glass, especially in the flute of the final movement, amid a heap of faith.

The simpler Pärt’s music is, the more detailed it becomes. We can hear this in the descriptive approach of La Sindone for orchestra. Composed in 2006, it evokes (and ponders) the Shroud of Turin, where the piece received its premier performance. Moments of stunning lucidity open their eyes against the music’s gradual swell, which the orchestra handles with appropriate sensitivity. Cecilia, vergine romana (2000, rev. 2002) for mixed choir and orchestra in an ode to the eponymous patron saint of musicians. At sixteen and half minutes, it is among the album’s longer works. As such, it adopts a relatively clustered approach, shifting instrumental and vocal combinations with great vigor. One notes especially the pounding tympani, which leaves only the slightest of dents in the music’s unbreakable bonds. Next, Da Pacem Domine (2004/07) finds itself expanded from its original a cappella version to include a full choir and orchestra. The same stepwise motions are there, but the line drawn by the sopranos throughout is more profound than ever. Mein Weg (1989/99, rev. 2000) also finds itself repackaged here. Originally for organ, it is now scored for 14 strings and percussion. Ancestral wisdom paints a new dawn for every bow drawn, and finds in its revelation the path toward afterlife. Which brings us to Für Lennart in memoriam (2006), written for the funeral of late Estonian president Lennart Georg Meri. This endearing orchestral statement signs a mostly exultant program with a somber flourish.

If I had to describe Pärt’s music in one word, I would call it “non-allegorical.” This is as direct as it gets.

Frank Martin: Triptychon (ECM New Series 2015)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Frank Martin
Triptychon

Muriel Cantoreggi violin
Juliane Banse soprano
German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
Christoph Poppen conductor
Recorded February and June 2006, Funkhaus Halberg, Saarbrücken
Engineers: Markus Brändle and Ralf Schnellbach
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

The inexplicably neglected Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974) is given just attention in this powerful collection of three works. The music is decidedly scriptural, but speaks to listeners of all backgrounds with a depth that is as genuine as it is tonal. Martin was a composer who, like Hindemith and Bloch, had a deep respect for the viola and its many timbral possibilities. It is the instrument through which I first encountered him. How enchanting, then, to hear the soulfulness of his violin writing, which under the sure bow of Muriel Cantoreggi finds itself renewed in life divine. Her contributions to Polyptyque (1973, for violin and two string orchestras) in particular lend themselves seamlessly to the composer’s well-intentioned spaces. Each of the work’s six images explores La Maesta, a 14th-century altarpiece by Duccio di Buoninsegna, in exquisite detail. The utter sense of delicacy as Martin unravels a regretful world built on a foundation of innocence is arresting across faiths. As a whole, these facets are not so much a mosaic as they are a tetrahedron, connected at all edges by their refraction of light, material, and form.

Similarly, the Maria–Triptychon (1967/8) for soprano, violin and orchestra is an unfolding partition. The violin acts as central body that anchors the outer wings, patterned in the poetry of an Ave Maria, Magnificat, and Stabat Mater. The image, one might think, would be incomplete without those wings fully spread, but here they quiver only slightly, angling the perspective of the same images in an illusion of deformity.

Last is Passacaille (1944/1962), an orchestral jewel drawing from its winds a narrative of modest yet far-reaching proportions.

This is music that tickles our spiritual feet, sending light through our laughter into a realm where voices live of their own accord.

The Hilliard Ensemble: Audivi Vocem (ECM New Series 1936)

| Tyran Grillo

 

The Hilliard Ensemble
Audivi Vocem

The Hilliard Ensemble
David James countertenor
Rogers Covey-Crump tenor
Steven Harrold tenor
Gordon Jones baritone
Robert Macdonald bass
Recorded March 2005 at Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Audivi Vocem highlights the work of three English composers—Thomas Tallis (c. 1505-1585), Christopher Tye (c. 1505-1572), and John Sheppard (c. 1515-1558)—during a period of great liturgical change in the wake of King Henry VIII. Represented here are key works in the latter days of Henry’s reign, what David Skinner calls a “musicologically grey period.” We cannot, however, help but see bursts of colors in the shadows of Tallis’s In ieiunio et fletu, which welcomes a program of uniquely affirming polyphony, for behind the repenting veneer we see ourselves wrapped in the brokenness of social order. Such would seem to be the touches brought to floral life by David James’s unparalleled countertenor strains, casting light as they do onto the relief of the Salvator mundi and smudging us over into the denser knots of Tye’s Omnes gentes plaudite.

Tye, in fact, is the glue that binds this set through his Missa Sine Nomine, itself refracted into a series of signposts on the way toward silence. His crunchy dissonances and thick harmonies capture the spirit of an age in decline (Gloria), even as they cast their arms toward rapture (Sanctus). These weighted clouds break for the music of Sheppard, whose light shifts our focus into the album’s tenderest moments. The haunting tenor lines in his Beati omnes give us an especially glorified account of time, while the Laudate pueri Dominum falls like water along stone.

This recording is more “present” than the Hilliard Ensemble’s usual and allows for a closer view of the harmonies woven throughout, giving guest bass Robert Macdonald plenty of room to lay his ground. A lovely, if saddened, selection of music, but nonetheless important for lamenting an era without hope.

Joseph Haydn/Isang Yun: Farewell (ECM New Series 2029)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Joseph Haydn
Isang Yun
Farewell

Münchener Kammerorchester
Alexander Liebreich conductor
Recorded May 2007, Himmelfahrtskirche, München
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Alexander Liebreich takes Christoph Poppen’s coveted position as director of the Munich Chamber Orchestra in this flagship recording for ECM. Say what you will about pairing the sound-worlds of Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Isang Yun (1917-1995). The results on this disc are nothing short of breathtaking, for when the first movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 39 in g minor (1765) for two oboes, four horns and strings spreads its majestic wings we cannot help but be swept away in the current. Liebreich enhances the dynamics for which the Munichers are so well known, nuancing the hunting horns with especial verve and panache. The dancing Andante evokes an exchange of partners beneath starry chandeliers, hands joining and separating in joyful twirls. Yet this joy is also quiet, respectful of the larger social body in which it figures. Unwavering from its careful, obedient purpose, it moves headlong into the Menuet, prancing its way with steps careful and true into a vigorous finale. Here the buzzing of strings hurtles us into a dream of conquest and victory. It is the kind of music that makes one want to conduct, to be the rhythmic and emotional fulcrum of something grand.

The 1772 Symphony No. 45 in f-sharp minor (known as the “Farewell” Symphony, as its performers are instructed to leave the stage upon its completion) for two oboes, two horns and strings opens with a delicately energetic Allegro. Interlaced harmonies from horns add a warm undertone to the frosty strings. The especially somber Adagio goes along languidly, even as the double basses surge slowly upward, unknowing of the delightful Menuet soon to overtake them. By the finale, a sense of dramaturgy prevails that is anything but hackneyed. This blends into a wonderful Adagio, which ends the piece on a surprisingly with just a violin and a few lingering winds.

All of which seems but a friendly preamble to the language of Yun’s Chamber Symphony I (1987). Scored for the same forces as Haydn’s 45th, its brush-fine detail in the wind writing calls to us from a different context entirely. The oboes embody an elegiac torturedness, seeming to sing and speak simultaneously. A planet colliding, the music ejects chunks of varying size, careening off into unknown reaches of outer space. This is not to imply that the music is destructive, but rather generative, full of creation and stirrings of spiritual awareness. The dialogic relationships among the instruments are superbly rendered, both in score and in performance. Liebreich ensures that the strings always move in arcs, scooping rather than carving their motivic soils into buckets of unity. Each section of the orchestra moves independently, but at the whim of a greater purpose that cannot be musically defined. Despite the complexities involved, this music is full of open spaces and winged phrasings. With each new section, the magnification of the microscope increases, such that we begin with an amorphous mass but end in a field teeming with microbes.

The performances here are superbly balanced and recorded, and prove once again that ECM is at the forefront of classical engineering and programming.

Trio Mediaeval: Folk Songs (ECM New Series 2003)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Trio Mediaeval
Folk Songs

Anna Maria Friman
Linn Andrea Fuglseth
Torunn Østrem Ossum
Birger Mistereggen percussion and jew’s harp
Recorded February 2007 at Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Since 1997, Trio Mediaeval has been unrolling a most distinct musical carpet. Yet nowhere has it made so consistent a statement as through the Norwegian folk songs that make up this, the group’s fourth album for ECM. With help from percussionist Birger Mistereggen, the Trio pulls the listener by the hand through a world of mythic scope. Mistereggen’s contributions are intuitive, drawing us into the spirit of things with a touch of the land for every ethereal weave loomed above him. His propulsive beat in “Villemann og Magnhild” (Villemann and Magnhild), for one, enhances the fablistic structure prevalent throughout so much of the program, and even in its absence renders such “Nu solen går ned” (The sun is setting) all the more dream-like for the precision of its harmonies. Styles range further from call and response [“Tjovane” (The thieves)] to lullaby [“So ro, godt barn” (Rest now, sweet child)], battle cry [“Rolandskvadet” (The song of Roland)] to supplication [“Folkefrelsar, til oss kom” (Saviour of the nations, come)], achieving emotive peaks in such forlorn sonic geodes as “I mine kåte ungdomsdagar” (In my reckless, youthful days) and in the solo “Nu vilar hela jorden” (All the earth now rests in peace).

Folk Songs cuts to the heart of its inspirations while also renewing those inspirations with clothing of the Trio’s design. The album also continues Manfred Eicher’s vision, which plunges its hands into the very earth and emerges with music that is uncannily familiar. The astute ECM fan will, for example, notice the wonderful “Bruremarsj frå Gudbrandsdalen” (Wedding march from Gudbrandsdalen) as a source on Jan Garbarek’s seminal Triptykon. These continuities are not without intuition, and speak to a deeper thread that links tradition to all eras with an unbroken line of affection.

Zehetmair Quartett: Béla Bartók/Paul Hindemith (ECM New Series 1874)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Zehetmair Quartett
Béla Bartók/Paul Hindemith

Thomas Zehetmair violin
Kuba Jakowicz violin
Ruth Killius viola
Ursula Smith violoncello
Recorded June 2006, Kulturbühne AmBach, Götzis
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Produced by Manfred Eicher

The sound of the Zehetmair Quartet is hard to miss. Playing from memory, this intensely talented ensemble brings a fiery passion to everything that receives its bows. Following up their groundbreaking recordings of Schumann and Hartmann/Bartók, Zehetmair and company return in the latter vein, pairing the Hungarian’s Fifth (1934) with Paul Hindemith’s Fourth (1921).

Bartók’s writing is as colorful as it is a joy to play, and from the first Allegro even the new listener will note the freshness of the territory. So begins a flowing series of vignettes, of which the slinking Adagio is the most enigmatic departure from the density of its surroundings, as if the ghost of the first were whispering in our ears. The Scherzo proves fertile ground for the composer, a gesture par excellence that stakes a claim in the brain. Promises are fulfilled in chains, as Bartók seems to favor a tight and, in Zehetmair’s words, “functional” approach. The Finale sets us swooning, working in knit clusters made all the more intriguing by the flawless playing.

Hindemith’s quartet, also in five movements, stresses a complimentary ability at the slow and inward looking. The Fugato through which it breathes into life is a perfect example of his ability to do for introspection movements what Bartók does for the extro, forging an idiosyncratic lyricism that constantly reforms itself. The Debussy-like charm of the third movement touches the heart, lulling us via a cello-heavy passage into the fanciful Rondo that leaves us breathless.

Invigorating, committed, superb. No lesser adjectives will suffice.

Paul Giger/Marie-Louise Dähler: Towards Silence (ECM New Series 2014)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Paul Giger
Marie-Louise Dähler
Towards Silence

Paul Giger violin, violino d’amore
Marie-Louise Dähler harpsichord
Recorded October 2006 at Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Produced by Manfred Eicher

For his sixth album for ECM, violinist Paul Giger joins harpsichordist Marie-Louise Dähler for a centuries-spanning program of improvisations, complemented by arrangements of Bach and Giger’s own passionate music.

The title of the opening improvisation, From Silence to Silence, would seem to be a meta-statement for ECM, the ultimate asymptotic relationship between the musical utterance and its inevitable cessation. The opening bass note of the harpsichord speaks with the quiet force of the earth as Giger’s violin skips above it. Such growls from the harpsichord are typically relegated to continuo status, anchor rather than all-consuming statement. But here they emerge with a grand narrative all their own. The lovingly rendered Aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations that follows is yet another grand narrative, the urtext over which all variations are laid. This flow by contrasts continues throughout the album, juxtaposing the extended techniques of Cemb a quattro (which sounds like the soundtrack to a Brothers Quay film) and the crystalline highs of Halfwhole with the Vivace from Bach’s Sonata V in F minor for violin and obligato harpsichord, BWV 1018.

The brilliance of this program is that its Baroque touches come across as the more esoteric against the status quo established by Giger and Dähler’s enticing musical language, such that the Allegro from the selfsame sonata seems almost avant-garde in the wake of Dorian Horizon. Giger’s solo pieces also nourish, as does the overtonal nectar of Gliss a uno, which is played in that mystic liminal range where the string gives up its inner secrets. Two further movements from the Bach sonata frame Bombay II, which expands beautifully on Giger’s original as it appeared on Schattenwelt. Spurred along by his footbells, it mourns with the cry of a bird in whose talons the final thread is taken, pulled from our hearts until it breaks into the silence toward which the album professes to travel.

This one-of-a-kind session is a most fortuitous meeting point, one sure to yield wonders with every listen. I’ve always felt that Giger is best heard alone, but of the collaborations on record this one ranks with Alpstein as being among the most intuitive.

Music of Friedrich Cerha and Franz Schreker (ECM New Series 1887)

| Tyran Grillo

 

Cerha/Schreker

Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra
Peter Eötvös conductor
Recorded September 2003, MCO Studio 5, Hilversum
Engineers: Stephan Schellmann/Christian Starke (Cerha) and Ted A. Diehl/Laurent Watgen/George Luijten (Schreker)
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

This unusual release from Austrian cellist Heinrich Schiff somehow slipped under my radar for years, coming rather late into my ECM New Series explorations. Neither composer represented here had been familiar to me, and I imagine these two works are as solid an introduction as any.

Friedrich Cerha (b. 1926) and Franz Schreker (1878-1934), both Viennese composers at the height of their creative powers here, seem to speak to one another beyond the force of their juxtaposition. Cerha’s Cello Concerto (1989/1996) bears dedication to Schiff, and the friendship between the two is evident in the familiarity of the playing. The opening proclamation brings with it an almost Dvořákian sense of communication between soloist and orchestra. The former skitters through the latter’s own lumbering (il)lustrations and races through the string-heavy surface with the ferocity of an impassioned editor: crossing out, underlining, circling, injecting its personal voice into the margins along the way. Yet the exact relationship between forces is always difficult to characterize. There is unity, to be sure, but it is not always so readily apparent, and this is perhaps the greatest challenge of this piece: namely, to supply that connective tissue with our undivided ears. The first movement excels in its quieter moments, for such are the moments when the cello meshes most harmoniously with its surroundings. The addition of percussion (steel drums, marimba, wood blocks) and pipe organ makes for some fascinating interplay, each ingredient flavoring the sonic recipe differently: the more you chew it, more delicious it becomes. The second movement, which is the core around which the entire concerto took shape, is gorgeous. The cello floats above wavering flutes and strings, hovering like a bird against an air current so as to render it stationary. The atmosphere is diffuse, comprising a fine mesh through which only light can travel. As strings slither in, they build of these sticks a more erratic cacophony. Woodblocks tick in every audible gap, seeming to punch out a hole with every contact, and as this climax dissipates, seemingly hundreds of individual paths open up before our eyes. Some forceful pizzicato signals the final movement, the cello’s rhythm dance-like yet somehow never exuberant. This tail is filled with verve, with all manner of snaps and other clicks to get us to our destination with plenty of souvenirs to spare.

Schreker’s one-movement Chamber Symphony comes directly out of World War I with hard-won tenderness. Almost rhapsodic, the violins trace a rippling orchestra, cutting through the darkness with the precision of a knife and the softness of a kiss. There is an ebb and flow to the piece that brings it full circle back to its own promises, turning darker as idealism crumbles in the shadow of reality. Thunder bursts with pastoral charm, frolicking among a meeting of winds. Each instrumental gesture translates into a visual stroke, rendering every detail of this broadening scene with the bleed of watercolor. Smaller offshoots of strings come together like orchestras in reduced form, drowning at last in their own murk and gloom.

Don’t worry if this album hasn’t won you over by the end of the first track, for it is a long and harrowing journey of triumphs and heavy losses, but through its continual tipping of scales one hears a vivid story. In the sparseness of Cerha, one finds the antidote to the density of Schreker and vice versa, and in that neutralization process there is a remarkable sense of belonging.