ECM Records

Thomas Demenga/Heinz Reber: Cellorganics (ECM New Series 1196)

| Tyran Grillo

ECM 1196 LP

Cellorganics

Thomas Demenga cello
Heinz Reber pipe organ
Recorded October 1980 at Pauluskirche Bern, Switzerland
Engineer: Martin Wieland
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Cellorganics is exemplary of what I see to be ECM’s primary aesthetic: the dialectic possibilities of seemingly disparate instrumental voices, cultures, and sociopolitical contexts. The pairing of cello with organ is but a step away from the former’s canonic place beside the piano. And yet this juxtaposition opens us to entirely new areas of sonic creation, dramatically enhanced by the lofty recording space.

The album arises as if from slumber with the lone cello, whereupon it is gently accosted by the organ. Thus begins a delicate conversation that before long erupts into a frenzied catharsis. At this point Reber repositions himself, providing a dense and layered backdrop for Demenga’s no less contemplative phrasing. This stichomythic structure continues, interspersed with stunning moments of confluence—occasionally dipping into reverberant depths of scraping and sustained chords—before the cello works through its own degradation into a sort of intertextual improvisation.

The album’s center finds the two musicians in an exuberant melancholy; one suffused with both rhythmic buoyancy and introspective caution. The organ’s pointillism becomes a comforting counterpoint to the cello’s harmonic glissandi, giving way to an expansive exposition and coda.

Ultimately, this album is about power relationships and their reconfigurations. The organ’s long-held position as a vessel for moral weight, as imposing as it is transcendent, is challenged here in its pairing with a “lowly” string. This is not a cello that yearns to be heard, but one that sings out of its own self-sufficiency. The pizzicato passages that open the final chapter in this narrative are like footsteps, neither approaching nor receding, dancing in place to the tune of their own inner voices. The organ, too, becomes a living organism, literally breathing life through a forest of esophagi.

This recording invites us not only to listen, but also to speak.

<< Shankar: Who’s To Know (ECM 1195)
>> Meredith Monk: Dolmen Music (ECM 1197 NS)

My life with ECM

| Tyran Grillo

When I was 13 years old I fell in love with classical music. At the time I was, like most of my peers, listening exclusively to popular music: Michael Jackson, LL Cool J, Boyz II Men, George Michael, and Mariah Carey were among the many artists in constant rotation through my Walkman. Then one day I decided that these soulful, albeit commercial, stylings just weren’t cutting it for me anymore. In retrospect, this was as much a conscious decision on my part to break from the mainstream as it was simply a means of defining my sense of self in the throes of adolescence. My teens may not have been especially difficult, yet I wanted to broaden my horizons as I saw them under threat of constriction. Put another way: it wasn’t that I felt misunderstood, but that I felt I didn’t understand enough. To this end, I found myself in a state of agitated boredom one Saturday afternoon and decided to relieve that boredom by poring through my father’s old record collection. It was then that I discovered a recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons as performed by I Musici. From that moment on, I shunned my shiny cassettes in favor of aged vinyl (I have since learned to appreciate pop music in many forms—not as a compromise, but as a genuine field of interest—and have “recovered” many of those same artists). Classical music provided me the safe space I had been seeking in my youth; a realm of sound in which I would never have to be afraid of reveling in the emotions I was being socially coerced to avoid.

It was not until high school, however, that I would discover ECM, when my world was transformed by a radio broadcast of Arvo Pärt’s Te Deum. Hearing this music for the first time awakened me, as I am sure it has many others, to a blissful state of self-awareness. Its supremely bipolar beauty allowed me to recognize the necessity of life’s contradictions at a time when such conflicts were leading me down a pessimistic path. Pärt’s musical gestures were not only bursting with spirituality, but also caked with the dirt of human touch as they tore at the flimsy façade I had constructed for myself. My encounters with this music hollowed me out completely.

This led me to my first ECM purchase of the selfsame album. I haven’t looked back since.