Jan Garbarek
Selected Recordings
Release date: April 29, 2002

After the broad yet intimate selected recordings of Keith Jarrett, it’s only natural that the :rarum series should follow up with another two-disc album from another of its biggest talents: Jan Garbarek. The Norwegian saxophonist and composer has left his fingerprints on many an object in the ECM curio cabinet, and in so doing has gifted listeners with countless hours of creative engagement, ideas, and memories. Indeed, perhaps more than those of most artists on the label, his albums are easily connected to times, places, and experiences for nearly everyone who has followed his career.

One thing that distinguishes this compilation from those that follow it is the abundance of title tracks, as if each were sigil of the past. From the anthemic enmeshments with Keith Jarrett on 1974’s Belonging and 1978’s My Song to his interdisciplinary collaborations with Shankar (Song For Everyone, 1985), Ustad Fateh Ali Khan (Ragas and Sagas, 1992), and Anouar Brahem (Madar, 1994), his saxophone is a cleansing harmonizer. Dominant but never dominating, its echoes carry every message as if it were the last. Like a strip of cloth washed in a river and wrung out to dry in the sun, it changes color in the evaporation process. Other noteworthy titles abound. Personal favorites include 1985’s It’s OK to listen to the gray voice, a timeless theme rendered by David Torn on guitar synthesizer, Eberhard Weber on bass, and Michael DiPasqua on drums that keeps us earthbound by the gentlest of gravities; 1992’s Twelve Moons, in which drummer Manu Katché and percussionist Marilyn Mazur add fire and attunement to one of his most mature melodies; and 1989’s Rosensfole, which elevates his arrangements of folk songs sung by Agnes Buen Garnås. It’s an album so brilliant and relatively neglected in the Garbarek catalog that I almost wish there was more of it here to entice newcomers to its wonders. Seek it out if you haven’t already.

Then again, any Garbarek admirer will know he has always been adept at creating traditions from scratch. Whether weaving himself into the rainforest with guitarist Egberto Gismonti and bassist Charlie Haden in “Cego Aderaldo” (Folk Songs, 1981) or rendering aching parabolas of honest reflection with organist Kjell Johnsen in “Iskirken” (Aftenland, 1980), or even riding the wave of windharp with Ralph Towner on 12-string guitar in “Viddene” (Dis, 1977), his music comes to us fully formed and preloaded with histories of their own. That thread of ancient purpose is woven through “Lillekort” (Eventyr, 1981), a track combining the signatures of percussionist Nana Vaconcelos and guitarist John Abercrombie on mandoguitar, and a turning point in the engineering of Garbarek’s sound. It continues on in “The Path” (Paths, Prints, 1982), a balancing act of sun and shade shared with guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Eberhard Weber, and drummer Jon Christensen, as well as “Its Name Is Secret Road” and “Aichuri, The Song Man,” both solo excursions documented on 1988’s Legend Of The Seven Dreams. Said thread reaches something of a terminus in Part 1 of the floating “Molde Canticle,” from 1990’s I Took Up The Runes.

This collection offers even more joys for veterans and newcomers alike, such the classical piece “Windsong” (Luminessence, 1975), written by Keith Jarrett and performed with the Stuttgart Südfunk Symphony Orchestra, and the iconic cries of “Skrik & Hyl” (Dansere, 1976), with pianist Bobo Stenson, bassist Palle Danielsson, and drummer Jon Christensen. There’s even a haunting nod to 1991’s StAR with bassist Miroslav Vitous and drummer Peter Erskine.

But the two most important touchstones of my own Garbarek discovery are also to be found in these borders. First is “Parce Mihi Domine” (Officium, 1994). This profound collaboration with the Hilliard Ensemble was my introduction to Garbarek at a time when I was only immersed in ECM’s New Series classical releases, and which compelled me to purchase one of Garbarek’s own albums, Visible World, thus opening the doors to ECM proper. The beginning of that 1996 masterpiece, “Red Wind,” has always been a special one for that reason alone. With barest means—Garbarek on synths and soprano and Mazur on percussion—it meshes beautiful details and unfettered expression and stands as a testament to a relationship between musician and producer that will never be equaled in the hall of mirrors that is our audible universe.

Bill Frisell
Selected Recordings
Release date: April 29, 2002

Bill Frisell is one of a few musicians who came into prominence under Manfred Eicher’s purview yet has since gone on to spread his wings over landscapes of other labels. On ECM, however, he produced a body of work that was entirely uncommon, and embodies the :rarum title as much as any artist featured in its roster of compilations. His self-selection of music is as insightful as it is dreamily alive. Such a description could apply across the board, but perhaps nowhere so organically as in his work with drummer Paul Motian. On “Mandeville,” for instance, a cornerstone of 1982’s Psalm, his backwoods charm—cultivated as if in the marshlands of a distant childhood—carries that same fluid charge of Motian’s free associations, as also in the dark river currents of “Introduction” and “India” from 1985’s it should’ve happened a long time ago. The latter’s inclusion of tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano shows just how wide a vista a trio can paint. Other key collaborations include “Singsong” (Wayfarer, 1983) with the Jan Garbarek Group, in which he and the saxophonist intertwine as birds who no longer need to hunt because they are fed by each other’s song, “Kind Of Gentle” with trumpeter Kenny Wheeler in 1997’s Angel Song (one of my all-time favorite ECMs), and “Closer” (Fragments, 1986) with pianist Paul Bley. In these, his guitar sings of the past in the language of the present.

Frisell’s albums as leader find him at his most distilled and hard-won. In this respect, he offers digests of three watershed sessions: 1988’s Lookout For Hope, 1985’s Rambler, and 1983’s solo In Line. The first contains such tender flavor profiles as “Alien Prints” and “Lonesome” and boasts the umami of cellist Hank Roberts. The second shows a grungier side of Frisell in such tracks as “Resistor” and “Tone.” In the third, we envision the surreal beauties of the title track. And while In Line also contains one of his gems, “Throughout,” we find it here not in its original form but as arranged by composer Gavin Bryars, who transformed it into the transcendent chamber piece Sub Rosa on 1994’s Vita Nova. In stretching Frisell’s sense of time to fill an era, offsetting regularity with slightly askew phrases, unexpected turns, and breath-stilling highs, Bryars-via-Frisell proves ECM to be its own ecosystem, filled with carefully planted hybrids thriving in crowning harmony.

Terje Rypdal
Selected Recordings
Release date: April 29, 2002

Among the cadre of guitarists gathered beneath ECM’s umbrella, Terje Rypdal stands as a pioneer of Nordic hybridism. His cross-pollination of rock, jazz, and classical influences continues to inspire listeners all these decades later, and a collection like this offers blinks of an eye’s worth of insight into the full scope of his craftsmanship. Having said that, I can lead you through this sequence in confidence that Rypdal himself has chosen for us a worthy discographic pilgrimage.

Of the trifecta referenced above, the most thoroughly represented persona is that of art rocker. Wielding his guitar like an ax in both the proverbial and literal sense, he rightly divides sonic truth from fluff across a spectrum of classic albums. From the representative 14-minute “Silver Bird Is Heading For The Sun” (Whenever I Seem To Be Far Away, 1974), in lockstep with drummer Jon Christensen over Mellotron strings, to the aphoristic “The Curse” (Blue, 1987), with bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr and drummer Audun Kleive, Rypdal takes fearless melodic risks, compressing shadows into a prism through which to shine the distorted light of his guitar. Said guitar sings in “Transition” (Chaser, 1985) and distorts in “Tough Enough” (from his 1971 self-titled debut), but always in a way that listens before it speaks.

On the jazzier side of things, we find him guiding a band of melodic travelers in “Waves” (from the 1978 album of the same name) and forensically examining the horn-laced groove of “Over Birkerot” (Odyssey, 1975) as if his life depended on it. His sweet spot, however, lies somewhere between those two coasts, and reaches its apex in “The Return Of Per Ulv” (If Mountains Could Sing, 1995). More than my all-time favorite Rypdal track, it’s also a giant leap of intuition for ECM’s shaping of his sound. Rypdal is unabashedly lyrical and Kjellemyr’s bass pliant yet unbreakably supportive in a tightrope walk between grunge and beauty. Other liminal spaces to be noted are the cowboy’s funereal dream that is “Mystery Man” (The Singles Collection, 1989) and “Ørnen” (another from Chaser), which stokes Bill Frisell-esque flame with a distinctly Rypdalian kindling.

We encounter Rypdal the bona fide composer via the second movement of his Double Concerto, which was paired with his 5th Symphony on a wonderful 2000 release. Strings and harpsichord add a finely woven carpet beneath Rypdal’s guitar, building to urgency before flowing back into a comfortable baseline.

Like a saddle that must be ridden many times before it is broken in and which molds itself to rider and horse alike, Rypdal’s guitar has been well-traveled and handled to the point of serving as an extension of his body and soul. Only time can know where each ride will take us and how long we will need to get there.

Jean-Louis Matinier
Kevin Sedikki
Rivages

Jean-Louis Matinier accordion
Kevin Seddiki guitar
Recorded April 2018, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Mixed by Lara Persia (engineer) and Manfred Eicher
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: May 29, 2020

Following one of my favorite productions of this century alongside nyckelharpa virtuoso Marco Ambrosini, accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier returns with another duo, this time sharing Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI studio with guitarist Kevin Seddiki. In the past, Matinier has contributed vitally to ECM sessions with Anouar Brahem and Louis Sclavis, but in the here and now of Rivages cultivates some of his most heart-to-heart playing yet. Because this marks Seddiki’s debut for the label, however, many ears will be on him. As a student of guitarist Pablo Márquez, he brings classical precision and emotional fluidity to the program, which draws on ten years of friendship and collaboration. After refining their rapport and repertoire alike, they put together a mix of in-house compositions, improvisations, and arrangements of material they love.

Indeed, love is on tap when the flotation of “Schumannsko” opens its eyes. Its marriage of a Bulgarian folk tune to a theme by Robert Schumann establishes a tone of mutual regard and open-ended communication that sustains itself to the album’s very end. The accordion’s purchase lends itself to the guitar, which itself allows melody to flourish unimpeded by the creeping vines of expectation. Clearly, flow is the default mode for this duo. Other original material upholds such virtues with consistency, illustrating each image, thought, and word with the care of a calligrapher. “Après la pluie,” for one, begins with Matinier drawing air through the bellows without a single note, evoking a breeze after a quiet storm, while Seddiki regards every earthward droplet from its leafy perch. “Rêverie,” for another, builds a conduit between dreaming and waking or, as in “Sous l’horizon,” between childhood and adulthood. The more virtuosic “In C” treats ecstasis not as hedonic pleasure but as a form of communication between realms.

Arrangements of enduring gems, by contrast, show Matinier and Seddiki at their gentlest. Where the traditional “Greensleeves” reveals darker shades and a fresh, jazzy quality, their take on Gabriel Fauré’s “Les berceaux” is an astonishing example of how a relatively straightforward presentation can reveal something new. The same holds true of “La chanson d’Hélène.” This classic song by French film composer Philippe Sarde is transformed. Such is the power of letting things grow until they are mature enough to shine on their own. Even in the duo’s colorful improvisations, of which the retrospective “Miroirs” is a highlight, they recognize the simple yet profound fact that neither an origin nor a destination mean anything without drawing a line of travel between them.

Cyrillus Kreek
The Suspended Harp of Babel

Vox Clamantis
Jaan-Eik Tulve conductor
Marco Ambrosini, Angela Ambrosini nyckelharpa
Anna-Liisa Eller kannel
Recorded April 2018, Transfiguration Church, Tallinn
Engineer: Margo Kõlar
Recording supervision: Helena Tulve
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: May 8, 2020

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the LORD’S song in a strange land?
Psalm 137:1-4

Cyrillus Kreek (1889-1962) is the latest member to be welcomed into ECM’s congregation of Estonian composers, and on this album we encounter a program of his choral music. Though a teacher by trade, Kreek spent decades transcribing nearly 1300 folk songs, three quarters of which he arranged for choir. These settings comprised a choral touchstone in Estonia and inspired such composers as Veljo Tormis and Tõnu Kõrvits in their own creative pursuits. Interpreted by Vox Clamantis and guided by director Jaan-Eik Tulve, these pieces constitute a worthy introduction for listeners outside Estonia to a composer who dedicated his life to the revitalization of local cultures. Joining these voices are Marco and Angela Ambrosini (nyckelharpa) and Anna-Liisa Eller (kannel), whose preludes, postludes, and intertextual commentaries render just enough connective tissue to channel our attention into the meaning of every word we hear.

The tender clarity of Kreek’s style lends itself authentically to the album’s many folk hymns, thus establishing a sacred baseline for all else that surrounds. Structures vary from the dancelike Mu süda, ärka üles (Awake, my heart) to the supplicating Kui suur on meie vaesus (Whilst great is our poverty), from the flowing Kes Jumalat nii laseb teha (He, who lets God prevail) to the prophetic Ma tulen taevast ülevelt (From heaven above to earth I come), in which the nyckelharpa shines through verses like the light of Bethlehem’s star. To my ears, however, the most powerful of these is Jakobi unenägu (Jacob’s dream), an Estonian runic song from Kanepi parish that moves through visions of crucifixion and lamentations of persecution by way of two solo voices: one singing, the other chanting in prayer. Such division mirrors the battle of flesh and spirit that every believer knows all too well. It also transitions into the Psalmnody of Kreek’s Õhtune jumalateenistus (Orthodox Vespers), from which two blessings are offered. His combined treatments of Psalms 135 and 136 show both his ability to restructure texts with humility of consideration and to compose by inspiration.

Beyond the Vespers, other Psalms emanate from his scores with supernatural purpose. The album’s title can be pieced together between the lilting hallelujahs of Paabeli jõgede kaldail (By the rivers of Babylon), thus hinting at God’s infinite nature through its picturing of the ephemeral. Another wonder to be cherished herein is Issand, ma hüüan Su poole (Lord, I cry unto Thee), a deep dive into Psalm 141 that enhances the folly of David’s doubting heart. As through the ache of Kiida, mu hing, Issandat (Bless the Lord, my soul) and the women’s voices of Päeval ei pea päikene (The sun shall not smite thee), images are born with an apparent age: a universe without precedent destined to prove the existence of eternity.

After the lively yet reflective Viimane tants (The last dance) from the Ambrosinis, we end with another Estonian hymn, Oh Jeesus, sinu valu (O Jesus, Thy pain), along with the song Dame, vostre doulz viaire by Guillaume de Machaut of 14th-century France. While the latter may seem an unexpected suffix in theory, in practice it is seamless. Moving backward, as if to remind us that time has neither beginning nor end, it pictures death, burial, and resurrection by the most fundamental element of them all: breath.

Thomas Zehetmair
Sei Solo

Thomas Zehetmair Baroque violin
Recorded August 2016, Propstei St. Gerold
Engineer: Hannelore Guittet
Mastering: Christoph Stickel
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: November 15, 2019

The Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo, inked by Johann Sebastian Bach under the trim title of Sei Solo (pseudo-Italian for “Six Solos”), are often lumped among his “secular” instrumental works, albeit as the crowning achievement of their kind. Yet they are every bit as spiritual as his cantatas and just as glorious in their ability to activate metaphysical particles in the listener. That said, they are more than illustratively hagiographic, for they are their own acts of transcendence.

We know little of the genesis of the Sei Solo, though Bach was accomplished enough as a violinist that he would have possessed requisite understanding of the instrument’s inner life to write them. And where some violinists—wittingly or not—take to obscuring the bodywork required of the interpreter, Thomas Zehetmair broke new ground in this regard with his recording for Telefunken in 1983. Said recording came to me by way of Teldec’s 1992 reissue (which I purchased on CD after wearing out my vinyl copy) and has been my benchmark ever since. Only later, once I saw that Zehetmair was being featured on an increasing number of ECM productions, including accounts of the solo works of Eugène Ysaÿe and Niccolò Paganini, and especially in light of ECM’s other takes on the Sei Solo by John Holloway and Gidon Kremer, I hoped he might one day think to revisit Bach’s masterworks. Imagine my elation when I saw the press release for this recording in my inbox. It was eminently worth the wait.

Now playing on period instruments that, by sheer coincidence, date from Bach’s birth and death years of 1685 and 1750 (along with two bows from around 1720) and recording in the priory of St. Gerold, a location known well by ECM aficionados as a favorite of the Hilliard Ensemble, Zehetmair brings more than thirty years of bonus experience to these personal interpretations.

Zehetmair’s use of gut strings, combined with the immediacy of playing without a shoulder rest, is palpable. As before, he eschews demonstrative pitfalls, lets endings exhale, and understands the architecture inherent to each movement, but this time brings the wisdom of life itself to bear on music that is, too, life itself. His ornamentation has grown in both detail and control—drawing from within rather than adding from without—and emphasizes the importance of reflective surfaces to give light meaning.

The Sonata No. 1 in G minor moves across his strings with the grandest of gestures, as if in that very sweep he describes the fullness of an entire village with all the histories, triumphs, and tragedies it has seen. Standing in the center of that village is a church where Bach himself can be seen praying for a world that is increasingly turning its ears away from the beauty it was designed to preserve. The initial effect is so inwardly focused that when extroversions like the Allegro emerge, they do so with light in their grasp. Zehetmair’s pacing is as magnificent as it is organic, swimming with the currents of time as a fish fearing neither hook nor net. His dynamics are also noteworthy, holding back with artful righteousness. Even in the briefer Siciliana, he ensures that every note has its say among a congregation of voices lifted high. Even the urgency conveyed in the final Presto is tempered by faith. Its balance of legato and rhythmic scraping is crepuscular.

The Allemanda that opens the Partita No. 1 in B minor is one of the most heroic passages of the entire collection (and, incidentally, where Zehetmair began the first recording). It is rendered here like an erratic brush painting. In moving through its narrative, cycling back to its repeat mark as if to confirm a memory before leaving it behind, Zehetmair allows previously glossed-over double stops to resonate a touch longer, speaking in a voice that can only resonate through hair and string. He plays the Double with such grace as to be its own hymn; the Corrente likewise. The Sarabande and its own double are hauntingly exquisite, as is the Tempo di Borea, which dances its way through the heart as if it were a springboard into doctrinal truth.

As Stanley Ritchie writes in his book on interpretations of the Sei Solo: “There is no such thing as ‘unaccompanied’ Bach.” This statement, I imagine, refers not only to the fact that the violinist must have an intuitive command of multiple strings and arpeggios (the connections of which bleed richly into one another in St. Gerold’s acoustics), but also to the music’s own self-referentiality. The Grave that begins the Sonata No. 2 in A minor, for instance, is certainly a ghost of the Allemanda that began the preceding Partita, and sets up the Fuga as if it were a closing statement from a pulpit. But then the tenderness of the Andante weaves its threads like a shroud for a glorified body and prepares to receive the sacrament of the final Allegro. Played at an initially conservative tempo, it escalates—as the flesh is wont to do—in abandonment of a rhythmic ideal, shifting from one phase to the next as if each were born of its own tempo.

The Allemanda of the Partita No. 2 in D minor breaks the chain of its cousins and forms a more rounded and contemplative sonic sculpture. Jumping over to the Giga, we encounter another wonder of the arpeggio in its ability to converse with itself. All of which brings us to the mighty Ciaccona. Despite taking on a life of its own as a self-contained performance piece, it is best heard in context. Zehetmair’s bowing comes across with sentience, as if compelled to communicate by something far more powerful than words: namely, melody. So, too, must we read carefully the Adagio opening the Sonata No. 3 in C major that follows as a continuation of that restless fatigue, and the organ-like Fuga that follows it as the beginning of a revival taken to fullness of joy in the concluding Allegro assai. What the exuberant Preludio of the Partita No. 3 in E major lacks in duration it makes up for in Zehetmair’s purity of interpretation. His mixture of the royal and the rustic is uniquely his own, as is true also of the Gavotte. And because the two Menuets feel like such snapshots out of time, the final Bourrée and Gigue are surely recreations of the past.

For me, at least, the bar has been set even higher by the one who placed it there to begin with. In so doing, Zehetmair has left us with a document unlike any other. The transformation he has undergone in a matter of decades—the same to which we are granted access over the span of two CDs—puts me in mind of Verses 1-7 from Psalm 102:

Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto thee. Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me: in the day when I call answer me speedily. For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin. I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.

So, too, does the lone instrument gaze upon the world from its vantage point, waiting for grace to show itself. But one also knows that goodness is never far behind wherever evil treads, and that divine protection is ours for the taking because it is offered freely against enemies whose melodies reign dissonant and unsweet. Bach gives one such set of armor, and here it has been tempered to mirror shine.

Momo Kodama
Seiji Ozawa
Hosokawa/Mozart

Momo Kodama piano
Mito Chamber Orchestra

Seiji Ozawa conductor

Recorded December 2006, Concert Hall ATM, Art Tower Mito
Engineer: Yoshinori Nishiwaki
Balance engineer: Suenori Fukui
Cover photo: Max Franosch
An ECM Production
Release date: April 12, 2021

After making her ECM New Series solo debut with 2013’s La vallée des cloches, followed by Point and Line in 2017, pianist Momo Kodama belatedly presents a finely articulated diptych of compositions. Under the baton of Maestro Seiji Ozawa, she joins the Mito Chamber Orchestra for this live recording from 2006, which saw the premiere of the opening work, Lotus under the moonlight, by Toshio Hosokawa. Written for Kodama, this homage to Mozart for piano and orchestra resulted from a commission that same year by the Norddeutscher Rundfunk, for which Hosokawa chose a favorite Mozart piano concerto and wrote this companion piece. Using the F-sharp minor slow movement as inspiration, it begins suspended before subtle disturbances, like the fluttering of butterfly wings, waft through the air. Paintings in moonlight on watery canvas take shape, turning darkness into speech and speech into song. There is patience gently asked for—and returned—by the willing listener, whose ears may finesse the scene with details unknowable through any other sensory organ. Music like this needn’t ask for breath because it is breath incarnate. It inhales silence and exhales shifts in climate activated by the kind of touch that skin cannot evoke or experience. It is, instead, an experience of the soul, which trembles and prays. There are moments of absolute sublimity, as when the piano scales downward and upward beneath gossamer strings. Siren-like cries reach quietly overhead, linking their verses through the clouds, ending in windchimes of an otherwise forgotten past.

In the wake of that internal gesture, the externality of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, shines like a blast of refined light, moving through its motifs at the shake of a bough in morning light. With barely a nod to the dream that came before, we emerge onto sunlit pasture, hand in hand with the solstice. Kodama’s entrance is likewise imbued with spectral awareness. Every arpeggio is as legato as it is staccato and points our attention to a time when joy was of central artistic concern. That said, there is great mystery in this music still, coaxing from our hearts an awareness that is anything but chronological. The Adagio flips this world upside down. A ponderous quality pervades. It is cautious yet all the more alive for it. Faith is restored in the Allegro assai, flowing with blessed assurance but also a lightness of step that never fails to smile. Those looking for a thrilling Mozart will not be able to punch their ticket here. Rather, one will encounter a regard for pathos: a worthily prosaic shade to include in the spectrum alongside Hosokawa’s poetry.

Orchestras tend to be seen as the context into which a soloist is placed. Then there is Kodama, who plays with such generosity that this recording feels the other way around: she provides the landscape across which the orchestra may travel. Ozawa makes sure that every nomadic step is faithfully documented for posterity. Despite aging in the ECM vaults for 15 years, we are invited to feel the presence of its creation here and now.

Konstantia Gourzi
Anájikon

Nils Mönkemeyer viola
William Youn piano
Lucerne Academy Orchestra
Konstantia Gourzi conductor
Minguet Quartett
Ulrich Isfort violin
Annette Reisinger violin
Aroa Sorin viola
Matthias Diener violoncello
Ny-él
Concert recording, August 21, 2016, KKL Lucerne,
by SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen,
in collaboration with Lucerne Festival
Engineer: Moritz Wetter
Hommage à Mozart and Anájikon
Recorded March 2018, University of Performing Arts Munich
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Cover photo: Thomas Philios
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: April 30, 2021

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
–Hebrews 11:13

When searching the scriptures for truth, one is said to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Similarly, when listening to the music of Greek composer Konstantia Gourzi, one is shepherded by the vibrations it produces. Like the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years, we who receive these melodies remember the taste of manna but, with enough faith, look past the murmuring toward not only the promised land but also the assurance of someday coming face to face with the one who blessed it. In light of faith, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1), we know that recognizing the value of audible art requires giving up the colonial notion of tangibility in favor of metaphysical awareness. Hence, the theme of angels in Gourzi’s work, here and elsewhere, which, as Paul Griffiths writes in his liner notes, “seems appropriate for a composer whose work is frequently interrogative.” In a world where answers are longed for as rain among draught-stricken farmers, questions might seem like the last thing anyone wants, but without them we would simply recycle the same tired doctrine. In musical terms, there would be no rests to allow the performers room to breathe.

Gourzi, however, deeply appreciates that every piece of music she composes is a landscape with its own topography, inhabitants, and history. And so, regarding the title of her opus 56, Hommage à Mozart (2014), one could be forgiven for expecting a piece filled with (or at least built around) quotations and recognizable motifs. For as many reasons as there are movements, it unravels two knots for each that it ties, by the end loosing myriad possibilities of flight. First, the viola sings as if for no other reason than to hear itself beyond the reach of a towering monolith so distant that even the tip of its shadow is no longer visible. The piano is the parchment to its ink, which renders a flowering garden in shades of gray. Second, its forest of trees provides ample hiding space for children who don’t wish to be found, reminding us of what it felt like to want to disappear before we knew in whose image we were created. Third, in the wake of a storm, damp foliage offers a scene of organic intimacy. A flutter of the bow indicates an animal shaking off the dew and jumping into the river for a nocturnal swim. So begins a snaking trajectory in which the wonders of slumber tremble in anticipation of waking.

Waking is precisely what we encounter in Ny-él, Two Angels in the White Garden for orchestra, op. 65 (2015/16). What begins with Biblical themes—its first three movements bearing the titles “Eviction,” “Exodus,” and “Longing”—ends in the mystical encounter of “The White Garden.” Thus removed from bondage, hearts and minds wander into speculation even as a chosen generation finds its home. Along the way, the aforementioned lead-ins explore percussion-heavy bursts of clarity, the piano dimpling the sands with its passage in a distinctly cinematic atmosphere that turns orientalism on its head and spins it like a top until its colors blend into one. There are still mysteries to be found here, lingering in the air, in the trees, and among the bushes. Shades of Bedřich Smetana invite fractal conversations. Block chords rise with insistence, silhouetted against a cloud-streaked sky as they march toward us without ever reaching out for contact.

The program ends with Gourzi’s String Quartet No. 3, op. 61 (2015). Under the title Anájikon, The Angel in the Blue Garden, it culminates in a triptych within a triptych. Where the first two parts, “The Blue Rose” and “The Blue Bird,” skim away layer beneath layer of watery surface, showing that the air inhaled through every f-hole is transformed upon exhalation, “The Blue Moon” implies a story in every crater and meteoric scar. Throughout, gestures in the violins give way to a flowing undercurrent in the viola and cello without ever feeling the need to divide them. They are at once parallel and intertwined. (Occasionally, the viola pokes its eyes above water, if only for a brief survey of the quartet’s travels.) Like a huntress in the night, pizzicato footsteps speak of careful survival. Dreams are kept at bay but close at hand, as yet invisible. The eyes continue to hold their awareness through the cages of their lashes. They hope to spot a candle in a window, but no such respite is forthcoming. Instead, they hang their lids from the stars, knowing they will no longer be needed in the life to come.

Anja Lechner
François Couturier
Lontano

Anja Lechner violoncello
François Couturier piano
Recorded October 2019, Sendesaal Bremen
Engineer: Christoph Franke
Cover photo: Erieta Attali
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 16, 2020

On Lontano, the cello of Anja Lechner and the piano of François Couturier play the roles of scenery and camera. As the lens bends the light into a discernible image yet changes that image in the process of fixing it within a frame, Couturier funnels Lechner’s sunbeams laden with stories that can only be heard with the eyes (and vice versa). If such a description seems too cerebral or even bogus, it’s only because the music it seeks to capture doesn’t accompany it. Even “capture” feels like an inappropriate word to interpret the relationships being explored by this symbiotic duo, especially when one considers that the music is half improvised and slips through the pores of any enclosure that surrounds it. Echoes reveal themselves to have been in the air they breathe all along, thus nullifying categorization as a political shadow that has no business casting itself here.

If the “Praeludium” tells us anything, it’s that awakening in this scenario can only take place when there is both sun and dew. Otherwise, the dawn might have nothing to kiss as it peers over the not-so-distant mountaintops. In so much of what follows, the inverted images in those pinhead orbs find themselves repeated in blissful aberration. Whether in the churning sediments of “Solar I” and “Solar II” or the flowering “Triptych” for two, there is a sense of agitation beneath the surface. The deepest point of these dialogues is mined in “Gratitude,” where Lechner skims the edges of notes as if to welcome melodic wanderers just long enough to feed and clothe them before sending them back into the wilderness, listless and without instruction until an ear catches them again—maybe tomorrow, maybe a millennium beyond.

That which is composed is carefully torn and folded from the pages of life itself. With each new crease, once-distant letters cohere into a new language. Among these homages, Anouar Brahem’s “Vague – E la nave va” inspires an astonishing piece of aural cinema, a tracking shot that shows us a wall and glimpses of the victims on the other side of it. The sensitivity of Henri Dutilleux’s “Prélude en berceuse,” too, reveals a pathway to revival, where awaits the closing door of the “Postludium.” Like the “Memory of a Melody,” which threads an excerpt from the Bach cantata aria “Wie zittern und wanken der Sünder Gedanken” (BWV 105) through the needle of the here and now, it reminds us that all melodies are memories.

Lontano is, above all, most wondrous for standing as a corrective to the phrase “effortless execution.” Tempting as this descriptor is, I find evidence of the untold hours of patient corporeal shaping and experience that feed every note. A flow like the one preserved here is made possible only by the sacrifices that dug its trenches.

Three Or One

Fred Thomas piano
Aisha Orazbayeva violin
Lucy Railton violoncello
Recorded 2012/2018
University of Huddersfield,
courtesy of Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay
Recording and mixing engineer: Alex Bonney
Balance engineers: Pierre-Alexandre Tremblay
and Rob Sutherland (trios),
Elliott Parkin (solos)
Recording producer: Fred Thomas
Cover photo: Manos Chatzikonstanzis
Mastering: Christoph Stickel
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 22, 2021

Three Or One documents the prismatic transcriptions of pianist Fred Thomas, who for this project dips his fingers into the font of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. He adds to that unfinished book of organ chorales and canons a selection of vocal movements and other Bachiana, lovingly sequenced by producer Manfred Eicher. As revealed in a liner note, Thomas sought to “subvert the associations of the piano trio (so remote from Bach) and induce a hushedness that I heard in his compositions.” Bringing said trio to life are violinist Aisha Orazbayeva and cellist Lucy Railton, whose sense of color, space, and time humble the proceedings to a scriptural level.

The opening chorale, “Ach bleib bei uns, Herr Jesu Christ” (BWV 649) gives majesty to the very air as if it were only a medium for melody. Such presence is strong yet yielding throughout, as most apparent in the organ pieces. Of these, “Herr Christ, der ein’ge Gottes Sohn” (BWV 601) is especially touching for its heartfelt composition and centuries-delayed interpretation. “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” (BWV 639) is another spiritual well from which is drawn the water of life itself.

The arranging is as sensitive as the playing. Whether in the delicate cello pizzicato of “Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt” (BWV 637) or the sustained violin lines of “Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott” (BWV 721), one can feel the close-eyed bliss of the creative process in both directions. The program offers solo piano interpretations as well, including a flight of four cantata arias and a sinfonia. In these are light-footed grace, intensifying passion, geometric wonder, and childlike whimsy all rolled into a holistic package.

Culminations of these signatures are found in the shining beacons of “Liebster Jesu, wir sind heir” (BWV 633), in which the strings blend like siblings while the piano sermonizes as if to a congregation of three, and “O Gott, du frommer Gott” (BWV 767), in which the violin sings as if a choir of one. Perhaps, this is a hidden nuance of the album’s title, referring not only to the number of musicians but also an evangelical diversity. Another doctrinal nugget is “Gott, durch deine Güte” (BWV 600), in which a closely miked violin played sul ponticello fills the left channel with birdlike movements.

We can be sure that everything gained here is the result of something lost. Hence the poignancy of what we are hearing: the cycle of birth and death that allows these beauties to exist in the first place. We can feel history coming together as much as separating, working to define the sounds through equal parts memory and unknowability. Notes Thomas: “Bach set out to discover, not create, the musical rules of the universe.” Indeed, there is much to discover in these hymns, sung before we could ever sing them.

Parker Quartet
Kim Kashkashian
György Kurtág/Antonín Dvořák

Parker Quartet
Daniel Chong violin
Ken Hamao violin
Jessica Bodner viola
Kee-Hyun Kim violoncello
Kim Kashkashian viola
Recorded November 2018, Radiostudio DRS, Zürich
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Cover photo: Woong Chul An
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: October 22, 2021

If the phenomenality of existence is rooted in its fleetingness, then music cannot be clothed in any raiment other than its mortality. Such is the impetus (and the slip-through-your-fingers brilliance) of György Kurtág’s composing, which never bites off more than it can chew so as to absorb every nutrient of its dialogic vocabularies. In the invocational architectures of his Six moments musicaux, op. 44 (2005), which open this program of ear-opening juxtapositions, there is much to be uncovered by listeners willing to seek the fragmentary in the harmonic and the holistic in the dissonant. Whether dancing with exuberance or wallowing in the eventide of mourning, the strings manifest as much meaning untouched by the bow as humming beneath its pressure. Shades of motifs that came before crack themselves open like eggs to reveal two distinct textures that cook at different temperatures. The Parker Quartet treats these dichotomies as anything but, reveling quietly in their gradations of white and yellow. The icy “Rappel des oiseaux…” (an etude rendered mostly in harmonics) is the clearest example of how sensitive one must be to speak Kurtág’s language. The quieter his grammar, the more robustly it leaps from the score.

The painted side of this mirror is Kurtág’s Officium breve, op. 28 (1988/89). Written in memory of composer Endre Szervánsky (1911-1977) but also paying respects to Anton Webern (1883-1945), its fifteen movements open as if tuning, bleeding into concentrations of light. Like a candle during a power outage, its quotidian purpose is magnified to near-sacred focus. For the most part, however, these pieces are reflections of reflections. From the sonority of the “Sostenuto” to the fragile spirituality of the “Canon a 2,” the Parkers erase the “d” in “breadth” and leave it to exhale into the slow-motion slumber of the final “Larghetto.” It is, as Paul Griffiths best describes it in his liner note, “A homecoming, to a lost home.”

Between these two destinations blossoms the String Quintet No. 3 in E-flat major, op. 97, of Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904). Composed in 1893 during a sojourn in the small Iowa town of Spillville, its rendering here with special guest, violist Kim Kashkashian (a mentor of the musicians), immediately boldfaces the brightness for which the Czech composer was so well known, soaring in search of a place without winter. What begins as a splash of sunlight in the Scherzo shifts into fluid motion, the violin working its way like a bird in slow motion without any other purpose than to mark its path with invisible ink. Heat comes in the slow burn of the Larghetto, which rests its weight on Kashkashian’s shoulders as on a savior in dark times. This is a highlight for the quartet’s ability to mesh with itself and incorporate the extra instrument as if it was always there. Between the light footfalls of the cello’s pizzicato and the dreamlike tremble of its higher cousins, everyone has a chance to make peace with the fullness of their message, finding in the Finale a way to begin again: by inhaling with a prayerful spirit.

Heinz Holliger
Lunea

Christian Gerhaher baritone
Julian Banse soprano
Ivan Ludlow baritone
Sarah Maria Sun soprano
Annette Schönmüller soprano
Philharmonia Zürich
Basler Madrigalisten
Heinz Holliger conductor
Recorded live March 2018
Opernhaus Zürich
Recording producer and editing: Andreas Werner
Recording engineer: Stefan Hächler
Assistant engineers: Alice Fischer and Philip Erdin
Cover sketches by Heinz Holliger / photo by Thomas Wunsch
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Co-production of ECM Records/Opera Zurich/SRF 2 Kultur
Release date: April 22, 2022

I am my own echo, but one eternally rigid and pinned down.
An echo nailed to the rock.

Heinz Holliger’s Lunea, described by the Swiss composer as his “dream opera,” grew out of a song cycle of the same name for baritone and piano. By 2017, Holliger had reworked it into its present form for the stage. Based on the demise of Nikolaus Lenau (1802-1850), who scribbled down outbursts during his years in an asylum, Lunea anagrams his name as a way of illuminating his poetic psychosis, thus hinting at the linguistic fragmentations we will encounter. As noted by baritone Christian Gerhaher, who seems born to sing this role: “Holliger presents these attempts on the part of the stricken poet to record his indescribable yet exquisitely traversed suffering—frightful and vivid experiences incapable of being communicated to another being.” And yet, communicate he does through a characteristically exquisite ear for nuance.

Whether by instinct or design, all of the artists of Holliger’s incidental interest, from Friedrich Hölderlin to Robert Schumann, are bound by the tattered thread of mental illness. His willingness to give them a mouthpiece through the score, of which language is a key instrument, finds a willing accomplice in Händl Klaus, whose libretto contextualizes 23 “leaves” in a space without linear order. Holliger’s approach to the text is microscopic in spirit but grand in scope. And yet, as Roman Brotbeck observes, “[N]othing is blurred; everything is as clear as glass and laid out by Holliger with maximum lucidity.” 

Holliger and Klaus pieced the opera together through fragments written on paper slips, glued with phrases (both musical and oral-motor) into shape. In doing so, they sought to resolve each sentence (or even word within it) through interpretation. If any plot can be discerned in all of this, it is embodied in the character of Lenau himself, whose cogent coterie of family members and acquaintances populates a bare environment like projections of his many sides. Lenau’s alter ego is Anton Xaver Schurz (1794-1859), a constant companion throughout his illness who also married his sister and published a nearly 800-page biography of Lenau in 1855. The women in Lenau’s life, including Sophie von Löwenthal (a platonic lover), Marie Behrends (his fiancée), and sister Therese, lend worldliness (if not also wordiness) to his isolation.

Holliger’s love for speech abounds, as when he incorporates the character of Justinus Kerner, a physician and close friend who, in 1850 (the year of Lenau’s death) began making what he called “klecksographs”—inkblot pictures mirrored by folding pieces of paper into symmetrical images. Following this, the opera is symmetrically arranged around the stroke Lenau experienced in September 29, 1844. Long before that, the opening speaks is as if through a layer of rice paper. Low reeds and an intoning chorus give way to Lenau’s amorous deteriorations. This is the asylum, a space in which the mind has free reign even as the body is contained. Such is the contradiction of operatic space: a stage that delineates mise-en-scène while opening our hearts to its inner flames. Holliger understands this in both the most traditional and postmodern sense.

For Lenau, “Man is a beachcomber at the sea of eternity,” and so might we call the instruments, among which the violin, cimbalom (Hungarian dulcimer), and bassoon move as characters in their own right. Each slices mortality at a different angle, offering us unrepeatable cross-sections of emotional sediment. As waves of utterances and choral echoes navigate the scrapheap of a broken mind, we are privy to glimpses of recovery and tension in kind. Some of the most profound moments are shared between Lenau and Sophie. Their wordless breathing in the Fourth Leaf palpitates the ears. And it is Sophie who, in Leaf Nine, brings the most hopeful beauties into focus. Such respite is brief and occasional, as in the skyward harmonies of the Sixth Leaf, whereas the most powerful interruptions (such as that by Sophie again in the Eleventh Leaf) make the morbid grays and charcoals of the opera’s fulcrum that much more morose.

In one key scene, played out in the Fourteenth Leaf, Lenau leaps from the window in desperation before bowing the violin in a cathartic dance of healing. What follows from here to the end is a reversion into childhood (Fifteenth Leaf) before solitary madness sets in. Turning as a revolving door from one state of mind to another, the chorus voices the multiplicity of his demise. The final part is a gravelly expression of death borders that burrows into the reptilian brain.

While Lunea is a chain of intimate fascinations as only Holliger can link, it is best appreciated with the booklet in hand, ready to absorb the fragments at hand and assemble them into your own whole. Its brilliance comes to life through the heartbeat of its concepts. Then again, the disorientation of not knowing where our ears might land next is appropriate enough when scrutinizing a mind that might never have demanded more. Hence the significance of Gerhaher being the only singer who doesn’t perform multiple rolls, at once emphasizing Lenau’s splintered cognizance and his insistence on maintaining an identity through it all. For a man who saw the moon as “a luminous, drifting tomb,” death was, perhaps, the only certainty.

Danish String Quartet
PRISM III

Danish String Quartet
Frederik Øland violin
Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen violin
Asbjørn Nørgaard viola
Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin violoncello
Recorded November 2017, Reitstadel Neumarkt
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Cover: Eberhard Ross
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: March 12, 2021

Ludwig van Beethoven’s five late quartets must be reckoned with. In the words of the Danish String Quartet, presenting the String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor of 1826, they “changed the game.” In saying as much, we might very well ask ourselves: What was the game to begin with? How far back does it go? With whom did it start? Augmenting the famous profession that “all roads lead back to Bach,” this recording charts as many paths forward as it does retrospectively. As for the game itself, we can say that it involves not only musical idioms but also hints of visual art, literature, religion, war, migration, and, dare I say, hope.

To know Beethoven’s Op. 131 is to take a full view of humanity, with all its triumphs and tragedies. The opening Adagio, the first of seven movements, spins fibers of tenderness into a muscle that flexes in tune with emotional suspensions, thus emphasizing the DSQ’s fitness as much as the composer’s. The Allegro that follows surprises with dance-like energies but may just as easily be interpreted as a coping mechanism against the grief that preceded it. Its extroversions are deeply entwined with introversion. Other movements, like the lively Presto, share their secrets more openly, taking on a litheness of clarity rarely heard in other renditions. The closing Allegro wears its heart on its sleeve just as securely, emboldening (not flaunting) its awareness as a modus operandi of exposition. But it’s in the gargantuan fourth movement, a nearly 15-minute Andante, where most of this vessel’s cargo is tallied in its keep. What begins as a spider’s thread of narrative sweetness morphs, as if in answer to the subtle insistence of the cello’s pizzicato, into a fog of impressions that resolves itself into a dew of urgent memories. All the more fitting that this quartet was never performed in the composer’s lifetime. For while its mixed receptions have morphed into high regard, the music reminds us of the necessarily contrasting organs in its body. As these meticulous musicians remind us, none will function on its own but only when connected to the larger whole.

For his String Quartet No. 1, op. 7, Sz. 40 (1909), Béla Bartók took inspiration from Beethoven’s opus 131. Both open in lament. That said, Bartók evokes a distinct shade of darkness made modern not only by its tonality but also in the interpretation so lovingly given here. The DSQ enhances the piece’s metallic sheen without neglecting the patina it already had when first composed. When the viola announces itself in the opening Lento, it does so not out of desperation but infirmity. At this point, the heart is already so weakened that beating its drum feels like an uphill climb. Somehow, Bartók affords us a view of the valley to show that achievement means nothing without hardship. Even the Allegretto that follows emerges hesitantly, an animal out of hibernation before proclaiming its heritage. The digging cello of the Introduzione that follows sets up the storytelling of an Allegro for the ages. The atmosphere is chiseled in something more durable than stone: an alloy of reinforcement made possible only by the laying of human hands on natural materials. Forgoing any illusion of permanence (everything decays), Bartók recognizes that imperfection is always a reliable receptacle for creative ideas. As the strings move—sometimes in unison, mostly apart—they prove that cohesion isn’t always obvious or visible. Rather, it is born through the message of interpretation. Every gesture of insistence in the violins gives way to glorious resolution, jumping from the edge of a collective inhalation. Is this triumph or just a return to baseline? You decide.

Because Beethoven was deeply inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, it only makes sense to include a fugue (this one in C-sharp minor, the very key signature used in Beethoven’s 14th quartet), as arranged by Emanuel Aloys Förster. Its tessellated configuration is a breath of higher origin, smoothing over the postmodern cracks with a reminder of what makes beauty earn its name: the scars of our destitution.

Danish String Quartet
PRISM IV

Danish String Quartet
Frederik Øland violin
Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen violin
Asbjørn Nørgaard viola
Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin violoncello
Recorded September 2018, Reitstadel Neumarkt
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Cover: Eberhard Ross
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 3, 2022

For this fourth installment of the PRISM series, the Danish String Quartet strikes its boldest combination of light and shadow. By starting with the Fugue in G minor, BWV 861, from Book I of Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier (as arranged by Emanuel Aloys Förster), it wears on its sleeve the subtle élan that permeates all to follow. Its textures are those of a piece of clothing one has worn for years, every memory connected with it coming to life in déjà vu. Stepping outside of that outfit and into another embroidered with the name “Ludwig van Beethoven,” it’s impossible to think of the String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, op. 132, as anything less than an unpacking of the gift we have just received. The opening forgoes Bach’s expansiveness, tracing ropes all the same but this time in less of a macrame and more of a sailor’s knot. The second movement, marked Allegro ma non tanto (“Fast, but not too much”), gives ample room for the musicians to spread their leaves in a canopy porous enough to nourish the forest floor with sunlight. The balance of urgency and patience is exemplary. A shift halfway through into sustained harmonies pushes hues of glory between the trees. The 18-minute third movement is like a pond in that while its surface appears tranquil, we are aurally edified regarding the undercurrents and other invisible forces keeping its waterline steady. A methodical seesawing between straight tones and vibrato amplifies a voice of literary dimension, circling clockwise from prologue to epilogue. Only then do we get the retrospective excitement of the fourth movement (a brief march), followed by the shifting plates of the fifth. When pizzicato punctuations from the cello signal the final stretch, a feeling of sadness eclipses the ears. Thus, any happiness we might have found must be returned to sender, leaving us to wonder when we will ever meet again.

It’s poignant to consider that Beethoven was just months from leaving this world behind when Felix Mendelssohn, then a tender 18, composed his String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, op. 13. Mendelssohn’s exploratory ethos was ripe for transplanting the influences of Beethoven’s Opus 132, watering them into a piece that overlapped in technical similarities even as it deviated in extroversion. Such is the spirit of the first movement, in which vertical and horizontal motifs favor parallel paths over common ground, so to speak. The Adagio that follows develops with nondescript urgency. The viola is especially robust as the violins circle overhead, high but never out of sight. The third movement is a delectable exercise in playfulness that foreshadows the pastoralism of Antonín Dvořák. Its abrupt ending gives us pause before the drama of the finale opens the quartet’s thickest curtain to reveal a densely populated scene, likewise open-ended in its resolution.

If any of the above reads evocatively, it’s because these Danes make it impossible to experience this program any other way. Their approach to synergy is as carefully planned as it is spontaneous, and with only one more volume to go, we have much to look forward to as this journey reaches its destination. At that point, however, we are likely to realize how much further we have yet to go in our listening.

Carolin Widmann
L’Aurore

Carolin Widmann violin
Recorded July 2021
Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano
Engineer: Markus Heiland
Cover photo: Wilfried Hösl
Produced by Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 17, 2022

Although L’Aurore represents violinist Carolin Widmann’s seventh ECM appearance, this is her first solo program for the label, making it the culmination of the many potent strands she has woven to get here. Hearing her breathe through the Spiritus sanctus vivificans vita of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), which opens the program with fundamental monophony, is equivalent to the feeling of recovering from a long illness, taking in mundane details with renewed appreciation. The angular vigor of the Fantaisie concertante by George Enescu (1881-1955) that follows reminds us further of the need to absorb as much of our surroundings as possible if we are to give back more to the world than it has given us. Widmann’s ability to bring verve to the most leaping gestures and quietest rasping of the bow ensconces the motivations of this rarely performed treasure she calls a “sweeping melisma” of improvisational qualities. Contrasts of pulchritude and decay leave us marveling over a gray area where no single impression overwhelms another. Any keen listeners drawing a line from here to the work of Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931) are rewarded by his Sonata No. 5 in G major, op. 27, the first movement of which yields this album’s title. Its multivalence drips from Widmann’s fingers like rain from leaves after a storm, her double stops leaving trails of light as she works her way toward the “Danse rustique.” Here, the mood is somehow airier, despite the denser textures and grounded form, though at no expense of emotional savor. Between these giants are the no-less-powerful Three Miniatures of George Benjamin (b. 1960). With an economy of expression that makes every note count, each tells its dedicatory story in lucid terms. In doing so, what otherwise might seem like fleeting shifts in more florid writing take on a stark significance. The central piece, in particular, stirs the soul with its elasticity.

After revisiting Hildegard’s antiphon, Widmann takes us on a journey through the Partita No. 2 in D minor of J. S. Bach (1685-1750), a piece she felt prepared at long last to present in the studio. And while it concludes the disc, it feels more like a renewal. The minutiae of her caring spirit are immediately apparent in the caressing Allemanda, from which a personal ethos of direct communication shines in welcome. Over the next three movements, she turns the mirror to capture flashes of light, fragments of dreams, and memories of better times. All’s well that ends well in the epic Ciaccona, which for Widmann is “an epitome of life” (as is Hildegard, she is quick to add). Without apparent force yet with total conviction, she renders its details with the control required to wield a feather quill. Every mark confirms the need for ink and paper, without which these leaves of the human spirit might fall from the trees of history, leaving its forest bereft of fruit.

András Schiff
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Johannes Brahms: Piano Concertos

András Schiff piano
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Recorded December 2019
Abbey Road Studios, London
Engineer: Stephan Schellmann
Balance engineer: John Barrett
Production coordination: Guido Gorna and Thomas Herr
Cover photo: Péter Nádas
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: June 4, 2021

Following his 2020 release of the Brahms clarinet sonatas with Jörg Widmann, pianist András Schiff continues his exploration of this beloved composer by diving into his formidable piano concertos. With characteristic attention to detail, peeling back layers of artifice to get to the heart of what a score is trying to convey, Schiff seeks appropriate companionship in the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a period-instrument ensemble that often performs in the absence of a conductor, as it does here. Leading this entourage alongside Schiff is a Julius Blüthner grand piano built in 1859, from which he coaxes an incredible amount of resonance. Thus, he attempts “to recreate and restore the works, to cleanse and ‘detoxify’ the music, to liberate it from the burden of the—often questionable—trademarks of performing traditions.”

It was with Ludwig van Beethoven firmly in mind that Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1 in d minor, op. 15, even as he tried to step outside the giant’s shadow. Despite its poor initial reception, it has since grown into an experimental full-course spread in the estimation of performers and listeners alike. The opening movement betrays the piece’s transformation from sonata to symphony to concerto, bursting into being with a hit of strings and timpani. Such grandeur, however, is only temporary, as the river’s flow evens out beyond the dam’s reach. When the piano makes its entrance, it dances, carrying with it all the memories it needs to fend for itself in the wilderness. The drama returns only to break the proverbial vessel for a much-needed rebuilding in the Adagio. Brahms marked this movement “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini” (Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord) in response to the death of Robert Schumann. With unwavering emotional veracity, it shifts from dark to light and back again as unconsciously as breathing. Bringing us out of that pall is a vivacious Rondo leading the final movement’s charge. Schiff emphasizes its improvisational qualities, bringing luminous immediacy to every note.

One might not know that the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in B-flat major, op. 83, is notorious for being one of the most difficult in the repertoire from the pastoral flavor in which it opens. But as the piano’s rubato phrasing proceeds freely over the foundation, pizzicato strings trailing not far behind, the rhythmic complexities become increasingly apparent. The second movement represents some of Brahms’s finest writing. Schiff’s awareness of its textures testifies to his experience and maturity, thus emphasizing the time shift of strings and horns midway through—a resounding call for the future built on the technologies of the past. The wildly inventive third movement (with solo cello lines played by Luise Buchberger) is a lone wolf of expressivity leading us to the momentous Allegretto. The pianism takes striking turns, digging into the lower register before ending on a firmly resolute chord.

Schiff holds these pieces dear to his heart, as should we in being handed the gift of his interpretations.

Michael Mantler
Coda

Recorded September 2019
at Porgy & Bess Studio, Vienna, Austria
Engineers: Martin Vetters and Juan José Carpio del Rio
Additional recording, mixing, and mastering
November 2019 and June 2020
at Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineers: Gérard de Haro and Nicolas Baillard
Design: Sascha Kleis
Produced by Michael Mantler
An ECM Production
in collaboration with Porgy & Bess
Release date: July 16, 2021

Coda: a concluding statement, based on elaborations of thematic material from selected past works. So does the booklet for this album of Austrian trumpeter and composer Michael Mantler’s Orchestral Suites define its collective title. In that sense, we might point to its reworking of material from his substantial corpus, including elements of 13 3/4, Alien, Folly Seeing All This, Cerco Un Paese Innocente, Hide and Seek, and For Two. Beyond that, it is an inclusive force that attaches its tendrils to outside influences, carved as much on the surface of the present as of the past. Using his favorite ensemble format of flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, trumpet, French horn, trombone, tuba, guitar, piano, marimba/vibraphone, and a string section (here under the direction of Christoph Cech), he walks self-referencing as a path to evolution.

While Mantler’s music has deeply cinematic skin (going back at least to 1978’s Movies), there’s no denying a dramaturgical heartbeat within. This isn’t just recycling; it’s a psychological reforming of the self. A frenetic yet never overbearing energy pulls a punch in the TwoThirteen Suite. The electric guitar of Bjarne Roupé rises from the strings as a phoenix, while pianist David Helbock stirs the ashes left behind. In the wake of this tempered triumph, the Folly Suite interrupts in mid-sentence, opening into a quieter realm where the trumpet emotes from the ledge of a skyscraper, tracking as many bodies as it can on the streets below until it loses count. Effortlessly gliding from one part of the city to another until only memories of gridlines are left, Mantler is the itinerant planner whose leaves his messages like tickets on the windows of every illegally parked car as a reminder of acoustic order in a digital world. The Alien Suite leaves such quotidian concerns far behind as Roupé and Mantler go extraterrestrial. The flute of Leo Eibensteiner adds a touch of unexamined landscapes over tense strings. The overarching sense is that of an oncoming storm that never arrives.

If the piano in the Cerco Suite is a pile of bones, then the orchestra is the archaeological team putting it back together. The excitement of this discovery veers into a cavern where the oboe of Peter Tavernaro speaks of civilizations drawn into ruin. Whatever voices we might have recovered there are subsumed into the HideSeek Suite. What were once lyrics now become impulses—the physical sensations of the breaths that produced them. As winds and piano hover beneath the heat of the electric guitar, a mature control of tension and release treats the explosive reveals of life as a matter of course.

Mantler has always had a gift for turning melodies into full bodies. More than signatures or calling cards, they hold themselves together in spite of staggered surroundings. Such is the theme of these compressed realities, each a doorway leading to another.

Gidon Kremer
Mieczysław Weinberg: Sonatas for Violin Solo

Gidon Kremer violin
Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2
recorded December 2019
at Studio Residence Paliesius, Lithuania
Engineers: Vilius Keras and Aleksandra Kerienė
Sonata No. 3 recorded July 2013
at Lockenhaus Kammermusikfestival
Engineer: Peter Laenger
Cover photo: Max Franosch
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher

When Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-1996) fled his homeland to escape the Nazis in the early stages of World War II, little could he have known the fate that would befall those left behind. It was Dmitri Shostakovich who eased his way into Russia, where the Stalinist regime would surely have killed him again had not the despotic leader died a month after Weinberg’s arrest for “Jewish bourgeois nationalism” in 1953. With more than a decade separating those events and his composing of the three solo violin sonatas recorded here, by which time his entire family had long perished in the concentration camps, there was yet room in his battered heart to amplify the need for humanity.

Violinist Gidon Kremer, who has championed Weinberg’s music on two previous discs with his Kremerata Baltica, offers the present program in reverse chronological order, starting with the Sonata No. 3, op. 126 (1979). Dedicated to his father and ostensibly taking form as a single movement, it is marked by borders that, like those in his life, were blessedly surmountable. It sharpens its blade of experience, forged in the fire of history, across stone-hard double stops before carving its way delicately through softer actions, snaking high lines, and bruised leitmotifs. Kremer navigates every chamber as if it belonged in his home, describing the furniture, curtain, and artwork hanging on the wall down to the last detail.

The concentrated sections of the Sonata No. 2, op. 95 (1967) take on descriptive titles. “Monody” digs up bare bones, while “Rests” shines a light on Weinberg’s brilliant personality. From “Intervals” to “Replies,” we see other sides of his visage—in the former, an angular nose; in the latter, a hair that refuses to stay combed. “Accompaniment” switches acrobatically from pizzicato to programmatic upswings as a magician might shuffle cards. “Invocation” cries for salvation, leaving only “Syncopes” to cut its jagged figure into the air with tactile dissonances.

Last is what came first: the Sonata No. 1, op. 82 (1964). There is a sad ebullience to its opening movement, characterized by alarming calls to action, which then turn on a dime into Bartókian flavors. The Andante is its dark side, churning as sediment in a river, slowed to the pace of a careful hunter. From there, the pointillism of a rotating Allegretto adds more stars to this sky, constellated by pliant bow work. After a multifaceted fourth movement, the final Presto recalls Bartók once again in its soil-scented urgency. Scratching motifs, strummed strings, and insistent harmonies pull each other in many directions, never straying from their handling. They know where they are going, even when everyone else around them is lost or falls behind.

As incredible as these pieces are, they are by no means “pleasant” to listen to. If anything, they listen to us, placing a stethoscope on our collective chest to amplify events we would rather ignore. If Bach’s solo violin works are of heavenly height, then Weinberg’s walk the valley of the shadow of death between them.

Heiner Goebbels
A House of Call – My Imaginary Notebook

Ensemble Modern Orchestra
Vimbayi Kaziboni conductor
Recorded September 2021
by Bayerischer Rundfunk
Prinzregententheater, München
Engineer: Clemens Deller
Recording engineer: Gerhard Gruber
Mixed and mastered by Clemens Deller, Heiner Goebbels, and Gerhard Gruber
Cover photo: Gérald Minkoff
Executive producer: Manfred Eicher
Release date: August 26, 2022

With A House of Call, Heiner Goebbels peels back his most significant layer of multimedia music for the stage. This self-styled “imaginary notebook” incorporates archival recordings of prayers, songs, and other speech acts into dialogic relationships with a full orchestra. Much of what we hear is old and anonymous, barely hanging by a thread of preservation and never imaginable in a concert setting. And yet, here it all is, wired together like some elaborate lie detector of our shared past, pinging with increasing frequency to signal every denial of complicity by proxy. Tempting as it might be to view such a project through an archaeological or ethnographic lens, to do so would strengthen the very contradictions it wishes to dilute in its reckonings of time and place. “The music is a direct response to the complexity and roughness of the voices,” says Goebbels in his liner note, pointing also to the radiance thereof against the opacity of present traumas.

Across four thematic assemblages, the Ensemble Modern Orchestra, under the direction of Vimbayi Kaziboni, draws upon an intimate relationship with Goebbels to bring his vision of death to life. Part I, “Stein Schere Papier” (Rock Paper Scissors), cites Pierre Boulez’s orchestral work Répons as foundation, magnifying its call-and-response principle with glimpses of Goebbels’s art rock band Cassiber from the same period (the early 1980s). The initial stirrings of a privileged crowd indicate the biological venues we often fail to maintain. The instrumental colors are fluid, attentive to detail, and indicative of various styles pouring from many portals at once. The story of Sisyphus, as retold in Heiner Müller’s “Immer den gleichen Stein” (Always the same stone), wraps the orchestra in a chameleonic skin. And as the street noise of a Berlin building site from 2017 stirs up a vortex of unread manifestos, faded newspapers, and other detritus, we begin to treat all words as fair game.

Part II, “Grain de la voix,” borrows from the Roland Barthes essay of the same name, in which the French philosopher asserted the power of language to shield oneself against the glare of mortality. Ghosts from the Caucasus region open their lungs, strings trembling beneath the surface as a violin leaps in sporadic response. Thus, the hypocrisy of destroying the questions of culture to answer them is outed. When more modern recordings, like that of Iranian musician Hamidreza Nourbaksh intoning Rumi from 2010, reveal themselves, they take on a volition that blinds the orchestra’s feeble attempts at imitation. The juxtaposition is critically self-aware, a score written in scars. The evocation of Komitas and Armenian soprano Zabelle Panosian hints at the spiritual planes being razed in addition to the physical, as scrutinized in Part III, “Wax and Violence.” The title refers to the wax cylinders weaponized by pseudoscientific ideologues whose voracious appetite for the “exotic” was only the beginning of their consumption. In particular, Hans Lichtenecker’s xenophobic aural documents of the very people German soldiers would later destroy through genocide pull us by the ears. A recording of school children in the Namibian village of Berseba is even more haunting and spawns a big-band catharsis—if falsely so called, for what do we have to be released from by comparison? The effect is even stronger in the laments and incantations of Part IV, “When Words Gone,” wherein Amazon rituals conducted in lost languages blend into lines from one of Samuel Becket’s last texts amid digital whispers.

The danger of all this is reading the wrong kind of sorrow into everyone we hear. We latch on to familiar names like life preservers, forgetting that the nameless have been speaking truth all along. And so, while it would be easy to call this the pinnacle of Goebbels’s work, it might be more appropriate to see it as his valley of the shadow of death. We walk through it, guided by hands unseen, in faith that hope awaits us on the other side. But to get there, we must be willing to face the hostile forces of collective memory, thick with the mud of misunderstanding.

Pascale Berthelot
Saison Secrète

Pascale Berthelot piano
Recorded November 29, 2018
Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines
Engineer: Gérard de Haro
Mastered by Nicolas Baillard at La Buissonne Mastering Studio
Steinway grand piano prepared and tuned by Alain Massonneau
Release date: October 26, 2020

Pianist Pascale Berthelot, a remarkable interpreter of (and favorite among) living composers, becomes one herself—in a sense—throughout this program of five extended improvisations. Liberated at the behest of Gérard de Haro, engineer and head of Studios La Buissonne in France, these unabashedly visual evocations of in-the-moment imaginings constitute one of the most multidimensional piano recordings I’ve heard in years. While its impressionism lays its head as much on the shoulder of Poulenc as Jarrett, it shapes itself one body part at a time without the ultimate need for such comparative garments. Regardless of the lines of reckoning we might connect from Earth to its distant galaxy, it validates the listener’s imagination, and in that spirit I offer mine in return.

“Balance des étoiles” opens the curtains as if in expectation of morning but instead finds the moon masquerading as the sun, rising in mimicry of dawn. The toes become restless for the feel of soil between them, the heart for a lamp to light the way. What began as a reverie ends as a descent into ocean, where prose and poetry comingle until the difference is impossible to make out. In “Ciel s’illune,” the sky and earth are flipped, so that another distinction—that between inhalation and exhalation—is rendered mythological. When we at last get to the center of this genetic spiral, “Nuits, chères” abandons the lie of tranquility for the truth of its unsettling, thus evoking the bliss and deeper love that a relationship conflict can yield. Even in “Chambre sans langage,” in which the intonations of dampened piano strings resound like a knock at the door, spiritual tendencies move beyond prayer into communion. And so, when the dream of “Clair éclat de l’M” lights a ponderous candle with its tongue, it adds one last link to the chain we’ve been extending all along, dragging behind us a memory box whose contents we have already forgotten.

And yet, we mustn’t fool ourselves into thinking that the world Berthelot describes existed before these utterances. Rather, we experience it as she does, unfolding in real time at the touch of flesh and key until something inevitable arises. Thus, the recording itself is a song made up by a child lost in the woods, holding on to lullabies as the only answers to her questions of fear and emerging all the stronger for it.