Tag: ECM Records

CD Review, File Under?, Strings

Danish String Quartet – Keel Road on ECM (CD Review)

Danish String Quartet

Keel Road

ECM Records ECM 2785

 

Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, Violin, Clog Fiddle, Harmonium, Spinet, Voice, Whistle;
Frederik Øland, Violin, Voice, Whistle; Asbjørn Nørgaard, Viola, Voice, Whistle;
Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, Violoncello, Bass, Voice, Whistle;
Nikolaj Busk, Piano; Ale Carr, Cittern

 

The Danish String Quartet have explored music from many eras and styles. Keel Road  (ECM, 2024), is the third recording in which they delve into Northern European folk music, ranging through Scandinavia, Britain, and Ireland; they call it “a musical journey through the North Sea.” The arrangements were made by the quartet, and in addition to playing strings, they also sing, whistle, and perform on a variety of traditional instruments. 

 

Those used to the quartet’s Prism series for ECM, which featured Bach, Beethoven, and contemporary pieces, will likely be in for a pleasant surprise. Keel Road displays a correspondingly skillful approach to folk music, as well as a remarkable affinity for the music they have chosen for the album. This is evident from the recording’s opening track, Turlough O’Carolan’s “Mable Kelly,” where the musicians play a winsome tune with ornaments from Celtic fiddling, accompanied by lyrical harmonies. “Pericondine/Fair Isle Jig” begins in a similarly adorned fashion in a jaunty dance. Ale Carr’s “Stompolskan” gradually builds in intensity, developing two-note repetitions alongside another quick dance. “Carolan’s Quarrel With the Landlady” has more of a playful than adversarial demeanor, and its refrain focuses on open strings. O’Carolan likes to focus on character sketches, and the third piece played by the quartet is his “Captain O’Kane,” a study in contrast with a soaring reprise. 

 

“En Skomager Har Jeg Været” is a brief field recording of a solo singer, a nod to the curators of this genre.The traditional song “As I Walked Out” may be familiar to listeners in its Vaughan Williams arrangement, but this brisk version with pizzicato strumming and whistling is enjoyable. Partway through, the whistling subsides and loud downward attacks accompany the tune, eventually subsiding in favor of an undulating accompaniment with the melody moving among the players. The downward attacks return softly, and there is a long fade with the whistling and pizzicatos of earlier. “Marie/The Chat/Gale Warning” is a vibrant medley in which the melody of each section is buoyed by different rhythmic patterns, tempo, and countermelodies.  Glissandos, tremolandos, pizzicatos, and harmonics demonstrate a variety of techniques borrowed from the quartet’s contemporary classical repertoire. The harmony employs stacked quartal chords, including the last vertical in the piece, which is another twentieth century calling card reminiscent of Bartôk and Stravinsky (both arrangers of folk music). 

 

The last track is particularly evocative. “Når Mitt Øye, Trett Av Møje,” is a traditional Norwegian tune, in a resolute arrangement that the quartet plays with sumptuous tone. Once again, the Danish String Quartet has shared the songs of multiple cultures in compelling renditions. Keel Road is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.

 

Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Improv, jazz

Ban and Maneri – Transylvanian Dance on ECM (CD Review)

Transylvanian Dance

Lucian Ban, piano

Mat Maneri, viola

ECM Records

 

“These folk songs teach us many things.”

 

Transylvanian Dance is the second recording on ECM by pianist Lucian Ban and violist Mat Maneri; the first was Transylvanian Concert (2013). As the album title suggests,  the duo explores Eastern European material, specifically that collected by Béla Bartók. Ban was born in Romania and delights in the fascinating polyrhythms of this region. Maneri is well versed in the microtonal and multi-scalar aspects of folk song. These are not mere transcriptions. Maneri has described them in interviews as, “a springboard,” a reservoir of melodic and rhythmic ideas that the duo use for improvisation. Recorded live in the Romanian city Timișoara în 2022 as part of ECM’s Retracing Bartók project, Transylvanian Dance demonstrates varied and versatile reinventions of its source material.

 

Bartók collected folk songs in Transylvania from 1909-1917. He made a number of trips to Eastern European countries, sometimes with his friend and fellow folk song collector the composer and pedagogue Zoltán Kodály. With cumbersome recording gear and staff paper at the ready, they sought out amateur singers, particularly those of previous generations. As older people in these regions died off, so too would generations of music-making. Before it would be too late, Bartók was eager to capture and transcribe their knowledge.

 

Ban and Maneri revel in the music Bartók found in his trips to Transylvania. The title track is a case in point, where Ban explores a mixed meter groove while Maneri plays modal scales with glissandos and bent notes that recall the gestural vocabulary one might hear from a traditional fiddler. As the piece progresses, Maneri plays long lines that blur the polymeter, inviting Ban to add splashes of cluster harmonies and a thrumming bass countermelody. Gradually, there is a coming apart and then rejoining by the duo, a recapitulation of the opening material, and then a sideways swerve with new harmonies, inside the piano work, and a rousing viola cadenza. “The Enchanted Stag” has a very different demeanor, slow and mysterious, almost pointillist in conception. 

 

Ban and Maneri don’t neglect the jazz tradition in which they have been steeped. “Harvest Moon” is filled with scales from folk music, but is played like a blues ballad. “Romanian Dance” is an extended workout where Ban builds upon an asymmetrical beat pattern until it becomes a rich ground from which the duo’s forceful soloing emanates. “Boyar’s Dance” uses a soft, undulating piano passage as a refrain, between which is some of the most free improvisation on the recording, building to incendiary climaxes before lapsing into softly repeated dance steps. 

 

The recording concludes with “Make Me, Lord, Slim and Tall,” in which both players explore a sumptuous melody over a mixed meter ostinato. The piece morphs between dovetailing melodies, post-bop, and extended harmonies featuring Maneri’s microtones and elaborate changes by Ban. It ends in a denouement, angular viola riffs and dance rhythms in the piano fading away. 

 

Fluent in folk sources and imaginative in improvising upon them, Ban and Maneri have created a compelling document. I think Bartók would be proud of them. Transylvanian Dance is one of my favorite recordings of 2024.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Ralph Alessi Quartet on ECM (CD Review)

Ralph Alessi Quartet

It’s Always Now

ECM CD

 

Trumpeter Ralph Alessi brought a passel of originals to his latest recording date, his fourth for ECM, It’s Always Now. Most are single-author compositions, but a few are collaborations with pianist Florian Weber. The two are joined on the recording by double bassist Bänz Oester and drummer Gerry Hemingway. It is a formidable lineup, one responsive to and supportive of each others’ playing. 

 

Coauthored with Weber, “Hypnagogic” opens the album, with whole-tone arpeggiations from Weber and repeating notes from Alessi creating a mysterious atmosphere. Alessi’s lines unfurl into passages morphing the scale patterns Weber uses, imitating elements of his intro and exploring upper register sostenuto. It is a beguiling way to begin. “Old Baby’s” loping tempo and bluesy cast alludes to jazz styles past. Still, the player’s keep these tropes within their own modern language. Oester and Hemingway assert themselves on “Residue,” creating a powerful sound and corruscating rhythms. The solos are correspondingly boisterous. 

 

“The Shadow Side” is an appropriately named mysterious ballad with wide ranging solos from both Alessi and Weber. The title tune, coauthored with Weber, features Alessi playing in the upper register with exquisite control. Slow, soft, inside-the-piano work and thick chords create complex textures. “Diagonal Lady” begins with Oester playing a fine solo with terse melodies and glissandos. It concludes with arco low notes. Alessi explores an anapestic cry and Weber ghosts his melodies.

 

“Everything Mirrors Everything” is a nice change of pace, literally. It begins with an uptempo moto perpetuo. The solos maintain a bebop tempo, Alessi using a mute and firing off line after line in fiery fashion. At the tune’s conclusion, he references the moto perpetuo line and Hemingway’s cymbal’s sizzle away. Short and sassy, “Ire” has a duet of its tart tune by Alessi and Weber, which is then taken out of phase by the duo, Weber adding stabbing comping. 

 

Two extended outings, “His Hopes, His Fears, His Tears,” and “Hanging by a Thread” show the capacity of the quartet to develop small pieces of initial material into larger forms. Here as elsewhere, the simpatico interaction between Alessi and Weber is formidable. Likewise, the interactions between Oester and Hemingway never fail to impress. Hemingway has long been a favorite of mine, and hearing Oester’s lines curl around the pulse the drummer sets down, moving into his own line of syncopations to add another rhythmic layer, is a highlight of both tunes. Weber’s solo on “His Hopes… presents virtuosity in full flourish. “Hanging by a Thread” is another tune where a chromatic melody outlines an uptempo pulse. Alessi begins and is joined by Weber in a follow the leader duo. After the intro, the pace slows, and Weber takes a solo set of variations of the tune. Alessi sequences the tune in his solo and overblows stentorian high notes. He is joined by Weber and the tempo picks up to a rapid pace, florid lines breathlessly flowing. Glissandos from the trumpet heralds a new section and the rest of the quartet plays a vigorous ostinato. Alessi locks in with the patterning of the others, Weber returning to with the chromatic tune, and then Alessi repeating it one more time to conclude.

 

The recording’s last cut, “Tumbleweed,” another authorial collaboration with Weber, has a delicate melody built of latticed repeating cells. As in the past, Alessi and Weber trade angular lines, the trumpeter’s tone plummy in contrast to the silvery sound he often evokes. Rather than explore all of the tune’s potential, it finishes after a tantalizing three minutes.

 

It’s Always Now is one of my favorite recordings thus far in 2023. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, File Under?, Strings

Danish String Quartet – Prism V (CD Review)

Danish String Quartet

Prism V

ECM Records

 

This is the last outing in Danish String Quartet’s Prism series. Each of the five recordings has included a late Beethoven string quartet, a related Bach fugue, and a later work influenced by Beethoven. Prism V’s program begins with “Vor deinen Thron tret’ich,” Bach’s chorale prelude BWV 668, arranged for string quartet. It also includes “Contrapunctus 14” from Bach’s Art of Fugue, Anton Webern’s String Quartet (1905), and Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135.

 

The performance of the chorale prelude is beautiful, played with expressive tone and ardent phrasing, with the Danish Quartet not pretending to be playing on period instruments. It is followed by the Beethoven quartet, the last piece he wrote in this genre and, indeed, one of the last he completed. Unlike the intensity found in some of the other late quartets, such as Op. 131, Op. 135 has a bright, often jocular, demeanor. The first movement, marked Allegretto, is full of puckish feints and gestures from classicism. The Vivace is a roller coaster of syncopations. Movement three, marked Lento assai e cantante tranquillo, is performed with luminous beauty, lyrical phrasing and timbral shadings underscoring its valedictory nature. The final movement incorporates the famous “Es muss sein” motive. The Danish quartet punctuates its appearances, underscoring the intensity of the sentiment to Beethoven. Despite the aging composer’s struggles, there is a triumphant feeling that pervades the last movement, a valediction underscoring Beethoven’s indomitability of spirit.

 

Webern’s String Quartet (1905) is influenced by Beethoven to be sure, but there also is a palpable connection to Webern’s mentor Arnold Schoenberg, particularly his groundbreaking work Verklärkte Nacht. Some of the harmonies and textures adopted by Webern also seem prescient to atonality, a musical scheme that would be explored in the next decade.

 

Contrapunctus 14 has three “soggetti,” or fugal themes. The quartet takes it at a relatively slow tempo. Their blend as a group is well-known, and here it imparts tremendous clarity to the contrapuntal lines. This is the last section of the Art of Fugue, and Bach left it unfinished. The quartet doesn’t adopt any conjectural completion, instead allowing the ending to break off abruptly. In addition to acknowledging Bach’s mortality, perhaps on a personal level, this gesture signifies the Danish quartet’s conclusion of the Prism project. It is an enormously fruitful collection of pieces. One waits with anticipation to see what the Danish String Quartet will next commit to disc. It will surely be as elegantly curated as the Prism series.

 

Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Guitar, jazz

Dominic Miller – Vagabond on ECM Records (CD Review)

Dominic Miller

Vagabond

Dominic Miller, guitar; Jacob Karlzon, piano, keyboard; Nicolas Fiszman, bass; Ziv Ravitz, drums

ECM Records

 

Vagabond is guitarist Dominic Miller’s third recording for ECM Records. Apart from bassist Nicolas Fiszman, Miller has assembled a new group of collaborators: keyboardist Jacob Karlzon and drummer Ziv Ravitz join him in a quartet setting. Miller composed most of Vagabond’s eight originals while living in the South of France. He has suggested that nature and the small towns and buildings he passes on long walks supply him with inspiration. The guitarist’s Argentinian roots may be a bit further out of the limelight, but they too are an abiding part of his composing and playing technique. 

 

The track “Vagines,” named after a small French town, epitomizes this. Miller plays delicate melodies, sometimes doubled in octaves, that contain a hint of Francophone aesthetic. Here as elsewhere, he plays a classical guitar that is judiciously amplified. Fiszman and Ravitz deftly punctuate his phrasing. Karlzon joins with a scalar solo that embellishes the tune. On “All Change,” the band is more assertive, creating a buoyant backdrop to Miller’s single line solos.

 

Miller has likened himself to an “instrumental songwriter,”  and on “Cruel but Fair,” one can readily hear the ballad’s song-like construction. Chord-melody and single guitar lines are accompanied by economic comping from Karlzon. Add lyrics to this, and several others on Vagabond, and one could readily imagine them ready to sing. 

 

“Open Heart” is one of the highlights of Vagabond. It features a syncopated ostinato underneath a minor-key tune. The longest composition on the album, it introduces the material slowly, with Miller playing  in a solo context. The other musicians enter and develop the material in rebuttal. Karlzon’s fetching solo retains the tune’s diaphanous contours while extrapolating from its changes. The piece’s denouement features splash cymbals that announce Miller’s return and the reprise of the tune’s head, with a decrescendo to close. 

 

“Altea” begins with sumptuous chord voicings that quickly adopt the Latin rhythms of Miller’s Argentianian roots. His colleagues revel in this context,  both Fitzman and Ravitz providing syncopations in ebullient fashion. There is a tangy solo by Karlzon, and all of a sudden the tune ends with rolled chords by Miller. “Lone Waltz” closes the album with Miller playing a jazz tune in triple time to an arpeggiated accompaniment. Karlzon is at his most virtuosic here, and the rhythm section allows room for the Miller-dominated arpeggiated sections while playing with zest during the piano solos. Once again, the group performs a gradual denouement, with brief melodies from Miller, performed over the piano’s arpeggios, sending the record to a quiet conclusion.

 

Vagabond is Miller’s most versatile project yet, and has several memorable compositions. Miller gels well with this band. Although he tends to change collaborators between projects, one could readily see these musicians sticking around for a while.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, jazz

Rochford and Downes on ECM (CD Review)

Sebastian Rochford, Kit Downes

A Short Diary

ECM Records 

 

“This short diary (of loss), offered as a sonic memory,

  created with love, out of need for comfort.”

-Sebastian Rochford

 

When Sebastian Rochford’s father, the Aberdeen poet Gerard Rochford (1932-2019) passed away, the drummer decided to create a recording in his memory. He composed most of the music after his father’s death, and enlisted pianist Kit Downes as a collaborator. Downes is actually a musical switch-hitter; he is also an accomplished organist. “This Tune Your Ears Will Never Hear” opens the album mid-tempo with thick chords and snare in rhythmic unison, only to give way to a slower rendering of the tune, juxtaposed with enigmatic harmonies. “Communal Decisions” has a wayward, modal melody that becomes an overlapping duo, finally filled out with Debussyian harmonies. “Night of Quiet”  consists of slow-paced chords in intricate changes, parallel planing, and filigree phrase endings. “Ten of Us” has an ambling melody and chromatic chord progressions that recall Rimsky-Korsakov. Considerable development follows, with a floating texture that arpeggiates some of the preceding material and shares new melodic variations. The last section includes a chordal ostinato reinforced by Rochford that slows into an emphatic minor key cadence.

 

“Love You Grampa” is one of the most fetching of the collaborations here, with Rochford creating a lullaby rhythm behind the drum kit and Downes playing the composition’s winsome melody with delicacy and poignant phrasing. In a shuffling rhythm and with a pentatonic melody, “Silver Light” recalls folk music. “Rochford’s playing is often economical, even restrained. Yet the textures and punctuations he provides always enhance the proceedings. 

 

The last piece on the recording, “Even Now I Think of Her,” is in a sense co-composed by Sebastian and his father, who sang the melody to his son, suggesting it for a piece. The drummer in turn shared the melody with Downes via cell phone. It is quite an intricate tune, rendered as a folk-like ballad with warmly voiced harmonies and gentle drum fills. Bringing the project full circle to Gerard Rochford is a fitting and touching conclusion to a compelling and inspired project.

 

-Christian Carey 


by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

The Song is You – Enrico Rava and Fred Hersch on ECM (CD Review)

The Song is You

Enrico Rava and Fred Hersch

CD/LP

ECM Records

 

ECM Records has begun resuming production of their releases as vinyl LPs. This is the first I am reviewing. As one expects from ECM, its sound quality is superlative. Those who remember ECM’s vinyl releases in the pre-CD era will welcome this return. In addition to production values, another aspect of ECM’s curation ethos is bringing together artists from their roster to make music together. Both trumpeter Enrico Rava and pianist Fred Hersch have created memorable releases for ECM. Pairing them is an inspired choice. The Song is You features songs by each artist, improvisation, and several standards. 

 

“Retrato em Branco e Preto,” by Antonio Carlos Jobim, is given a rhythmically pliant rendering, with Rava’s solo swinging in sultry fashion and Hersch providing a subtle outline of the Bossa Nova, comping with generously attired harmonies and playing  a solo cut from the same cloth as the trumpeter’s. When Rava rejoins, the dance picks up slightly and he crafts a solo built out of mid-register melodies. 

 

An improvisation follows, with Rava playing dissonant lines with trills while Hersch creates treble register material, single lines, glissandos, and tremolos. Rava deftly deconstructs the pianist’s material. The final section is spacious, with piano jabs and sixteenths in the trumpet slowly moving to a final, held harmony. George Bassman and Ned Washington’s “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” continues the musical contest. Once again, one is struck by how quickly both players can assimilate each other’s material and craft an overarching idea. “The Song is You,” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, begins with overlapping cascades of melody. Howling upper register playing from Rava is responded to by Hersch with alternate scales in the upper register; whole tone, the diminished scale, and dissonant tremolos. After this exploration, the two take up the tune in traditional ballad form. The coda returns to the former, outside, demeanor. 

 

Two originals follow. Hersch’s “Child’s Song” is a Latin ballad with a gentle melody. Rava plays it with fetching lyricism, then takes a slow solo. The piano notes outline the tune just behind the trumpet, and then take up a limpid minimal ostinato. Midway through, Rava and Hersch perform a chromatic descent, followed by a disjunct trumpet cadenza. Gradually there is a return to the ballad texture, a countermelody appearing in Hersch’s left hand, followed by thick chords and a single line melody. Hersch’s own cadenza slows the tune down and accompanies it with mixed interval chords. Rava rejoins for a final chorus that gently brings the piece to a close. Rava’s “The Trial” is begun by Hersch with punchy two-voice counterpoint. Rava enters, taking up the main melody, which juxtaposes nicely with Hersch’s invention. All too soon, the duo complete the piece with a mischievous cadence. 

 

Hersch takes a long solo on Thelonious Monk’s “Misterioso,” using its undulating lines to craft a sinuous solo. Rava joins, bringing out the blues quality of the tune. Hersch responds in kind, comping to give the trumpeter room. Eventually the two split up the tune, creating a pendulum of melody. The closer is another Monk tune, “Round Midnight.” Hersch approaches the tune playfully, warping the tempo, playing trills, and crafting imaginative chord structures. At the end, Rava once again brings the tune back down to earth to finish.

 

Rava and Hersch are a simpatico pairing. One could envision them continuing in a duet context or adding some more of ECM’s roster to the activities. Hooray for vinyl.

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, early music, File Under?

András Schiff – Clavichord on ECM (CD Review)

J.S. Bach

András Schiff

Clavichord

 

He was the best organist in Europe and a mean harpsichordist too, but Johann Sebastian Bach loved playing the clavichord. The intimacy of its soft dynamic range, supple tone, and the ability to have an aftertouch with a slight vibrato made the instrument a distinctive one, ideal for small rooms: for practice or to be played for a few listeners. András Schiff has distinguished himself as one of the premiere Bach pianists of our time, making a convincing case for the music to be realized on a concert grand. He has recorded extensively for ECM’s New Series, the Goldberg Variations (2001)  the Six Partitas (2007), and both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier (2012). On Clavichord, he turns to the smaller instrument, playing a double CD recording of works eminently suited for it. In the program notes, Schiff says that he always begins his day with Bach. While he used to do so on the piano, it is now the clavichord that occupies his early hours. The period instrument used for the recording was built by Joris Potvlieghe in 2003 and is a replica of the unfretted Specken clavichord of 1743.

 

The clavichord thrives in contrapuntal textures of two or three voices. Thus Schiff has assembled a number of pieces without the thickened textures of the largest fugues. The standouts of the recording are the 2-part Inventions and 3-part Symphonias. Schiff adopts tempos that often are more deliberate than his renditions on the piano, reflecting the action of the clavichord. One can still play quickly, however, as he demonstrates with a fleet-fingered rendition of the F-major Invention. The architectural shaping of pieces like the E-flat major Sinfonia elucidates its form with consummate elegance. The Sinfonias in D and E both adopt dance rhythms, which are performed with verve.

 

Four Duets (BWV 802-805) demonstrate that even in a two-voice texture, Bach could create considerable contrapuntal interest and spicy chromatic inflections. Schiff plays these with a period-informed sense of fluidity of tempo. The Capriccio BWV 992 has a characteristic flair, with subtitles that detail a person being entreated by his friends not to undertake a journey. This is something we would more likely see from Beethoven or Schumann. The variations, on the tune Lontanza del fratello dilettissimo, include multiple arias and finish with a jaunty “Fuga al posta ” – a postcard from abroad!

 

Clavichord includes two particularly imposing pieces. The Ricercar á 3 is from the Musical Offering, the composer’s late career gift to Frederick the Great. The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (BWV 903) is a virtuosic masterpiece. Schiff digs in, relishing every moment and showing us the full capacity of the clavichord as an instrument that should be better known. 

 

  • Christian Carey 
by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz, Piano

Benjamin Lackner – The Last Decade (CD Review)

Benjamin Lackner

Last Decade

Benjamin Lackner, piano; Mathias Eick, trumpet; Jérôme Regard, bass; Manu Katche, drums

ECM Records

 

Pianist Benjamin Lackner makes his ECM debut with Last Decade. Joined by a stalwart group of collaborators, many of them ECM alumni who have appeared on many of the label’s releases, Lackner is in an ideal situation to present his compositions, as well as one by bassist Jérôme Regard. A few of the constraints the pianist placed on himself, no electronics, a staple of his previous recordings, and the addition of trumpeter Mathias Eick to his usual piano trio format, have afforded him the chance to stretch. Lackner has described rethinking harmonic voicings and allowing space for a melodic voice as aspects that were spurred on by Eick’s presence.

 

Lackner’s originals move away from his prior post-jazz leanings back toward the modern jazz tradition. The recording’s opener, the smoky “Where Do We Go from Here,” begins with a slow tempo trumpet solo with a memorable melody that is then deconstructed by Lackner, with the two exchanging mid-tempo lines.Katche and Eick are well known to each other, having played on many ECM albums together, some as leaders and others as collaborators. Regard has been the bassist in Lackner’s groups since 2006. The two duos combine as an acoustic quartet that is distinctive and well-attuned. Lackner’s flourish-filled solo on “Circular Confidence,” followed by the slow build solo that follows from Eick, who emulates the climax of the piano material, is an engrossing piece. “Hung up on that Ghost” includes prominent bass pedals and a slow intro from Lackner, followed by a mid-tempo main section in which Katche provides variety from the kit. Gerard and Lackner continue their colloquy with burnished melodic play from the bassist. Eick’s belated arrival is no less welcome, his solo here angular, adding motives for the others to explore only scarcely outlined in the changes. The group ends up playing their material in counterpoint, creating a quilt of amalgamated textures.

 

The title track begins with a chordal presentation of the melody, with Gerard and Katche creating an undulating rhythmic canvas. Lackner’s solo gradually moves through 3:2 passage work to fleetly rendered arpeggiations. As it builds, the pianist burrows into the middle of the piano, ferreting out chromatic seconds. Eick’s solo instead begins with a light touch, gradually moving into the upper register but maintaining a piano dynamic. The piece ends with his solo, Katche providing a snatch of sizzle as punctuation.

 

Gerard’s composition “Émile” finds the bassist playing a funky solo reminiscent of his work with Lackner on previous outings. It is succeeded by the album closer, “My People.” Initially tried out in rehearsal in the polyrhythmic meter 11/4, the recording’s introduction instead shows a free rhythmic context in which Katche guides them without a strict time. Eick’s solo responds to this wayward context with free jazz lines that eventually are coaxed by the drums into a swinging post-bop essay. Lackner interposes lines with Eick, the two here playing some of the most creative music on the album. The tempo and demeanor shifts to a mournful minor-key ballad, sending the conclusion satisfyingly sideways.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Favorites of 2022: Heiner Goebbels and Ensemble Modern – A House of Call

A House of Call. My Imaginary Notebook.

Heiner Goebbels

Ensemble Modern, Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor

ECM Records

Heiner Goebbels’ A House of Call is an evening length collaboration with Ensemble Modern, an group with which he has collaborated on a number of projects over a thirty-five year period; this is their fourth CD for ECM. Subtitled “My Imaginary Notebook,” a reference to John Cage’s roaratorio via Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, the piece brings together several stylistically distinct sections, notably troping pieces associated with the ensemble. Sound recordings that Goebbels has collected over the years, many of folk music-making, are a significant part of the House of Call’s source material. They range from Kazakh, Iranian, Georgian, and Armenian folk songs to poetry and texts by Heiner Müller, Samuel Beckett, and Jalaluddin Rumi. 

 

These recordings are accompanied by vivid orchestrations, amplifying their intensity without diminishing their distinct flavor. Perhaps in part because of the collaborative nature he adopts with the ensemble, Goebbels is the master of this type of amalgam.  The piece is cast in four large sections: Steiner, Scherer, Papier; Grain de la Voix; Wax and Violence; When Words Gone. Each contains three to four movements that survey a kaleidoscopic array of material. The first movement “Introit: A Response to Répons” combines tropes on Pierre Boulez’s totemic piece with recordings of Cassiber, Goebbels’s rock band from the 1980s. Répons is central to the repertoire and aesthetic of Ensemble Modern, and they incorporate the additions and variations fluidly. In Immer den Gleichen Stein, Müller’s deadpan recitations are juxtaposed with boisterous instrumental attacks. The section’s third movement, “Under Construction,” subtitled “Berlin 2017,” is the 21st century version of Copland’s cityscapes, with the ensemble creating a riot of urban noises; clearly in the midst of a traffic jam. In the coda, we get a small taste of respite.

 

Grain de la Voix (a reference to Roland Barthes) has four sections featuring vocal recordings. It begins with a 1916 recording in Mannheim of Giorgi Nareklishvilli, a prisoner of war, singing a keening melody often accompanied by dulcimer and accordion but periodically interrupted by abrupt and explosive outbursts. Next is a 1925 recording of Amrey Kashaubayez, a Kazahk singer. After an extended introduction, the singer enters with haunting, high-lying melismas, to which for a moment the ensemble cedes terrain. An imitative instrumental interlude builds to a fortissimo climax, upon which the voice returns, forward in the mix and ardently intoning. Led by brass swells, the coda descends into a maelstrom, capped off by a final vocal phrase that sounds choked with laughter. “1346” is a performance of Rumi by Iranian musician Hamidreza Nourbakhsh. His incantatory chanting, rife with runs, is shadowed and imitated in an imaginative piece of scoring. The final movement, Krunk, is less tempestuous, featuring harp and dulcimer gently accompanying a recording from 1914 of the great Armenian musician Komitas alongside one from 1917 of Zabelle Panosian. This synthetic duet is most fetching.

 

Part three, Wax and Violence, brings together a mashup of vocalists, including German recordings from the turn of the twentieth century in “”Toccata – Vowels/Woven,” and Namibian vocalists in “Achtung Aufnahme”  and “Nun Danket Allen Gott.” To to transform the composition, Goebbels begins to treat the source materials with greater liberty, recalling the techniques of musique concréte. The final movement of the section, Tí gu go Inîga Mî, explores a grainy recording from Farm Lichtenstein bei Windhoek in 1931 of the singer Haneb alongside percussion and a tangy chord progression. The Ensemble retorts with a howling mix of free jazz and cabaret. 

 

Named after a Samuel Beckett poem later recited, the final section, When Words Gone begins with Bakaki – Diálogo, recorded in 1931 in Quebrada Isue by Victor and Luciano Martinez. It contains murmured hocketing between two voices accompanied by an ambling ostinato. “Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen” features texts by Joseph von Eichendorff recited by Margaret Goebbels, accompanied by particularly spooky music. “Kalimerisma,” recorded in 1930 in Kalymnos, Eskaterina Mangouli performs a passionate and oftentimes chromatic song that is given restrained accompaniment, light percussion and pizzicato cello. The piece’s conclusion, “What When Words Gone,” gives the entire ensemble, apart from the brass, the vocal role, with slowly repeating pitches in each phrase in an intricate pattern. Much of it recalls Feldman, a frequent Beckett collaborator. It finally settles into a two–chord repetition that ends hanging on an extended harmony. 

 

Goebbels outdoes himself here, with perhaps the most far flung references and imaginative scoring he has found to date. Collaborating with Ensemble Modern for over thirty-five years has yielded fresh sounds and scoring approaches, not an easily comfortable working relationship. A House of Call is one of our Favorites of 2022.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey