Merry Christmas!
pw: sgtg
A music blog of albums I like.
Friday, 23 December 2022
BBC Singers - A Christmas Carol (Milton Court, London, 14th Dec 2022)
Monday, 19 December 2022
Tomasz Stańko Quartet - Lontano (2006)
At the album's core are its title tracks, numbered I, II and III, a total of 40 minutes of free improvisation credited to the full group. Whether they were all recorded as a single session or as three separate takes I'm not sure, but the Lontano tracks provide the deepest expression of this quartet's spacious sensibility, the shorter pieces that surround them highlighting the spare beauty of Stańko's writing and more sublime playing. Stańko reaches back to his first ECM appearance for a fresh take on Tale, and even further to his first appearance on LP, the muscular version of Komeda's Kattorna giving an upbeat contrast to sublime ballads like Song For Ania and Sweet Thing. A masterpiece of an album that keeps on giving with every listen.
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Friday, 16 December 2022
Echoes Of Nature - Wilderness River (1993)
The self-descriptive titles - Big River, Streamside Songbirds, Small Rapids and Crickets & Water - are pretty much all you need to know, other than it's all well recorded (that DDD coding is making me picture someone with a DAT machine in their backpack and a couple of microphones dangling over a bridge), and it does the job if you want to relax with nature for a bit.
pw: sgtg
Monday, 12 December 2022
Arvo Pärt - Miserere (1991)
The 34-minute title piece comes first, with its stark choral liturgy interspersed with orchestral swells and the organ playing of Christopher Bowers-Broadbent. Miserere remains one of Pärt's most immersive works in its controlled power, and it sounds sublime in this first recording. A short respite is programmed next in Festina Lente, very much cut from the same cloth as the Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten. We return to Old Testament liturgy for the final track, Sarah Was Ninety Years Old, but wordlessly. An intermittent drumbeat forms the backbone of the piece as the Hilliards in turn add plaintive melodies, the culiminative effect (once Broadbent's organ enters for the finale) being another masterpiece of steady pacing to thoroughly entrance the patient listener. This might not be Pärt's easiest album to get in to, but it pays some of the greatest rewards.
pw: sgtg
Friday, 9 December 2022
Jan Garbarek / The Hilliard Ensemble - Officium (1994)
Officium certainly sounds breathtaking. You'd expect nothing less from an ECM New Series recording of the Hilliard Ensemble, taking advantage of the resonances of the St. Gerold priory in Grosses Walsertal, Austria. Flitting in and out is the ahistorical, but somehow seeming like a natural added voice, sound of Garbarek's saxes, equally attuned to the natural reverb. An hour-plus immersion in this sound-world is definitely a sublime experience.
In terms of material, the album flits through the Hilliards' repertoire from the 12th to 16th century, giving a nice balance of starker, plainer material (including the odd solo spotlight) with more complex and interweaved voicings. Garbarek doesn't overpower the singers, but finds subtle harmonies and drones with which to enhance the music. The end result might be an early vocal music purist's nightmare, but for anyone willing to take the chance on this hybrid, as soon as you acclimatise to it it's a delight. The only thing I sometimes wonder is if 77 minutes is a bit too much of the same thing for a single sitting, but on those occasions the first reprise of Parce Mihi Domine is a handy staging post to focus on one half of a double-album. Overall, beautiful stuff that still stands up. Must get hold of the other albums someday.
pw: sgtg
Jan Garbarek at SGTG:
The Hilliard Ensemble at SGTG:
Monday, 5 December 2022
Annie Gosfield - Flying Sparks And Heavy Machinery (2001)
Engines whir into life in the opening section, gradually joined by metallic clangs developing into interlocking rhythmic patterns. The passages of eerie subtlety in this first movement, with electronics by Ikue Mori, are particularly effective in contrast to the industrial-racket expectations that the next two parts deliver on. By this point, with drving rhythms underpinning the other noises, comparisons with Einstürzende Neubauten are inescapable, but honestly, who cares - if you like this sort of thing, Gosfield puts it together really, really well, and it's such riotous fun to crank up loud.
The shorter work that closes the album and provides its title takes similar inspiration from industrial sounds, but writes them in to a (slightly) more conventional context for string quartet and percussion quartet. It's a nice conclusion to a very satisfying album which makes me want to listen to more of Gosfield's music (believe it or not, this one was a charity shop find, earlier this year).
pw: sgtg
Friday, 2 December 2022
Alexei Lubimov - Der Bote: Elegies For Piano (2002)
Kicking off with a 20-minute stretch that pairs CPE Bach and John Cage, it's clear that this is no ordinary classical solo piano recital. But you know what, the Fantasie Für Klavier and a nice pacey In A Landscape complement each other just fine, and things just get more interesting from there. With an overall theme of 'elegies', and an album title of 'the messenger' (taken from the haunting final piece), as a concept piece it plays out well, and just sounds heavenly. Balancing stock repertoire choices like Liszt, Chopin and Debussy with the kind of more recent composers that have long been Lubimov's interest (Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov), he turns in a great set that feels satisfying from beginning to end on every listen.
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Monday, 28 November 2022
George Russell's New York Band - Live In An American Time Spiral (rec. 1982, rel. 1983)
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The rest of the "Complete Black Saint & Soul Note" box set:
Friday, 25 November 2022
Giya Kancheli - Symphonies No. 1 & 7, Mourned By The Wind (1992)
Some more recordings of the Georgian master of steely storminess and melancholy calm, all taped in Moscow in September 1992. The 'world premiere recording' banner up there I assume only refers to Kancheli's 7th Symphony (composed in 1986), as the other works on the disc both had prior releases - see links below for an earlier Mourned By The Wind.
This album, then, functions as a kind of bookending of Kancheli's symphonic era, that began in 1967 with his 1st and ended 19 years later with the aforementioned 7th. Symphony No. 1's two movements show early signs of the Kancheli trademarks - fluctuating dynamics, especially in the choppy first movement, then a more languid solemnity in the second (love that twinkling percussion though). The dramatic fireworks and passages of elegaic respite of Symphony No. 7 are contained in a single, flowing movement lasting 21 minutes. Some later recordings are noted as proper blow-your-speakers-out monstrosities, but this premiere doesn't sound too extreme.
In between the symphonic bookends sits a lovely rendering of Mourned By The Wind, Liturgy for Viola and Orchestra. It's not drastically different in approach to the 1988 Georgian recording, more a matter of taste - occasional little subtleties are more apparent in one version than in another. Nice to have a contrast.
pw: sgtg
Giya Kancheli at SGTG:
Monday, 21 November 2022
BBC Concert Orchestra / Marcin Wasilewski Trio - Tribute To Tomasz Stańko (live at EFG London Jazz Festival, 16th Nov 2022)
The first half begins with Yankiel's Lid and Street Of Crocodiles from Polin (links to other albums below), spotlighting young saxophonist Emma Rawicz. To fill the essential trumpet role, we then get Avishai Cohen for the rest of the evening, starting with a beautiful rendition of the Wisława title track. More guests are introduced by way of a duet interlude - guitarist Rob Luft, a recent addition to the ECM stable, backs singer Alice Zawadzki on a folk song arrangement of hers. Luft is then the featured player as we return to Stańko's music for Terminal 7, to lead in to the interval - and I've left this 20-minute section of the broadcast intact for a change, as the announcer features clips of an interview with Stańko recorded in 2008.
Tomasz Stańko's early association with Krzysztof Komeda, mentioned in the interval, is also reflected in the concert resuming with the Lullabye from Rosemary's Baby, sung by Zawadzki backed by the orchestra. Stańko's own music for film and theatre is also touched on, with A Farewell To Maria and Roberto Zucco - good to hear from a corner of the Stańko ouevre that remains lesser-known (not least because those obscure soundtracks could do with being reissued). Other than Celine, an arrangement of material from Suspended Night, the rest of the set returns to the Wisława album - Faces, April Story and then a brief rip through Assassins to close a superb concert. Avishai Cohen sounds fantastic throughout, given the not inconsiderable task of stepping into Stańko's shoes; the Marcin Wasilewski Trio a perfect link to the composer in life (and Wasilewski is always such an incredible pianist), and well-chosen guests and sympathetic arrangements all make this a fitting tribute. If you love Stańko's music even half as much as I do, don't miss this one.
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