KIM KASHKASHIAN - Olivero / Mansurian / Steinberg
ECM New Series 2065     02894763281(8)

Betty Olivero: Neharót Neharót; Tigran Mansurian: Tagh of the funeral of the Lord / Oror / Three Arias: Sung Out the Window Facing Mount Ararat; Eitan Steinberg: Rava Deravin

Kim Kashkashian viola; Münchener Kammerorchester condusted by Alexander Liebreich; Boston Modern Orchestra Project conducted by Gil Rose; Kuss Quartet

Kim Kashkashian’s new album following her Spanish and Argentinian songs on „Asturiana“ is a carefully composed prgramme addressing fascinating connections between three contemporary composers from Israel and Armenia. With five pieces respectively based on traditional laments of the Near East, Armenian chant and Hasidic melody, the focus is again on essentially vocal expressivenss.

J.S. BACH: THE SIX PARTITAS, BWV 825-830
ECM New Series 2001/02     02894766991(3)     *2CD

András Schiff: piano

Following last year’s completion of his highly-praised Beethoven cycle András Schiff returns to Bach with a superb interpretation of the six “Partitas”, recorded live in September 2007 at Neumarkt Reitstadl one of the best piano music venues in Eurpoe. The cycle, which in 1731 was the first group of works to be published by Bach himself, represents a unique stylistic synthesis of the suite form with a particular emphasis on most varied and imaginative opening movements. In his 1802 biography of Bach, Nikolaus Forkel famously wrote that “such splendid compositions for the clavier had not been seen or heard before… so brilliant, harmonious, expressive and constantly novel are they.” Compared to his London studio recording of 1983 this second rendering on disc demonstrates Schiff’s stylistic development towards more freedom, sonic depth and sheer pleasure of phrasing. The rather unorthodox sequence of partitas – 5 – 3 – 1 – 2 – 4 – 6 – draws an ascending line of keys leading from G major to e minor.

NICOLO PAGANINI: 24 CAPRICCI PER VIOLINO SOLO, Opus 1
ECM New Series 2124      002894763318(1)

Thomas Zehetmair: violin

Thomas Zehetmair’s manually overwhelming and thought-provoking ECM recording of the complete sonatas for unaccompanied violin by Eugène Ysaÿe – released in 2004 to great critical acclaim – offered ample proof that alleged virtuoso pyrotechnics can be surprinsingly multi-faceted and complex when approached by a musician with a rare awareness of stylistic layers and expressive traditions. His (long deleted) Teldec version of the Capricci dating from the early nineties quickly won the status of a new benchmark recording. In 2007 he went to the Austrian monastery of St. Gerold to record a second – even more ambitious – interpretation. In an interview with English journalist Ivan Hewett Zehetmair recently explained his ever-growing interest in this particular repertoire: "Every violinist grows up with these pieces, because they are such fantastic technical studies. Paganini sometimes had these showman's tricks, like playing on only one or two strings. But you know, all the great musicians who heard him, like Schumann, took him totally seriously. These Caprices aren't just studies, or showpieces. They're improvised character pieces, so full of poetry and fantasy."

GARY BURTON, CHICK COREA / CRYSTAL SILENCE
The ECM Recordings, 1972-79
ECM 2036-39     60251768057(9)     *4CD

Gary Burton: vibraphone; Chick Corea: piano

This 4-CD box set reprises the history-making recordings “Crystal Silence” (1972), “Duet” (1978) and the live double album “In Concert, Zürich, October 28, 1979”. The duo was a seldom-tested format in jazz when pianist Chick Corea and vibraphonist Gary Burton, at the instigation of Manfred Eicher, came together for “Crystal Silence”, but its luminous music proved a resounding success. Both “Duet” and the Zürich recording won Grammy awards, and Chick and Gary toured to worldwide acclaim, astonishing audiences with their improvisational fluency. They have continued to make music together, for almost 40 years now: “Crystal Silence, The ECM Recordings” shows how the story began. Two live selections, “I’m Your Pal/Hullo Bolinas” and “Love Castle”, appear on CD for the first time in this collection. Booklet includes liner notes by Peter Rüedi and Steve Lake, and photos by Ib Skovgaard Peterse and Ralph Quinke.

MANFRED SCHOOF QUINTET / RESONANCE
ECM 2093/94     60251780453(1)     *2CD

Manfred Schoof: trumpet, flugelhorn; Michel Pilz: bass clarinet; Jasper Van’t Hof: piano, electric piano, organ; Rainer Brüninghaus: piano, synthesizer; Günter Lenz: double-bass; Ralf Hübner: drums (collective personnel)

The first CD issue of music from Manfred Schoof’s three ECM/Japo albums of the 1970s – “Scales”, “Light Lines”, and “Horizons”. “Resonance” is the German trumpeter’s personal compilation of his favourite music from this era, released as two CD set. Schoof’s quintet was a highly regarded band on the European scene of the 1970s, and the “Scales” LP won the German Critics Prize as Album of the Year (Grosser Deutscher Schallplattenpreis 1977). At the time, both Schoof and frontline partner Michel Pilz were also members of Alex Schlippenbach’s freewheeling Globe Unity Orchestra (indeed Schoof still plays with the GUO periodically) and also recorded for ECM/Japo with that formation (see the albums “Improvisations” and “Compositions”).

KÜHN, BEKKAS, LOPEZ – OUT OF THE DESERT
ACT 9475     614427947529

Joachim Kühn - piano, alto saxophone
Majid Bekkas - vocals, guembri, kalimba, molo
Ramon Lopez - drums, tabla
& guest musicians from Morocco, Benin and the Sahara Desert

The great avant-garde pianist Joachim Kühn celebrated his 64th birthday on 15th March, 2008, and spent it in the desert doing what he does best - making music. He played in the middle of the Sahara with Moroccan Berbers, the desert musicians of the “Source Bleue des Meski”, a small oasis near the Algerian border. First they jammed directly at the spring, and then they went and recorded at the near-by Palms Hotel on the outskirts of the town of Erfoud. “It was also completely ringed by desert”, says Kühn. “I’m a fan of the desert, and I have travelled a lot, but the trip here went through some of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. On arrival we immediately started playing; we didn’t do a lot of talking first, although, because of the tourism, the Berbers have a good command of every possible language. These musicians are some of the friendliest, most gracious people I have ever met. They are totally relaxed and open. Everything functioned “Inshallah” with a mixture of planning and improvisation. Ever since I was there, I don’t have any more stress. This was my most beautiful birthday present, a great experience, and an amazing musical inspiration.”

Four-time Grammy award winner Vince Mendoza has distinguished himself during the last 20 years as one of the most important arrangers, conductors and musicians of contemporary jazz. The American is constantly looking for exciting unique projects breaking the mould of conventional music. His latest production for chamber orchestra in fall 2008 Blauklang (ACT 9465-2) has been welcomed enthusiastically as a “musical celebration in blue” (Stereo) and was prized with a GRAMMY nomination. Now Mendoza is again in the public eye together with the Dutch Metropole Orchestra as their Chief Conductor, and casts light on the musical facets of the famous Spanish writer Federico García Lorca (1898-1936).

Uri Caine opens a new window in his versatile playhouse of music. Together with Zach Danziger and Tim Lefebvre he plays with the development of electronic and groove music. Caine, Danziger and Lefebvre are Bedrock and »Plastic Temptation« is their third album.
The older sounds of the Hammond B3 and Minimoog are combined with the sounds of Drum 'n' Bass and electronica. Their sound encompasses wild improvisations, remixes of their own sounds, beats, and elements of Dance and House music. »Plastic Temptation« also features the stirring voice of gospel singer Barbara Walker and the propulsive rhythms of percussionist Elizabeth Pupo-Walker.

HANS ABRAHAMSEN – SCHNEE
WW 910 159     025091015924

Ensemble Recherche:
Melise Mellinger: violin, Barbara Maurer: viola, Åsa Åkerberg: cello, Klaus Steffes-Holländer: piano 1,
Christian Dierstein: percussion, tam-tam, Jean-Pierre Collot: piano 2, Martin Fahlenbock: piccolo, flute, alto flute, Shizuyo Oka: clarinet in Eb, clarinet in Bb and A, bass clarinet, Jaime González: oboe, English horn

At the beginning of the nineties, I arranged some canons by Johann Sebastian Bach for ensemble – a total of seven pieces, ranging across his whole creative life. I was completely immersed in this music, and arranged it with the idea that it should be repeated many, many times – as a sort of minimal music. What lengths Bach had in mind I didn’t know, but for me, looking at the canons in this way opened up a new, animated world of time in circulation.
Depending on how one looks at these canons, the music stands still, or moves forwards or backwards. As for my own work, a further idea crystallised: to write a piece that consists of canonic motion, and explores the universe of time. When ensemble recherche asked me to write a piece for the Wittener Tage, I knew that now was the right time.
One idea for Canon 1a was to present a process where two phrases in canon are gradually interchanged by means of an increasingly close stretto. So the initial phrase becomes the closing phrase, and vice versa – rather like the world of Escher’s pictures, where a white foreground on a black background on one side of the picture becomes a black foreground on a white background on the other.
Another idea was to divide the nine musicians into two symmetrical but rather different groups, on either side of the percussionist in the middle. So Group 1, with violin, viola, cello and piano, is placed to the left, and Group 2, with flute, clarinet, oboe and a second piano, to the right.
When I saw these novel, quasi three-dimensional pictures at the start of the nineties, I was very interested, and especially by the old stereoscopic technique from the late 19th century, where two almost identical pictures, photographed with just a small spatial displacement between them (like two stereo microphones), are placed next to one another. If one looks at them in an unfocussed way, one sees a magical three-dimensional picture in the middle, as the sum of the other two.
So now I played with the idea of whether this was also possible in music, given that it already happens naturally through our listening with two ears. But might it also arise when one hears a repeated figure (as in Bach’s C major prelude from the Well-Tempered Piano, part I), or perhaps within a large-scale formal repetition (such as Bach’s Contrapunctus 13a and 13b from the Art of Fugue, where the second is an inversion of the first)? If one laid two ‘times’ over one another, would a deeper, three-dimensional time be created?
At any rate, that’s what I attempt here, partly on a small scale, as in the repetitions of Canon 1a, and partly on a large one, since Canon 1b is a ‘double’ of 1a (which is for Group 1), but this time for all nine instruments. It is basically the same music, but with many more canonic levels superimposed. So the two form a pair, and should be heard as such. They are like two big musical pictures which, heard with distant, unfocussed ears, may produce a third, three-dimensional picture.
Straight after the premiere of Canon 1a and 1b in Witten in 2006, it was clear to me that Schnee had to be expanded to a bigger series of pairs. There needed to be five pairs. It had to be five pairs, because it was my intention to make the pairs shorter and shorter. The first pair lasts 2 times 9 minutes, so I conceived the following pairs in terms of 2 times 7 minutes, 2 times 5 minutes, 2 times 3 minutes, and 2 times one minute. Finally, time runs out, just as that of our lives runs ever faster to its end. This was my initial vision, and the temporal ideal; the execution turned out a bit differently, and Canons 3a and 3b in particular got longer.
The pairs 2, 3, 4 and 5 that follow the first one are based on the same haiku-like ideas as Pair 1. Again, in the course of each individual canon a gradual process is revealed: one that sheds light on various aspects, each pushed into either the foreground or the background. At the same time, each canon has its ‘double’, where it is heard in a different version.
This pair-wise rhythm is gently interrupted by three intermezzi, in which the strings and winds are tuned down microtonally, so that bit by bit, an ever greater tonal interference arises between groups and pairs of instruments. For example, in Canonic Pair 4 – a salute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (I borrowed his marvellous 'Schellen' (sleigh bells) from his German Dance Die Schlittenfahrt, K. 605, N° 3) – flute, clarinet and of course the two pianos are normally tuned, whereas the cello and cor anglais are tuned 1/6th-tone lower, and the violin and viola 2/6th-tones lower.
Perhaps these are rather cold, formal considerations, but for me they are bound up with the poetic world of the piece: a representation of snow and white polyphony.
Yesterday, by chance, I was in a bookshop, and I picked up a Book of Gerhard Richter‘s pictures in grey; immediately, I felt a great affinity with my polyphonic Schnee-Canons in white