Aug 30: Danish String Quartet's New Album Keel Road Out on ECM New Series

ECM New Series Releases

Danish String Quartet
Keel Road

Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, violin; Frederik Øland, violin; Asbjørn Nørgaard, viola; Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, violoncello

“Folk tunes are not just a part of our repertoire, but an important element of our identity as musicians” – The Danish String Quartet

Release Date: August 30, 2024
ECM New Series 2785

Press downloads available upon request.

Keel Road is the latest chapter in the Danish String Quartet’s reckoning with music from – or inspired by – northern folk and traditional sources, rounding off a decade of sustained engagement with the genre. Wood Works, issued in 2014 on the Danish Dacapo label gave notice of the extent of the DSQ’s commitment to folk, explored in parallel with their classical activities, and Last Leaf, released in 2017 on ECM New Series took the story further. A resounding success with press and public, Last Leaf ranked high amongst albums of the year at NPR, The New York Times and Gramophone, the latter magazine suggesting this might be “the best album of folk ditties from a string quartet you’ll ever hear,” an assertion now challenged by Keel Road.

Once again, the group casts its associative net wide: “We set out on a musical journey that traverses the North Sea. For centuries, the main communication channel of Northern Europe, the highway and the internet of bygone eras. And even though known for its swift upsurges and strong gales, brave sailors would again and again travel the keel road, enabling a continuous exchange of goods, culture and music. The musical keel road of this album will take us from Denmark and Norway to shores far away: to the Faroe Islands, to Ireland and England.” The journey illuminates musical affinities as well as distinctions. “While folk music represents local traditions and local stories, it is also the music of everywhere and everyone. At the end of the day, our stories and our music remain closely connected.”

Amid the traditional pieces, Keel Road subtly interweaves compositions by Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen and Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin, which eloquently convey a “folk” spirit. A brief excerpt from a field recording of the Danish traditional “En Skomager Har Jeg Været” (A cobbler I was) precedes Sørensen’s reflective tune “Once A Shoemaker."

With characteristic attention to detail, the Danish String Quartet creatively colour the album’s arrangements with the addition of instruments including spinet, harmonium, bass and clog fiddle. Guest musicians Ale Carr (cittern) and Nikolaj Busk (piano), meanwhile, both members, with Rune, of the folk trio Dreamers’ Circus join the DSQ for a performance of Carr’s “Stormpolskan."

Keel Road’s musical stopover in Ireland proves particularly productive, as the quartet interprets pieces composed by Turlough O’Carolan (1670-1738), the legendary harpist from County Meath. Unusual among the itinerant harpists of his day, O’Carolan drew influence not only from local tradition but also from then-contemporary European composers including Vivaldi and Corelli, intuitively seeking his own blend of form and folk spontaneity.

For the Danish String Quartet traditional music has been part of the group’s story since their early days: “As we came together to form the quartet, folk melodies naturally blended into our rehearsals. We were experimenting with lots of different tunes, each of us adding a personal touch. This evolved into a serious endeavour over time.”

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Now widely recognized as one of the most adventurous string quartets, the Danish String Quartet celebrated their 20th anniversary in the 2022/3 season. 2023 also saw the completion of their five volume PRISM series on ECM, which explored musical and contextual relationships between Bach fugues, Beethoven string quartets and works by Shostakovich, Schnittke, Bartók, Mendelssohn, and Webern.

The group made their ECM debut in 2016 with music of Thomas Adès, Per Nørgård & Hans Abrahamsen, reflecting their special affinity for contemporary composition.

“What they do know is how to be an exceptional quartet, whatever repertory they play.” — Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

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Keel Road was recorded at Copenhagen’s Village Recording Studio in November 2022, and mixed at Munich’s Bavaria Musikstudios in March 2024.

The Danish String Quartet celebrates the release of Keel Road with concerts in the US and Europe. Further details and information at www.danishquartet.com and www.ecmrecords.com 

June 21: ECM New Series Releases Delian Quartett's New Album Im wachen Traume

ECM New Series Releases

Delian Quartett
Im wachen Traume

Schumann / Reimann, Byrd / Pierini, Purcell 

Delian Quartett
Adrian Pinzaru, violin; Andreas Moscho, violin; Lara Albesano, viola; Hendrik Blumenroth violoncello 

Claudia Barainsky, soprano
Mikhail Timoshenko, baritone

Matthias Lingenfelder, viola
Andreas Arndt, violoncello

ECM New Series 2743
CD: 0289 4875875 3
Release Date: June 21, 2024

Press downloads available upon request.

Named after a lyric from the first piece in Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben song cycle, the Delian Quartett’s programme of Im wachen Traume combines said cycle – in a new arrangement for soprano and string quartet by the late Aribert Reimann – with music by Renaissance composer William Byrd and Baroque composer Henry Purcell. Most of the works appears in world premiere recordings here. The earlier English repertory bookends the album, framing Frauenliebe und Leben in a thematic embrace and, as the quartet’s violinist Andreas Moscho puts it, “in dazzling harmonies, that colour the musical span from the bliss of the moment to the end of things”.

Much has been said about Frauenliebe und Leben, from 1840 based on the poetry cycle by Adelbert von Chamisso, and many interpretations and versions of it uttered. This remodelling, however, conceived specifically for the Delian Quartett and soprano Claudia Barainsky, opens up truly new perspectives that seem to have been lying dormant within the original score all along. By transferring the piano part to four voices, Reimann dresses the cycle in an entirely new guise – one that builds on the sustained quality of the strings and utilizes both the art of reduction, to a concentrated and minimalist end, and embellishment, in form of vibratos, pizzicati and harmonic flourishes, for the purpose of emotional emphasis of both music and lyrics.

“Music and poetry have ever been acknowledg’d Sisters, which walking hand in hand, support each other; As Poetry is the harmony of Words, so Musick is that of Notes; and as Poetry is a Rise above Prose and Oratory, so is Musick the exaltation of Poetry. Both of them may excel apart, but sure they are most excellent when they are join’d…” Henry Purcell wrote this in 1650 – in a way, predicting the significant role poetry would play in Romantic music almost two centuries later.

Claudia Barainsky, one of the foremost interpreters of Reimann’s music, is a striking presence throughout the programme and especially expressive in the Schumann cycle, delivering the story of an enamoured woman, from her first meeting with her love, through marriage, to his death and after, with conviction and a keen sense for the text’s emotional delivery. The piano’s uniquely independent voice-leading from the original score is expanded upon in this arrangement for string quartet, with inspired translation choices made regarding range, drone-passages and how repetitive piano motifs here are cleverly spread across the two violins, viola and cello. 

Andreas Moscho introduces the project in his performer’s note: “Two powers continue to overcome the changes of our fast-paced world. They have inspired human existence since forever: death, which limits us, and love, which carries us beyond our end. They also echo in the history of music. Under their influence, composers of all eras have bequeathed us with their most stirring moments. Some of them are brought together on his album. It traverses the space between light and shadow, between sorrow and joy, laying out new paths along the way: None of the works selected here were originally conceived for string quartet. In all of them, however, the string quartet seems to return home.”

All Byrd and Purcell pieces appear in arrangements by Italian composer Stefano Pierini, except for the Purcell instrumentals, “Pavane” and “Chaconne”, which are rendered in their original shape. More than mere reiterations, these Renaissance and Baroque reinterpretations inspire spirited performances by the quartet and soprano. Joining the ensemble on Byrd’s “Lullaby, my sweet little baby” and the programme-concluding Purcell piece “Hear my prayer, O Lord” is baritone Mikhail Timoshenko. Additional viola and violoncello parts on the last piece are contributed by Matthias Lingenfelder and Andreas Arndt.

As with Schumann, the synergy of poem and music comes to play here as well, in Byrd’s “Jhon come kiss me now”, which, in the version of Pierini, is based on the 1792 poem by Scottish lyricist Robert Burns. Word and song are entwined throughout Im wachen Traume, and the Delian Quartett’s impassioned performances together with Claudia Barainsky confirm Purcell when he suggests that they are indeed “most excellent when they are join’d”. 

*

Since its inception in 2007 the Delian Quartett has gained widespread international attention, performing on major stages and festivals in Europe and alongside various important figures in the classical world. The German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has praised the quartet’s “wonderful sonority and striking plasticity of structures”. Previous recordings, among them performances of Schumann and Haydn, have been met with acclaim and garnered award nominations. One of the Delian Quartett’s main emphases is the expansion of its repertory to include the works of contemporary composers, such as Alberto Colla, Per Arne Glorvigen, Gabriel Iranyi, Christian Jost, Uljas Pulkkis and the in this album included Stefano Pierini and Aribert Reimann. Most of them have written music specifically for the ensemble.

The late German pianist and composer Aribert Reimann (4 March 1936 – 13 March 2024), known especially for his literary operas, was specialized in the contemporary Lied (art song) – he was a professor of the contemporary Lied in Hamburg and Berlin. Among his most well-known works are the operas Ein Traumspiel, Lear (based on Shakespeare’s play) and Medea. As recounted in this album’s liner note, Reimann conceived his arrangement of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben after having dreamt about a version of the cycle performed by strings. This was in 2018 – he completed the score within two months of the dream.

Claudia Barainsky studied at the Hochschule der Künste in her home city of Berlin with Ingrid Figur, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Aribert Reimann and is internationally regarded as one of the most versatile singers of her time due to her wide-ranging repertory. She made her debut with the title role in Aribert Reimann's Melusine and was awarded the German Theater Prize "DER FAUST" for her outstanding interpretation and portrayal of the title role in Aribert Reimann's German premiere of Medea at the Frankfurt Opera. Barainsky has worked with some of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors – chamber music being her speciality. 

June 14: ECM New Series Releases Pianist Anna Gourari's Recording of Hindemith and Schnittke

ECM New Series Releases

Paul Hindemith | Alfred Schnittke

Anna Gourari, Piano
Orchestra Della Svizerra Italiana
Markus Poschner, Conductor

ECM New Series 2752
CD: 0289 4875453 3
Release Date: June 14, 2024

Press downloads available upon request.

After three acclaimed solo piano programmes for the label, here Anna Gourari widens the instrumental spectrum with the Lugano-based Orchestra Della Svizzera Italiana under Markus Poschner’s direction in striking performances of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra and Paul Hindemith’s The Four Temperaments.

Gourari’s pianistic command is one of “virtuoso polish and with flawless action,” to quote the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, and her holistic, wide-reaching grasp of the instrument is on full display in Schnittke’s shape-bending polystylistic concerto. The orchestra furthermore shines in a powerful interpretation of Hindemith’s Symphony Mathis der Maler. 

Contrasts emerge not only through the juxtaposition of the three works but from within the pieces, which have fiery temperaments and technically demanding scores in common.

Recorded at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano in December 2021, the album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

April 19: ECM Releases Fred Hersch's new album Silent, Listening

ECM Releases

Fred Hersch: Silent, Listening

Release date: April 19, 2024
ECM 2799

Press downloads available upon request.

Silent, Listening is both a highly individual musical offering and an important contribution to ECM’s line of innovative solo piano recordings. It finds US pianist Fred Hersch, one of jazz’s most outstanding soloists, putting a poetic emphasis on alert, open improvisation while also embracing original compositions and a scattering of standard tunes in his album’s graceful creative arc. Interspersing songs and spontaneously composed pieces, Hersch shapes and sustains a musical atmosphere that he describes as “nocturnal”, an atmosphere of heightened sensitivity to sound.

“I still believe in the idea of an album as a complete musical statement from beginning to end,” he says, adding that this is a perspective being lost in an impatient age. “To me, an album has to tell a story.” Silent, Listening builds upon Hersch’s alliance with Manfred Eicher, established with The Song Is You, Fred’s duo album with Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava.

“The things that I’ve been happiest with in my life as a musician in jazz,” says Fred, “have been those things that have happened most organically. And in that recording with Enrico, which was made very spontaneously, I recognized that something special was going on. I said afterwards that I’d really like to make a solo album with Manfred as producer, in the same hall – where the acoustics, to my ear, are pretty-near perfect - and on the same piano.”

In May 2023 Hersch returned to Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI. “I came with some ideas of tunes of mine I might want to play, and with some little snippets of things that were like launching pads for improvisation. ’Silent, Listening’, the title piece, for instance, has written material at the beginning and the end, and I improvise on its motives and feel.” 

“Little Song” is a Hersch composition, written originally for the duo with Rava, which receives its recorded premiere here. As for the standard pieces chosen, “I had no idea I was going to play those. I just sort of felt them in the moment, and then the spontaneous compositions arose to offset the tunes.” To name the latter, Hersch brought along a list of titles culled from a Robert Rauschenberg monograph – “Rauschenberg was always good with titles” - hence “Volon”, “Aeon” and more. 

“I play a little more inside the piano than I usually do,” says Hersch of the exploratory, freely-structured pieces. “People don’t necessarily associate me with open improvising, but it is something that I have done a lot of, over the years. In fact, the recording with Enrico also included an improvisation that worked really well. And Manfred’s very positive response to that encouraged me to go further in this direction, alternating tunes and not-tunes on the solo album.” 

Among the standards, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington’s “Star-Crossed Lovers” sets the scene with a sparse, haunted interpretation that cleaves to the melody. “It’s such a beautiful melody, and sometimes it’s enough to state it. I learned the tune from Jimmy Rowles who used to play the song , as did Tommy Flanagan. I knew both of them well when we all worked at Bradley’s in New York, and recorded a version of ‘Star Crossed Lovers’ on my very first album back in 1985.”

“The Winter of my Discontent” is a tune that Hersch began playing after meeting its composer Alec Wilder in 1978. “Wilder made contact – also at Bradley’s, as it happens - and sent me books of his songs, and that’s one I’ve been playing ever since, in different formats including duo and trio. In Lugano, the mood of what I was playing seemed to suggest and lead to it.” 

“Softly As In a Morning Sunrise” is, in Fred Hersch’s mind, “always associated with Sonny Rollins at the Village Vanguard. Sonny’s version is the gold standard for me. Sonny Rollins is my hero, frankly. As a jazz musician he has everything, and I’ve been strongly influenced by him.”

“Akrasia” is an instance of a Hersch composition that took on a second life in the studio. Its title, meaning “acting against one’s better interests”, is an allusion to life in lockdown when, Fred says, he found himself spending too much time indulging in detective novels and computer games. “You know you shouldn’t be doing it, but… Anyway, ‘Akrasia’ is a longer composition and, when we started recording it in Lugano, I suddenly realized that the music was on the floor, and I couldn’t see it! So I played the beginning of it and then just kept going, improvising, and it turned into something unexpected but, we felt, interesting.”

This openness to contingency and willingness to honour the flow of things was also, Hersch says, reflected in his performance of Russ Freeman’s “The Wind”, which provides one of the album’s most magical sequences. Fred says that his younger, perfectionist self might have balked at his delineation of the melody but that, at 68, he is trying “not to micromanage everything anymore. What we got was a great first take” – gentle, but full of feeling – “that would have been impossible to recapture with the same spirit.” 

The in-the-moment spontaneity of Silent, Listening makes it, similarly, a self-contained one-off. Hersch enjoys the challenge of finding new musical solutions for new spaces and his upcoming touring activities include solo piano performances in both the US and Europe. Dates include Merkin Concert Hall, New York City (April 16), Piedmont Piano Company, Oakland CA (April 28) ,Dakota, Minneapolis MN (April 29), SPACE, Chicago IL (April 30), Cleveland OH (April 31), Firenze, Italy (May 11), Festival Ste Germain, Paris, France (May 18), Stadtcasino, Basel, Switzerland (May 21), Innsbruck, Austria (May 23),), Flagey, Brussels, Belgium (May 31), Ghent, Belgium, June 1. Additionally Fred Hersch plays duo concerts in France with Avishai Cohen in Nantes (May 6) and Coutances (May 8), and appears with the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra in Stockholm, Sweden on May 17. He plays in trio with Drew Gress and Joey Baron in Treviso, Italy on May 25. Hersch returns to Europe for another round of concerts in October.

For biographical and other details, visit Fred’s web site: www.fredhersch.com

Further ECM recordings with Fred Hersch are in preparation.

ECM New Series releases Gidon Kremer's Songs of Fate

ECM New Series Releases

Gidon Kremer: Songs of Fate

Vida Miknevičiūtė, Soprano
Gidon Kremer, Violin
Magdalena Ceple, Violoncello
Andrei Pushkarev, Vibraphone
Kremerata Baltica

Barcode: CD 0028948598502
Catalogue number: ECM 2745
Release Date: January 19, 2024

Weinberg's Aria, Op 9
First Single Available Now: https://ecm.lnk.to/SongsOfFateFP

Press downloads available upon request.

"Gidon Kremer has perhaps never before revealed himself as intimately and as existentially focused as on this recording," observes Wolfgang Sandner in his liner note accompanying the Latvian violinist's new album Songs of Fate, recorded in July 2019 and July 2022 and set for release by ECM New Series on January 19, 2024. The first single, Weinberg's Aria, Op. 9, is available now. 

Together with his Kremerata Baltica chamber ensemble and soprano Vida Mikneviciüte, Kremer approaches scores by Baltic composers Raminta Serksnyte, Giedrius Kuprevitius, Jekabs Janevskis and the Polish-Jewish composer Mieczysiaw Weinberg. 

In a performer's note, Kremer explains how, reflecting on the different threads that create the fabric of this programme, "I realise - to my own surprise - that in many ways, this project revolves around the notion of 'Jewishness'." 

Poignant deliveries of excerpts from the chamber symphony The Star of David and Kaddish by Giedrius Kuprevitius as well as the Jewish Songs by Mieczyslaw Weinberg emphasize this connotation. Bookending Songs of Fate are premiere recordings of Raminta Serksnyte's This too shall pass and Jekabs Janevskis's Lignum, bringing the voices of a younger generation of composers to the fore.

ECM New Series releases new album featuring the music of Arvo Pärt - Tractus - recorded in 2022

ECM New Series Releases

Arvo Pärt: Tractus

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra
Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor

ECM New Series 2800
CD: 0289 4859166 4
Release date: November 10, 2023

Press downloads available upon request.

Music and word: In Arvo Pärt's work, they are manifestly at its core, even when no word is heard, no text has been set to music, but the power of language becomes the subject nonetheless. – Wolfgang Sandner

Tractus emphasizes Arvo Pärt compositions that blend the timbres of string orchestra and choir. New versions predominate, with focused performances from the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Tõnu Kaljuste’s direction that invite alert and concentrated listening. From the opening composition Littlemore Tractus, which takes as its starting point consoling reflections from a sermon by John Henry Newman, the idea of change, transfiguration and renewal resonates, setting a tone for a recording whose character is one of summing up, looking inward, and reconciling with the past. Compositions included are Littlemore Tractus, Greater Antiphons, Cantique des degrés, Sequentia, L’abbé Agathon, These Words… and Veni creator. An evocative reworking of Vater unser for choir, strings and piano concludes this album.

Tõnu Kaljuste, a long-time ally of Pärt, points out that much recent discussion with the composer has revolved around new approaches to the scores. Commenting on the wide-reaching and evocative repertoire brought together here, Wolfgang Sandner remarks in the CD’s liner note (included at the press room link above), “sound and silence, music and word always remain in dialogue in Arvo Pärt’s work. But the vocal and the instrumental too, the sacred and the profane, complement each other. Liturgical ritual and spiritual concert are in exchange and form a context that points to a common origin.”

The compositions included on Tractus are based upon or inspired by scriptural, liturgical or other Christian texts. “The text is independent of us,” Pärt once said. “It awaits us. Everyone needs his own time to come to it. The encounter occurs when the text is no longer treated as literature or artwork but as reference point or model.”

Recorded in Tallinn’s Methodist Church in September 2022 and produced by Manfred Eicher, Tractus extends the line of Arvo Pärt albums begun with Tabula rasa in 1984, the recording which initially brought Pärt’s music to widespread awareness. 

The collaboration between Arvo Pärt and producer Manfred Eicher has persisted now for forty years: “Our work together making new records is always a celebration,” Pärt has said. “It is something very lively and in continuous formation.”

The Tractus album includes a booklet with all sung texts and liner notes by Wolfgang Sandner (in German), and by Kai Kutman (in English).

ECM New Series Releases Thomas Larcher's The Living Mountain

ECM New Series Releases

Thomas Larcher: The Living Mountain

Sarah Aristidou, soprano; Alisa Weilerstein, violoncello; Aaron Pilsan, piano; Luka Juhart, accordion; Andrè Schuen, baritone; Daniel Heide, piano

Münchner Kammerorchester
Clemens Schuldt, conductor

ECM New Series 2723
CD 0289 485 8784 1

Release Date: October 6, 2023
Press downloads available upon request. 

Austrian composer Thomas Larcher’s new album features premiere recordings of three strongly contrasting works. The Living Mountain, composed 2019-20, draws inspiration from Scottish poet and nature writer Nan Shepherd’s book of the same name. Having grown up in Tyrol and familiar with mountain landscapes, Larcher was taken by Shepherd’s unique approach to the topic in her memoir, and “how completely different it is from all the other literature touching upon this subject. There’s a particularly palpable connection between her introspection and the nature that surrounds her, the microscopic details that are elaborated in that context. Being able to identify with her writing as much as I did, reading the book turned into my own introspective journey and immediately sparked the musical connotations that I elaborate in my piece”.

In the piece, motifs are bound to thunderous percussive crescendos and insistent note repetitions that frame the powerful and evocative vocal performance of Sarah Aristidou. Besides the relation to Nan Shepherd’s text, Larcher’s piece also draws from a series of photographs by Dutch photographer Awoiska van der Molen – landscape pictures taken in the mountains of Tyrol that were first published alongside the premiere of Larcher’s piece in 2022. Van der Molen and the composer felt a deep affinity with each other’s work from the start – work “characterized by the slowness of analogue composing and photography as well as constraint through erasing and concealing of content.”

The act of concealment, of leaving things unsaid, is the keyword of Larcher’s setting of German author W.G. Sebald’s Unerzählt (composed 2019-20). A song cycle performed by baritone Andrè Schuen and pianist Daniel Heide, Unerzählt is composed of thirteen sparsely designed miniatures that underscore Schuen’s expressive range. Unerzählt presents its miniatures in a very pure and concentrated way, with their enigmatic appeal leaving much freedom for interpretation.

On Ouroboros, an instrumental work in three movements for violoncello and orchestra, cellist Alisa Weilerstein draws compelling lines against the backdrop of the Munich Chamber Orchestra’s cluster harmonies and the pointillist accompaniment of pianist Aaron Pilsan. The second movement, Allegro infuriato, true to its tempo indication, is a storm of sonic fury.

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Described by Alex Ross in The New Yorker as “an unpredictable, freethinking composer, who has set aside the modernist strictures that have long governed Central European music”, Thomas Larcher, was born in Innsbruck in 1963, and studied composition and piano in Vienna. His ECM recordings include Naunz (2001), Ixxu (2006) and Madhares (2011).

Andrè Schuen grew up in South Tyrol, where he played cello before studying singing at the University Mozarteum Salzburg. He is today one of the most sought-after baritones, performing in opera houses across the world, such as the Bavarian State Opera, the Vienna State Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and others. More recently, Schuen “made big waves”, to quote the Swiss daily Neue Züricher Zeitung, at the Salzburger Festspiele 2023 for his part as Count Almaviva in Mozart’s La Nozze Di Figaro.

The French-Cypriot soprano Sarah Aristidou is an award-winning interpreter of both contemporary music and core opera repertoire. In 2022/23, Aristidou she made her debut at Semperoper Dresden under Omer Meir Wellber as Zerbinetta in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. In the same year she also made her debut at the Bavarian State Opera.

American violoncellist Alisa Weilerstein’s commitment to new music has been recognized with a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant”. She has worked extensively with composers Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach and Joseph Hallman, among others.

The Münchner Kammerorchester’s association with ECM began in 2000. Since then the orchestra has recorded music of Mansurian, Hartmann, Bach, Webern, Scelsi, Hosokawa, Isang Yun, Barry Guy and more. In 2011 they also contributed to Larcher’s Madhares album.

The Living Mountain and Ouroboros were recorded in June 2021 and Unerzählt in May 2022. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

CD booklet include photographs from Awoiska van der Molen’s ‘The Living Mountain’ series and liner notes by Friedrike Gösweiner.

ECM New Series Releases John Holloway Ensemble’s Recording of Purcell’s Fantazias

ECM New Series Releases

Henry Purcell | John Holloway
Fantazias

John Holloway, violin; Monika Baer, viola; Renate Steinmann, viola; Martin Zeller, violoncello

ECM New Series 2249
Release Date: September 22, 2023

Henry Purcell’s “fantazias” are regarded as some of the finest and most intricately wrought examples of the fantasia, due to their profound embrace of counterpoint and great command of the polyphonal techniques of the time. Composed in the summer of 1680 – a time when the fantasia was already considered old-fashioned and had been replaced by the sonata – Purcell’s “fantazias” turned out to be the very last ensemble fantasias to be published in England. As John Holloway notes in his detailed liner text contextualizing the three- and four-part works, “it is tempting in retrospect to see their brilliant distillation of the very best of Byrd, Lawes, Jenkins and Locke as a personal farewell to a kind of music, which in Purcell’s own chamber music would soon be superseded by sonatas”.

In this recording John Holloway and his ensemble – violists Monika Baer and Renate Steinmann as well as violoncellist Martin Zeller – excel at bringing to light the emotional nuance and technical complexity of the works in all their transparency and colorfulness, naturally emphasizing Purcell’s contrapuntal idiosyncrasies in the process. Holloway’s expansive studies of Purcell’s life and work are evident in this music, and the violinist discloses his great appreciation of the composer in the accompanying text, saying, “only just out of his teens, Purcell already shows his extraordinary ability, shared by few other composers of any era, to walk the fine line between joy and sorrow, to beautifully express the melancholy which was such a characteristic mood of his times; and all this within the strictest self-imposed disciplines of complex counterpoint.”

On the album, recorded at Zürich’s Radio Studio, Holloway and his ensemble approach Purcell’s fantasias No.1 through 12 with distinct and convincing interpretations that substantiate John Holloway’s suggestion that even J.S. Bach “would have been immensely proud to have composed this music, and had he encountered it, would certainly have acknowledged it as equal to his finest achievements in this art.”

The CD includes a booklet with liner notes by John Holloway.

A pioneer of modern Early Music and historically-informed performance practice, John Holloway has been a leading figure in chamber music and concertmastering of Renaissance and Baroque music for over five decades, with many distinguished recordings under his belt. He is the founder of the baroque ensemble L’Ecole d’Orphée and in 2001 became Musical Director of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, in addition to multiple other activities as teacher and instructor across Europe and the USA. Holloway made his ECM debut in 1999 with a recording of the Sonatae unarum fidium by J.H. Schmelzer and has recorded eight further albums – including this release – for the label since, with repertory spanning music of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Francesco Maria Veracini, J.S. Bach, Jean-Marie Leclair, John Dowland and more.

ECM New Series September 2023 New Releases

ECM New Series September 2023 New Releases

Veljo Tormis: Reminiscentiae
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Tõnu Kaljuste
Release Date: September 8, 2023

Éventail
Heinz Holliger, oboe & Anton Kernjak, piano
Music by Ravel, Debussy, Milhaud, Saint-Saëns, Casadesus, Koechlin,
Jolivet and Messiaen
Release Date: September 22, 2023

Veljo Tormis: Reminiscentiae

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Tõnu Kaljuste

ECM 2793

Release Date: September 8, 2023

The elemental power of ancient folk music is the lifeforce that drives the compositions of Veljo Tormis (1930-2017). As the great Estonian composer famously said, “I do not use folk song. It is folk song that uses me.” This sentiment is echoed in definitive performances by the Estonian Philharmonic Choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Tõnu Kaljuste, for decades one of Tormis’s closest musical associates. Four orchestral cycles celebrate the changing seasons: Autumn Landscapes, Winter Patterns, Spring Sketches, Summer Motifs. And three pieces – Worry Breaks The Spirit, Hamlet’s Songs and Herding Calls – feature new arrangements by Tõnu Kaljuste, continuing and commemorating Tormis’s work. The album opens with The Tower Bell In My Village which Kaljuste commissioned 45 years ago. It sets words by Fernando Pessoa that seem entirely pertinent in the context of this tribute. “Oh death, it’s a bend in the road/You can’t be seen when you’ve passed by/But still your steps continue…” Reminiscentiae was recorded at Tallinn’s Methodist Church in October and November 2020.

Éventail

Heinz Holliger, oboe & Anton Kernjak, piano

Music by Ravel, Debussy, Milhaud, Saint-Saëns, Casadesus, Koechlin, Jolivet and Messiaen

ECM 2694

Release Date: September 22, 2023

In his Éventail de musique française, Swiss oboist and composer Heinz Holliger traverses a broad selection of French works for oboe and piano in a multichromatic programme of early 20th century music. As Holliger states in his liner note, “the closeness of the oboe to the human voice inspired my idea of opening up the richly coloured fan of French music through the still far too little known collection of Vocalises-Études.” Contained in this wide-ranging recital are compositions by Ravel, Debussy, Milhaud, Saint-Saëns, Casadesus as well as Koechlin, Jolivet and Messiaen – Holliger cultivated a personal relationship with several of the composers. On piano returns Anton Kernjak, who appeared on Holliger’s 2014 recording Aschenmusik, while French harpist Alice Belugou comes in to play on André Jovilet’s Controversia pour hautbois et harpe. The richness of the 20th century oboe-repertoire is on full display throughout and finds Holliger in engaging dialogues with piano and harp. Éventail follows the release of Heinz Holliger’s multiple awards-winning large-scale opera Lunea from 2022.

ECM New Series Releases Keith Jarrett’s 1994 Recording of CPE Bach’s Württemberg Sonatas for the First Time

ECM New Series Releases

Keith Jarrett’s 1994 Recording of CPE Bach’s Württemberg Sonatas

Released for the First Time on June 30, 2023

ECM 2790/91
CD: 0289 4858495 6

New York, New York – Keith Jarrett’s account of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Württemberg Sonatas is a revelation.

“I’d heard the sonatas played by harpsichordists, and felt there was a space left for a piano version,” says Jarrett today. This outstanding recording, made in May 1994 and previously unreleased, finds the pianist attuned to the expressive implications of the sonatas in every moment. The younger Bach’s idiosyncrasies: the gentle playfulness of the music, the fondness for subtle and sudden tempo shifts, the extraordinary, rippling invention…all of this is wonderfully delivered. The fluidity of the whole performance has a quality that perhaps could be conveyed only by an artist of great improvisational skills. In Jarrett’s hands, CPE Bach’s exploration of new compositional forms retains the freshness of discovery. The pianist also takes to heart CPE’s famous statement:  “Since a musician cannot move others unless he himself is moved, he must of necessity feel all of the affects that he hopes to arouse in his listeners."

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Württemberg Sonatas were written in 1742-3, and dedicated to Carl Eugen Duke of Württemberg, who studied with CPE at the court of Frederik the Great in Berlin. Published in 1744, they are regarded today as musical masterpieces of the era between the Baroque and the Classical. 

Keith Jarrett’s recording of the Württemberg Sonatas followed a period in which he had been focussing on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. ECM New Series documented Jarrett’s interpretations of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier Buch 1 (recorded February 1987), the Goldberg Variations (January 1989), The French Suites (September1991) and, with Kim Kashkashian, the 3 Sonaten für Viola da Gamba und Cembalo (also September 1991).  Other classical recordings made by Jarrett in this period included Shostakovich’s Bach-inspired 24 Preludes and Fugues (recorded July 1991) and Suites for Keyboard by Bach’s contemporary Georg Friedrich Händel (September 1993).  

In parallel with all this activity, Jarrett was continuing to work with his improvising trio with Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette, raising the bar for interpretive performances of jazz standards. Just three weeks after the CPE Bach recording, the trio was at New York’s Blue Note for an historic three-night run subsequently issued as an award-winning 6-CD box set. 

At the year’s end, there was further classical activity, Jarrett playing Mozart Piano Concertos with the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester under the direction of Dennis Russell Davies. It was Mozart who had hailed CPE Bach as “the father of us all,” a musician who brought a new creative freedom to composing for the keyboard.

The 2-CD set includes booklet with liner notes by Paul Griffiths. 

ECM New Series Releases Vox Clamantis’s New Recording of Music by Henrik Ødegaard out on June 2

ECM New Series Releases

Vox Clamantis’s Recording of Music by Henrik Ødegaard
Jaan-Eik Tulve, conductor

ECM New Series 2767
0289 4858473 4
Release Date: June 2, 2023

After dedicating past ECM New Series recordings to the works of contemporary composers Arvo Pärt, Erkki-Sven Tüür, Helena Tulve and most recently Cyrillus Kreek, the Vox Clamantis choir, under the direction of Jaan-Eik Tulve, turns its attention towards Norwegian composer Henrik Ødegaard with a fine-drawn programme of liturgical choral music. Vox Clamantis are at home in the worlds of both old and new music, having addressed Gregorian chant and the polyphony of Pérotin as well as present-day compositions on previous albums. The ensemble and the works of Ødegaard make a perfect match, as the composer’s work, in a subtle sleight of hand, interweaves Gregorian chant with Norwegian folk song.

“In this recording, Gregorian chant is the protagonist,” writes Kristina Kõrver in the liner notes, “sometimes in its pure beauty, sometimes intertwined with the ‘new song’ of Henrik Ødegaard. As an organist and choir conductor, his musical thinking has been strongly influenced by two important traditions, Gregorian chant and Norwegian folk music, both of which have found unique expressions in his work.”

While these two traditions appear inextricably merged into one in the performance of the choir, they are visibly separated from one another in Ødegaard’s scores – the passages of Gregorian chant being marked in square notation, the predominant musical notation form in European vocal music from the 13th to the early 17th century. It’s a symbolic divide, translated gracefully into the music by opening up monophonic plainchant with modern polyphonic ingredients. The composer employs liturgical hymns as source material, from which he then branches off with his own compositional voice.

His empathic embrace of the original scores is as respectful as it is subtle, endowing the early music with different shades of his own creation and thereby achieving a fresh perspective. The approach his heard on Jesu, dulces memoria, composed in 2014/2015, with the title of the original Gregorian hymn maintained. He gently integrates new musical material on O filii et filiae, based on a 15th century paschal hymn, and the approach persists in the following Kyrie and the conductus Pater noster.

The main work here is the eight-part Meditations over St. Mary Magdalene’s Feast in Nidaros, originally conceived to be sung by two separate choirs. It is based on antiphons found in a 13th-century manuscript from medieval Scandinavia. Ødegaard’s compositional process transfigures these antiphons without overriding the original sketches – a process described in the liner notes “as if the composer were literally sitting in front of a fragmentary manuscript, filling in the gaps and adding the missing lines, not as scholar-restorer, but as a poet, a co-creator.”

The album was recorded at the St. Nicholas Dome in Haapsalu, Estonia, in March 2021.

*

With an extensive background of studies in trombone, church music, composition and Gregorian chant, Henrik Ødegaard (Oslo, 1955) settled his focus on liturgical composition, working as choir conductor, organist and composer. He is represented in the Norwegian hymn book (1985), and from 1982 to 2006 held a position as organist/choir conductor in Sauherad, Telemark, in addition to being an active composer. His main focus is on choir music, where he mixes plainchant with the Norwegian folk tradition, employing micro-tonal elements in the process. Ødegaard has received commissions from Oslo Chamber Choir, Oslo Philharmonic, Telemark Brass Ensemble, Telemark Chamber Choir, and many other ensembles across Scandinavia and the Baltic States.

Tulve and Ødegaard first met 30 years ago, when Tulve was giving Gregorian chant masterclasses in Norway. Shortly after, the composer would go on to study at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musqiue et de Danse de Paris, where Tulve was the assistant of the professor of Gregorian chant, Louis-Marie Vigne. Tulve: “Henrik has always been interested in linking Gregorian chant to his own compositions, and so we have a long-standing connection through his work. Vox Clamantis has been performing his music for years. It is therefore deeply symbolic that he wrote Meditations over St. Mary Magdalene’s Feast in Nidaros, in which he used the old manuscripts of the Trondheim Cathedral, specifically for us and the Norwegian women's ensemble Schola Sanctæ Sunnivæ.”

After leading the Paris Gregorian Choir and the Lac et Mel ensemble, Jaan-Eik Tulve founded Vox Clamantis in Tallinn in 1996, and he remains its artistic director and conductor today. From the outset a collective with members sharing interest in Gregorian chant, Vox Clamantis has explored both early polyphony and contemporary music, with many composers writing new music for the group. Vox Clamantis’s recordings have won numerous awards, and in 2017 the ensemble received the National Cultural Award of the Republic of Estonia. The choir appears on numerous critically acclaimed ECM New Series recordings, including Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Oxymoron (2007), Filia Sion (2012), Arvo Pärt’s Adam’s Lament (2012) and The Deer’s Cry (2016), Helena Tulve’s Arboles lloran por lluvia (2014), and The Suspended Harp of Babel (2020) with music by Estonian composer Cyrillus Kreek. The BBC and The Observer, among much other international press, had high praise for the latter, each connecting something deeply universal but also alien with the music, calling it “magic of another sphere” on the one hand and “music of another place and time, beautifully done” on the other.

More info:

http://www.voxclamantis.ee/

https://ecmrecords.com/artists/vox-clamantis/