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Die Nacht
Anja Lechner, Pablo Márquez
Release date: 02.11.2018
ECM 2555
Format : CD
German cellist Anja Lechner and Argentinean guitarist Pablo Márquez met in 2003 and have since explored the most diverse repertoire and modes of expression in their concerts. For their first duo album, a conceptual context is provided by the strong tradition of songs with guitar accompaniment prevalent in 19th century Vienna, as Lechner and Márquez play some of Schubert’s most beloved songs (including Die Nacht, Nacht und Träume and Der Leiermann), elegantly framing the album’s centrepiece: Schubert’s expansive Arpeggione sonata. Many of Schubert’s songs were published in alternative versions with guitar during the composer’s lifetime; in some cases, the guitar version appeared even before the one for piano. Interspersed on the recording, as an echo and commentary to Schubert’s spirit and language, are the graceful Trois Nocturnes originally written for cello and guitar by Friedrich Burgmüller (1806-1874). Die Nacht is issued as Lechner and Márquez embark on a European tour with concerts in Germany, Austria, France, Hungary and Romania.
“Art does not reproduce the visible but rather makes things visible.” This statement of Paul Klee’s, from his Creative Confession of 1920, is valid not only as a watchword of modernity; for the Romantics, too, stirred themselves to render visible what is often hidden from us, appearing at most as an emotion.
Schubert’s music offers a particular instance. His works poeticize whatever is real, allowing reality to become dream and , by means of music, the dream of a better world to become reality. All that is earthly is metamorphosed into a function of soul and spirit. Themes such as night, aloneness, silence and longing are the fundamental leanings not just of the composer’s songs but of his soundscapes generally.
For the cellist Anja Lechner, Schubert’s music has been an aesthetic lodestar since childhood, when she became familiar with the songs and piano works in the parental home.
From the early 1990s on, the Rosamunde Quartett, of which she was a founding member, delved deeply into Schubert´s quartets and late quintet alongside a spectrum of repertoire from Haydn to the modern day. Since the quartet disbanded in 2009, she has made a name for presenting programmes that bridge styles and cultures, numerous composers entrusting her with the first performances of their works.
For Die Nacht she has returned to her early passion: the music of Schubert. Completely in the spirit of the composer, whose compositions were to be performed principally in private among friends, she and the Argentinian guitarist Pablo Márquez have recorded a programme that gives the feeling of a musical dialogue taking place in Schubert’s house.
Playing song accompaniments on the quieter guitar instead of the piano, strengthens the impression of intimate music-making. Moreover, singing to the guitar was a widespread practice in the 19th century. Some of Schubert´s songs, who also played the guitar, were, already during his lifetime, published in arrangements for the instrument. The song arrangements in the present recording (with the exception of Der Leiermann and the Romance from Rosamunde, which Anja Lechner and Pablo Márquez have themselves newly transcribed) come from manuscripts found in the collection of the Bohemian poet Franz Xaver Schlechta von Wschehrd, who belonged, together with Franz von Schober and the brothers Spaun, to the innermost circle of Schubert’s friends.
At the centre of the recording, alongside five songs and the romance, stands the Sonata in A minor, D. 821, originally written for, and subsequently named after, the arpeggione. Almost forgotten today, this instrument, often referred to as a guitar d’amour or bowed guitar, is customarily replaced by the cello, and is so here, while the transparent piano part has been subtly arranged for guitar. Three nocturnes, originally composed for the cello/guitar combination by a Schubert contemporary, Friedrich Burgmüller, add a gentle echo to the music of Schubert.
The album is Anja’s Lechner first purely classical recording since that of Haydn’s Seven Last Words, Hob. XX:2, with the Rosamunde Quartet in 2001.
Featured artists
Anja Lechner Violoncello
Pablo Márquez Guitar
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In Concert – Beethoven / Liszt
Till Fellner
Release date: 02.11.2018
ECM 2511
Speaking to the New York Times in 2007, Alfred Brendel said of fellow pianist Till Fellner: “It has impressed me how ambitiously he has developed his repertory, being equally at home in solo and concerto repertoire, chamber music and lieder… I heard him do the best live performance of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage”. Fellner’s insightful playing of the Premiere année from that collection of suites, underlines the contention, vividly conveying Franz Liszt’s literal and imaginative journeys. “Having recently travelled to many new countries,” wrote the composer in 1855, “through different settings and places consecrated by history and poetry, and having felt that the phenomena of nature and their attendant sights stirred deep emotions in my soul, I have tried to portray in music a few of my strongest sensations and most lively impressions”. Fellner’s account of Liszt was recorded at the Musikvereien in Vienna in 2002. It is paired here with a concert recording of Beethoven’s Sonata No 32, recorded at the Mahaney Center for the Arts in Middlebury, Vermont in 2010, the year in which ECM released Fellner’s interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos 4 and 5 to a chorus of critical acclaim.
Featured artists
Till Fellner Piano
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Lebroba
Andrew Cyrille, Wadada Leo Smith, Bill Frisell
Release date: 02.11.2018
ECM 2589
Format : CD
LP
Andrew Cyrille’s 2016 release The Declaration of Musical Independence gave notice that one of the drumming innovators of new jazz had taken his conception of group playing to another level of development, and the space-conscious Lebroba, with Wadada Leo Smith and Bill Frisell, applies further fine-tuning. The album’s title is a contraction of Leland, Brooklyn and Baltimore, birthplaces of the protagonists of a recording which brings together three of creative music’s independent thinkers.
Each of them made his first ECM appearance long ago. Drummer Andrew Cyrille appeared on Marion Brown’s Afternoon of a Georgia Faun in 1970, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith on his own Divine Love in 1978, and guitarist Bill Frisell in 1979 on Eberhard Weber’s Fluid Rustle, with his leader debut In Line following in 1982; these are, of course, players of enduring influence. In recent seasons, Cyrille has been heard on Ben Monder’s Amorphae, Wadada has recorded with Vijay Iyer on A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke and Frisell has introduced a duo with Thomas Morgan on Small Town.
Andrew Cyrille and Wadada Leo Smith first played together in the early 1970s in a period when some of the trailblazers of Chicago’s AACM were relocating to the New York region. In the late 1990s they came together again in the quartet of bassist John Lindberg. Their reunion in the Lebroba trio with this recording – made at New York’s Reservoir Studio – was suggested by the album’s producer, Sun Chung.
Always a generous leader, Cyrille gives plenty of room to his cohorts, who also bring in compositions, with Wadada’s elegant four-part suite dedicated to Alice Coltrane unfurling slowly over its 17-minute duration. Written and open sections are interlaced, with a free role for the drums in the closing moments. “I didn’t want to play all the time,” Andrew explains. “I wanted to play rhythms with spaces between them, and to play melodically, in relation to what Wadada and Bill were doing…” Creative energies are pooled also on the spontaneously created TGD, credited to all three players,
Reviews of Cyrille have often emphasised the elemental strength of his playing (“his energy is unflagging, his power absolute”, the All Music Guide notes). Yet even in contexts calling for unconditional drive – such as Cecil Taylor’s celebrated trio with Jimmy Lyons (of which Andrew was a member for more than a decade) – there always was a differentiated methodology at work in the drumming. Still, as Kevin Whitehead writes in the CD booklet, the release of The Declaration of Musical Independence in 2016 “took some listeners by surprise. There Andrew’s new elliptical style unfolded – a style, he says ‘where the meter is implied but not inferred’.”
Bill Frisell contributed to the Declaration album, but Lebroba marks a first-time meeting for the guitarist and Wadada Leo Smith. “If there is a continuity of concept between the Declaration quartet and this trio,” Says Cyrille in the liner notes, “the linchpin is Frisell. The music is different, but the concept is about the same. And then Wadada brings in his voice and his philosophy.”
With no bass and no keyboards this time, the ensemble texture is more transparent than on Declaration and with Cyrille sometimes reducing his sound to a discontinuous groundswell, there are plenty of the charged silences and open spaces that Wadada Leo Smith loves to play into. Bill Frisell’s history includes extensive work with another bassless trio, Paul Motian’s trio with Joe Lovano. “Andrew does remind me of Paul in a way,” says Frisell. “People describe their playing as free or abstract and overlook the feel: the deep, deep beat coming from a deep, deep place.”
Even unstated, its presence is felt on Lebroba, not least on Andrew’s tunes, the bluesy title piece, and the graceful ballad “Pretty Beauty”.
Featured artists
Andrew Cyrille Drums
Wadada Leo Smith Trumpet
Bill Frisell Guitar
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Lucent Waters
Florian Weber, Ralph Alessi, Linda May Han Oh, Nasheet Waits
Release date: 02.11.2018
ECM 2593
Florian Weber’s second ECM appearance, following a critically-acclaimed duo recording (Alba, 2016) with Markus Stockhausen, finds the gifted German pianist leading a newly formed quartet through a programme of his compositions. Openness is key here: whether paying tribute to mentor Lee Konitz on Honestlee, impressionistically conveying the glittering Melody of a Waterfall, or generating impactful outcomes from fragments of material on a conceptual piece like Butterfly Effect, the intention is to encourage fresh responses from the participants.
“I see this album as a meeting of very independently-minded musicians,” says Weber. “It’s the first time I’ve had a band where what particularly interests me is the difference between the players and their approaches to improvising.” He cites the contrast between the soulful, grounded quality of Linda May Han Oh’s bass playing and Nasheet Waits’s fleet, free-flowing drums. “Linda and Nasheet are very different characters, but they balance each other in their exchanging of energies.” The Lucent Waters line-up marks a first collaboration between Weber and Waits, the drummer being recommended by producer Manfred Eicher for the project. “I liked very much Nasheet’s playing on Ralph Alessi’s ECM albums [Baida and Quiver], those are great recordings, so the idea resonated with me.”
Linda May Han Oh and Florian Weber first worked together in trio with Lee Konitz a decade ago. “That was the beginning of a vivid exchange of ideas that has continued in other contexts. For myself, working with Lee night after night taught me what it really means to be spontaneous in the music.” There’s a difference, Weber suggests, between the contemporary emphasis on “self-expression” and “exploring what is actually there, implied in the material and in the interaction of the players.”
Weber and Ralph Alessi have been in and out of each other’s groups for more than 15 years. Latterly, Weber’s been playing in Alessi’s trio with Dan White. “If I look at my career to date, I’ve mostly tried to play with people that I feel close to, that I understand where they’re coming from, emotionally.” Friends, of course, can still challenge each other: “Ralph always says that my writing and playing pushes him to play differently.” This is strikingly evident on Fragile Coccoon, where an initially gentle piece bursts open to feature the trumpet in a blazing admixture of lyricism and intensity, framed by Waits dramatically powerful drums.
There are, says Weber, several factors influencing the pieces gathered here. “Pieces emerge, a lot of times, as a feeling or a perspective on some aspect of my life – in this case the twilight atmosphere of the touring musician’s world, and all the ups and downs of that. Then there’s the compositional aspect: I’m always trying to create or shape something which hasn’t, to my knowledge, been there before.”
The degree of freedom given to the players differs from piece to piece. “On Brilliant Waters, for instance, I didn’t give them much more than the title: that’s a free, open piece, although we end organically on one note, which does sound composed. I did tell the group that I wanted the album to have a sense of narrative, with interconnecting links, of some kind. A motif that appears in one piece might recur in another piece, perhaps reversed. Atmospheric ideas return, two pieces may have a similar instrumental emphasis at certain points, or a soundscape may be similar. As a bandleader I think there’s a fine line between giving musicians too much information and not giving them enough: I wanted the musicians to make their own thing, too.”
Nasheet Waits has the freest role in Melody of a Waterfall, which takes its inspiration partly from traditional Japanese drum ensembles: “I like the clarity and focus of that music, its stillness as well as its passion and energy. I find Japanese culture and its ideas fascinating and have tried to understand it – insofar as one can, as a westerner.”
From Cousteau’s Point Of View references some recent diving experiences: “The changed three- dimensional perspectives and transparency are central to this tune. Musically it’s 3 against 7, both times going on at the same time, and you’re not sure which one you should follow. I like transparency, but too much of it can make the mystery disappear. And I also like the mystery, just as I like the things that are not said, and the notes not played.”
Honestlee, dedicated to Lee Konitz (“every time I meet Lee I learn something new” says Florian), incorporates “some Lennie Tristano School ideas, but not Tristano-style playing. It explores some ideas he had about lines and counterpoint.” The piece also takes impetus from drawings which Karlheinz Stockhausen made at Darmstadt. “The drawings illustrate some polyphonic concepts. I looked at them and immediately wanted to write a tune. Wanting to dedicate something to Lee, the ideas converged. So we start with lines and then go into open mode.” Weber’s playing, exemplary throughout, is particularly affecting here.
(Konitz, on hearing this recording, has said “Florian is one of the most creative piano players I have ever played with. His music is totally free. He has got the texture, the feeling, just beautiful. I am very touched by this music. It feels divine to me.“)
- Born into a musical family in Detmold, Germany, in 1977, Florian Weber began playing piano at the age of four, and by the time he graduated high school was appearing with both jazz and classical ensembles. In Cologne he studied with Hans Ludemann and John Taylor, before heading to the USA and further studies with teachers including Paul Bley, JoAnne Brackeen, Danilo Pérez and Richie Beirach. In 2002 Weber founded Trio Mensarah with bassist Jeff Denson and drummer Ziv Ravitz. By 2006, Lee Konitz was playing with the group which subsequently formed the basis of his New Quartet, touring widely and recording a prizewinning album at New York’s Village Vanguard. In 2011 Weber founded the group Biosphere with guitarist Lionel Loueke, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Dan Weiss. Florian Weber also continues to play with trumpeter Markus Stockhausen. The intuitive music of their ECM album Alba was praised for its “natural warmth and character” by The Times of London. For further details, including details of upcoming dates, visit http://www.florianweber.net and http://www.ecmrecords.com
Lucent Waters was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the South of France in September 2017 and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Featured artists
Florian Weber Piano
Ralph Alessi Trumpet
Linda May Han Oh Double Bass
Nasheet Waits Drums
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