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Thomas Larcher: The Dwelling Mountain (ECM New Collection)
★★★★☆
The primary rule of recording was once: by no means convey out an unknown work except it’s carried out by a world-famous artist. Something much less can be business suicide. I can not bear in mind any main firm ever breaking this rule. The one transgressors had been fringe labels with zero overheads who, like Indian gurus, cultivated a tribe of true believers who purchased into no matter they did. The supreme Maharishi of this peripheral cult was ECM’s Manfred Eicher, and he’s nonetheless going robust in Munich after 54 years of doing his personal factor, backing obscure scores from the medievalist Morales to Meredith Monk with artists as little-known because the stuff they performed.
Eicher’s newest launch is one other punt into the unknown. The composer Thomas Larcher is an Austrian of esoteric tendencies. Mystical to a fault, his newest assortment consists of two solo vocal settings of enigmatic English texts by Nan Shepherd and W. G. Sebald, framing a cello concerto for chamber orchestra with piano obbligato. The solo cellist, Alisa Weilerstein, is the one acquainted identify on this pack, and the sleeve notes babble away about ‘shared breath’ and ‘whispering leaves’. Its title, Ourobouros, has one thing to do with a snake that eats itself tail first.
Eicher being Eicher, you begin out listening with amused tolerance and wind up transfixed by music of hypnotic energy, driving in direction of an inescapable future. The quilt picture tilts the creativeness in an ecological route, however the orchestral writing of the title monitor attracts little from mom nature.
It tinkles and tintinnabulates, utilizing an accordion for color and a soprano (Sarah Aristidou) who soars however seldom swoops. Don’t ask me what all of it means. The Sebald set, for prime baritone, is a throwback to John Cage’s prepped pianos and magic mushrooms, a modernism so late it’s virtually trending. I listened to he Dwelling Matter out of obligation and ended up liking it sufficient for a 3rd listening to. The final rule of a dying document business is: there aren’t any guidelines.
Manfred Eicher’s merchandise are actually streamed by mainstream Deutsche Grammophon. Go determine.
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Norman Lebrecht is among the most widely-read commentators on music, tradition and cultural politics. He’s a daily presenter on BBC Radio 3 and a contributor to the Wall Road Journal, Bloomberg, Standpoint, Sinfini and different publications. His weblog, Slipped Disc, is among the many most generally learn cultural websites on-line, breaking unique tales and campaigning in opposition to human abuse and acts of injustice within the cultural industries.
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