ECM New Series in 2024: A Year-End Review
ECM New Series in 2024 – A Year-End Review
Gidon Kremer – Songs of Fate | January 19, 2024 (ECM New Series)
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“What a treat this album is to explore Baltic composers who don’t often find their works recorded. In fact, many of these compositions are having their first-ever recording.” – Craig Byrd, Cultural Attache
“This is one of Kremer’s most personal undertakings. His playing — especially in Serksnyte’s ‘This Too Shall Pass’ and Weinberg’s simple, sad “Nocturne” — has the breath and rhythm of halting speech. Soprano Vida Mikneviciute imparts a similar tone to Kuprevicius’s ‘Kaddish’ and to excerpts from Weinberg’s ‘Jewish Songs.’ Jancevskis’s ‘Lignum’ for string orchestra and chimes, played with deep sensitivity by the chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica, progresses from dissonance to resounding affirmation to an open-ended conclusion. It sounds like Kremer’s description of the album’s purpose: ‘reminding us of tragic fates along the way and that we each have a ‘voice’ that deserves to be heard.’” – David Weininger, The New York Times
On Songs of Fate Gidon Kremer approaches scores by Baltic composers Giedrius Kuprevičius, Raminta Šerkšnytė, Jēkabs Jančevskis and the Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg, together with his Kremerata Baltica chamber ensemble and soprano Vida Miknevičiūtė – many of the works captured here appear in premiere recordings. In his performer’s note, Kremer traces the roots of this programme back to both his Jewish heritage and his extensive history of living in the Baltic states, which has and continues to lead to collaborations with countless musicians and composers from the region. The personal connotations are palpable in the music, as Wolfgang Sandner observes in his liner note, confirming: “Gidon Kremer has perhaps never before revealed himself as intimately and as existentially focused as on this recording”.
Anna Gourari – Schnittke & Hindemith | June 14, 2024 (ECM New Series)
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“[Anna Gourari] extracts a dizzying range of colours from Hindemith’s ingeniously constructed score. At one moment she’s playful and meditative, and then suddenly she breaks out into full-frontal percussive aggression.” – Erik Levi, BBC Music Magazine
“The two composers whom the pianist Anna Gourari brings together in her latest offering seem to create a diametrically opposed pair: Schnittke, the collagist of wild eclecticism, and Hindemith, his era’s master of orderly, workaday counterpoint. If Gourari hadn’t used the phrase ‘Elusive Affinity’ as the title of her previous ECM recording, it would work just as well here.” – David Weninger, The New York Times
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.
Delian Quartett: Im wachen Traume | June 21, 2024 (ECM New Series)
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“The idea of playing viol music on a string quartet is not new, but the [album] as a whole very much is. As usual, ECM's sound from the Abtei Marienmünster is first-rate and succeeds in creating the mystic atmosphere the performers were looking for.” – James Manheim, All Music
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 appear 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 color the musical span from the bliss of the moment to the end of things.”
Danish String Quartet – Keel Road | August 30, 2024
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“[The Danish String Quartet] bring[s] to this music the same virtues as their more canonical pursuits: unified and natural phrasing, and crack ensemble playing. The arrangements are coolly resourceful, and their own tunes are so idiomatic you could easily mistake them for being “authentic” folk music.” – David Weininger, The New York Times
“The sequence presented on this album is a multi-faceted diamond“ – David Nice, BBC Music Magazine
“It’s a disc of quiet revelations and arrangements that are as exquisitely crafted as they are captivating; performed with abundant spirit and conviction, and captured in warm, close sound.” – David Kettle, The Strad
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.”
Arvo Pärt – Tabula Rasa | September 6, 2024 (ECM New Series)
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“For anyone who fancies listening to Tabula Rasa as music rather than part of a continuum, this handsome reissue fits the bill.” – Kieron Tyler, The Arts Desk
In 1984, ECM brought a new sound into the musical world with the release of Arvo Pärt’s Tabula rasa, the first album on the label’s New Series imprint. As Paul Griffiths wrote in his liner notes for a 2010 special-edition produced in collaboration with the composer’s publisher Universal Edition: “This was the beginning, also, of an extraordinary association between composer and record producer, an example of loyalty and collegiality unique in our time. Pärt’s mature career is documented on ECM albums produced by Eicher (…) If Pärt gave ECM one of its enduring foci, ECM gave Pärt a forum he could not otherwise have found.”
Now, on the occasion of the 40th New Series anniversary, this gatefold vinyl reissue with enclosed booklet presents the record in its original guise. The record also marked the intersection of some of the most long standing, significant musical collaborators in the label’s history: Arvo Pärt, Gidon Kremer and Keith Jarrett.
Brahms & Schumann – Yuuko Shiokawa, violin & András Schiff, piano | October 11, 2024 (ECM New Series)
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New Music Friday: The best albums out Oct. 11 – NPR Music
After tackling the sonatas for violin and piano of Bach, Busoni and Beethoven in 2017, a “thoughtfully determined and subtly interconnected programme” according to Strad magazine, the duo of Yuuko Shiokawa and András Schiff returns with striking renditions of Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 1 and Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 2. When the violinist and pianist made their first joint appearance on the label with the 2000 recording of Schubert’s C major fantasy for violin and piano, Gramophone magazine was in awe with their performance, raving how “from the start, there's an air of magic,” and calling the renditions “interpretations of rare penetration and individuality: a must for the Schubert section in your collection.” Now turning their gaze to the Schubert-admirer Schumann and his contemporary Brahms, the duo offers a deeper look into the core repertory of Romantic chamber music.
Anja Lechner – Bach, Abel, Hume | October 18, 2024 (ECM New Series)
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“The cellist Anja Lechner has been such a bright star on the ECM firmament, that it’s hard to believe this is her first solo album for the label. Having engaged with musical traditions including tango, Armenian folk songs and Byzantine hymns, she now mines the deeply personal repertoire of viola da gamba music to reframe some of the most treasured works written for cello.” – Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times
“Playing on a cello that predates Bach – a Rugieri from 1680 – Lechner creates a provocative dialogue between two of the suites and selected pieces by Hume and Abel that were originally composed for the viola da gamba.” – Thomas May, The Strad
For her first solo-violoncello album on ECM’s New Series, Anja Lechner devotes herself to a particularly unique convergence of three composers from vastly different contexts: J.S. Bach, Carl Friedrich Abel and Tobias Hume. In the past, her extensive discography has captured the cellist as part of the renowned Rosamunde Quartett, as well as alongside seminal artists from both trans-idiomatic sound worlds and the realm of classical music, gracing her with rare musical farsightedness. With her distinct perspective on works composed for both violoncello and viola da gamba, Lechner – “one of the most gifted cellists in the world” (Strings) – sheds a fresh light on music written within a span of two centuries.
Framing the first two solo suites from the famous group of six Bach wrote for the violoncello are Abel and Hume compositions, originally conceived for viola da gamba, which are given new color and breadth through Lechner’s interpretation on cello – in parts newly arranged by herself. Connecting all three composers is a certain improvisatory notion within the fabric of their work, second-nature for composers and musicians between the 16th–18th centuries, when these three lived.
Alexander Lonquich, Münchener Kammerorchester – Ludwig van Beethoven: The Piano Concertos | November 8, 2024 (ECM New Series)
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After a first appearance on ECM’s New Series with premiere recordings of Israeli composer Gideon Lewensohn’s works on Odradek (2002), two subsequent solo recitals plus a duo programme with violinist Caroline Widmann (2012), here pianist Alexander Lonquich, alongside the Münchener Kammerorchester, rises to a more extensive challenge, in performing the entirety of Beethoven’s piano concertos, programmed in chronological order. Beethoven’s five completed piano concertos – the C major op. 15, the B flat op. 19, the C minor op. 37, the G major Op. 58 and the “Emperor”, in E flat major, op 73 – were composed between about 1793 to 1809, documenting the composer’s development over two decades.
In his detailed liner note, the German pianist calls these recordings a, “very special experience, for performers and listeners alike. The usually common placement of the individual works in the context of a symphony concert all too often runs the risk of confirming and reinforcing what is already traditional, while this chronological order draws attention to stylistic leaps in the compositions and allows the listener to experience Beethoven's development as the author of these outward-looking creations that illustrate his pianistic virtuosity between 1790 and 1809.”