ECM New Series
New Series, the child of highly respected jazz and world music parent ECM, regales with modern symphonies, early music chants, and avant-garde partnerships. Its latest series sings with a spiritual bent, spanning groundbreaking requiems to aural poems of mystic love. Armenian composer
Tigran Mansurian re-collaborates with acclaimed Armenian violist
Kim Kashkashian on the ambitious 2-CD
Monodia. Disc one holds "... And Then I Was in Time Again," a contemporary concerto for viola and orchestra inspired by William Faulkner's
The Sound and the Fury, while Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos follows with the abstract "Concerto for Violin and Orchestra." Both feature Christoph Poppen expertly conducting the Munich Chamber Orchestra. Mystery and enchantment pack disc two, with Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek weaving mournful notes like the famed Armenian breath-driven duduk (heard in
The Last Temptation of Christ) as Kashkashian's viola follows in mirrored, melismatic flight. On "Confessing With Faith," Kashkashian's viola joins ECM ancient vocal mainstay the Hilliard Ensemble, with the English quartet singing the Armenian text from a 12th-century mystic. Spine-tingling pulchritude. On their own disc, the
Hilliard Ensemble plumbs the melodic and contextual depths of the
Motets by
Guillaume de Machaut. One of the most adventurous artists of the 14th Century, Machaut used these motets to explore divine love as romantic love, and vice versa. Their capricious overlapping melodies float like rose pedals in a spring zephyr. As with their previous
Words of the Angel,
Trio Mediaeval interprets sacred songs on the new
Soir, dit-elle, ancient-inspired work composed especially for the Norwegian female trio. Like their debut, the outcome is stunning. After
Valentin Silvestrov suddenly lost his soulmate of three decades, music/ literary thinker Larissa Bondarenko, the noted Ukrainian composer set out to write his last and most important work,
Requiem for Larissa. Understandably, requiems are among the most powerful pieces of music ever written. No exception here. Creatively mixing choir, symphony, and synthesized sounds and structures,
Requiem for Larissa is as groundbreaking as it is moving. The crown jewel is the fourth movement's bare vocals accompanied by a sparse harp. The ensuing pianissimo harmonies resonate with the listener's central nervous system, creating a vehicle for experiencing, and looking through, profound loss. Only time will tell if the latest additions to the New Series catalog become classics, but these albums flower with repeated listening.
