Cosimo Fiaschi / Nicolò Francesco Faraglia: Variazioni [Superpang]. Here’s a funny one: a cycle of improvised duets for soprano sax (Fiaschi) and electric guitar (Faraglia), but it’s all structured by a serialist tone-row. The two musicians had worked together in this way for several years before making this recording, so have figured out a mutual language on “post-Webernian intervallic structures”. Not sure if that means it’s tighter or looser than Webern (it’s been eighty years), but it does sound different from any other improv set: besides the harmonic language, there’s a calm and steady approach to playing which prioritises those intervallic structures ahead of timbral diversity, to a certain extent. Twenty variations flit by in thirty-five minutes for a performance which resembles a modernist Konzertstück. You could also listen to each Variation as a self-contained vignette, but then they lose their affective punch and sound more geared towards inviting a post-facto musicological analysis. Other funny thing: it’s on Superpang.
Cosimo Fiaschi: Wunderkammer [Granny]. Released one day earlier, Wunderkammer has Fiaschi attributed sole compositional credit: he assembled a septet of musicians to record several takes of his piece in one day. Although Fiaschi had worked with each of the musicians before, they had never worked together as a group. Similar in length to Variazioni, this work stretches out for long tones and static phrases, with the instruments (flute, saxophone, accordion, cello, double bass, percussion) embellished with preparations and “objects”. Not everyone plays at once, so that every slow-rolling moment expands the range of timbres and textures, with great variety of register building up a surprisingly deep listening experience without ever demanding your attention. Fiaschi’s composition evidently allows the musicians a certain degree of liberty, so it’s to their credit that they know how to make things colourful without losing focus and when to keep schtum, and to his credit that he appreciates the balance between “full” and “empty” sounds. This was apparently a deciding factor in favouring this take, but also a chance intervention by the weather makes the ending particularly beautiful.
Maya Bennardo, Etienne Nillesen & Kristofer Svensson: For Violin, Snare & Kacapi [Kuyin]. Bennardo, Nillesen and Svensson’s fifty-minute Improvisation on Āsthita, January 2, 2024 makes for a nice companion piece to Wunderkammer, and for a study in how two works so similar in surface appearance and performance approach can be so different. The trio respectively play violin, snare drum and kacapi (I looked it up, it’s a Javanese zither); Āsthita is a Sanskrit term for a exotically-formulated just intonation mode devised by Svensson, so the music-making is free of any cod anthropology. More strangeness: the drum is played for its pitches, and forms the basis for the quasi-slendro tuning that underlies the piece. The snares aren’t heard, and the most percussive sounds come from Nillesen rubbing on the drumhead and Bennardo brushing her bow across the strings. The three of them tap into their inner immobility and play not so much upon the mode, but from within it. The piece slowly evolves through experience, each musician feeling their way through sound and silence, relying on their heightened senses for the right time to move on. In doing so, they establish a clear image of calmness, even though that image never settles into a single, fixed appearance.
