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Richter, Max: 24 Postcards in Full Colour
Richter has now a substantial body of solo work, not due to volume so much as due to extreme refinement and a rather well-sorted and distinctive lexicon. Set against his earlier, longer- to average-length pieces comprising The Blue Notebooks and Songs from Before, 24 Postcards finds Richter updating the form of "miniatures" - short, evocative sketches which in this case seem intent on coalescing as an integrated suite. Here his chamber-like ensemble sets aside the use of narrative voices (those of Tilda Swindon and Robert Wyatt, respectively) for a purely instrumental line-up comprised of piano, violins, viola, cellos, drums and guitars. Rarely will all instruments be heard simultaneously. Instead, the greater sense of the ensemble is effectively disassembled across the 24 concise pieces, encouraging subtle timbral relationships that drive moments of profoundly beautiful contrast and constancy. Pieces feature everything from the simple and expressive phrases of a solo violin, reverberant above grainy, arid drones, to the dense interactions of muted guitars, percussion and cellos. The overall mood is glimmering melancholia, the playing mostly soto voce, made profound by shifts between highly focused, solo phrasing and dense, textural expanses that all exhibit a compact, well-defined instrumental hierarchy. There's something brilliantly counter-intuitive in accomplishing this work as short segments, rather than as a segmented whole: and the impression made is much more than such an insufficient and purely semantic acknowledgement. The music goes on to accomplish something of an incredibly dissociative unity.
Track Listing
- The road is a grey tape
- H in New England
- This picture of us. P.
- Lullaby from the westcoast sleepers
- When the northern lights / Jasper and Louise
- Circles from the Rue Simon – Crubellier
- Cascade NW by W
- A sudden Manhattan of the mind
- In Louisville at 7
- Cathodes
- I was just thinking
- A song for H / far away
- Return to Prague
- Broken symmetries for Y
- Berlin by overnight
- Cradle song for A (interstate B3)
- Kierling / doubt
- From 553 W Elm Street, Logan Illinois (snow)
- Tokyo riddle song
- The Tartu piano
- Cold fusion for G
- 32 Via San Nicolo
- Found song for P.
- H thinks a journey
Added: January 2nd 2009 Reviewer: Kerry Leimer Score: Related Link: More Information Hits: 2363 Language: english
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