ECM News: Keith Jarretts Bordeaux Concert und Ukraine-Künstler Valentin Silvestrov

 

Bordeaux Concert is a special document from Keith Jarrett’s last European tour. Each of Jarrett’s 2016 solo piano concerts had its own strikingly distinct character, and in Bordeaux the lyrical impulse is to the fore. In the course of this improvised suite, many quiet discoveries are made, and there is a touching freshness to the music as a whole, a feeling of intimate communication. Reviewing the July 2016 performance, the French press spoke of hints of the Köln Concert and Bremen-Lausanne in the flow of things, and extended sections of Bordeaux are beguilingly beautiful.

Tender songs are pulled from the air, “rousing a community of listening at the edge of silence”, as Le Monde put it, “an awareness of time out from the noise and weariness of the world.”
 

With Maidan, Valentin Silvestrov continues his longstanding association with ECM and this time presents a programme of choir music that is as timely as it is dear to the Ukrainian composer’s heart. Like the albums Sacred Songs and Sacred Works, Maidan embraces Silvestrov’s composing for vocal ensemble and captures the Kyiv Chamber Choir under Mykola Hobdych in an impassioned performance at the St. Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv from 2016. Silvestrov, who in spring 2022 had to leave his Kyiv home of over half a century, composed “Maidan 2014”,

a ‘cycle of cycles’, in the wake of the ‘Euromaidan’ – the wave of demonstrations that hit Ukraine in 2014. Replete with liturgical passages and verses by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchencko, Maidan offers a wealth of melodies with both hymnal and chant-like structures. In the CD’s liner text, Silvestrov points out how “it’s no accident that the symbolic crown and ending of the “Maidan 2014” cycle is a quiet lullaby. For I’m neither able nor willing to duplicate the noise of this terrible war. Instead, I want to show how fragile our civilisation is. I try, with my music, to safeguard and preserve a day of peace.” The album is released as Silvestrov turns 85.October 7 Valentin Silvestrov will be honoured with the special prize for his life time achievement from Germany’s Opus Classic Awards.
To mark the release of these momentous albums, we included a wide selection from Keith Jarrett’s catalogue and recordings of Valentin Silvestrov this week's offer.

Among the Keith Jarrett albums in the offer are a broad selection of his solo concerts, recordings with his European quartet, with the standards trio as well as of his J.S. Bach interpretations and more. 
 
Silvestrov recordings in the offer include the seminal leggiero, pesante with the Rosamunde Quartett, pianist Silke Avenhaus and soprano Maacha Deubner, Der Bote – a piano recital by Alexei Lubimov, Hieroglyphen der Nacht with Anja Lechner and Agnès Vesterman, the composer’s symphonic work Metamusik / Postludium, recordings by Duo Gazzana and more.