GONZALEZ
Solo Piano
No Format
VASSILIS TSABROPOULOS & ANJA LECHNER
Chants, Hymns and Dances
ECM
· Salon music for the 21st century.
Mystic philosopher Georges Gurdjieff spent 20 years travelling through inner Asia and the Middle East in the early 20th century. Along with the spiritual teachings of those regions, he also brought back a vast body of remembered folk and sacred music, which his disciple Thomas de Hartman transcribed and elaborated for the piano, influenced by the Gnossiennes and Gymnopedies of Eric Satie.
These pieces for piano have been a major influence among most of those who crossed the pop-classical border in the last quarter-century, and Canadian electro-producer Gonzalez is only the latest in a long line of musicians to draw inspiration from that body of work. So, while the 16 instrumentals on Solo Piano are a radical departure from his previous work, they aren’t all that original. Still, so long as he doesn’t get too jazzy in his variations, the set holds together well, with the flavour of the original melodies and rhythms well-preserved.
Twenty-five years ago, ECM released one of the first of the Gurdjieff adaptations (by Keith Jarrett) and, given the label’s formidable reputation in the contemporary classical field, I had hoped that this new recording by a Greek pianist and German cellist would complement Jarrett’s laidback approach with passion and precision. Unfortunately, although their technique is irreproachable, they lack the soulful edge that one finds in any field recording of sacred folk music from the originating regions. As a result, Gonzalez’s relatively lightweight but energetic effort is probably truer to its sources.
But better still, for those with the time and money to pursue it, is Alain Kremski’s recently completed 12-CD overview of the Gurdjieff-de Hartman oeuvre, available at your local classical-record store on the Naïve label.
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