Patrick Demenga / Thomas Demenga LUX AETERNA

"Few are prepared", wrote The Strad, "for the sensational panache, dazzling virtuosity and sheer musicianship that characterizes the Demenga brothers' playing", and Gramophone magazine has hailed the Swiss cellists' playing as "spectacularly assured". Patrick Demenga ( b. 1962) and Thomas Demenga (b. 1954 ) make an impact, wherever they play. "Lux Aeterna" is their second combined New Series recording, following the critically acclaimed double-album "12 Hommages à Paul Sacher" released in 1995, and it is the first ECM recording to feature them actually playing together. (On the Sacher discs they had shared the programme between them).

Each of the cellist brothers is secure in his own reputation and continues to lead a distinguished solo career; the duo exists to celebrate their shared commitment for music from the baroque to the present day. Theirs is, how-ever, an unusual instrumental combination, and strong cello duo repertoire being in short supply, the Demengas have commissioned pieces from outstanding contemporary composers - and composers, in turn, have also dedi-cated works to them.

The opening work on this ECM New Series CD, Alexander Knaifel's Lux aeterna, is one of the most fascinating, compelling, intriguing, and rewarding compositions ' and perfomances ' that I have heard for quite some time. The sounds that the Demenga brothers achieve, combining their two cellos with their two voices, are haunting and expressive. You will think at times when listening to this cut that you are listening to a chamber orchestra and choir. ... This CD would well be worth purchasing for the title cut alone, but there's more, much more, including a duo for two cellos by Thomas Demenga, a sonata for two cellos by Jean Barrière, which shows that the Demengas can also play expressively in music that the average music listener is more likely to find familiar in style, and compositions by contemporary composers Roland Moser and Barry Guy. ... All in all, Lux aeterna is a CD that will open up your ears and minds to the musical possibilities inherent in two musicians. (Karl W. Nehring, Sensible Sound)

Thomas Demenga J.S. BACH Suiten für Violoncello

Swiss cellist Thomas Demenga returns to Bach’s suites. “To me, Bach is the greatest musical genius who has ever lived. His music is pure, sublime. It possesses something divine and each musician has a lifetime in which to discover new ways of interpreting it.” Demenga previously recorded the cello suites for ECM between 1986 and 2002, juxtaposing them with contemporary composition in albums that count as milestones in the early history of the New Series. This new double album however is devoted entirely to Bach and the six suites. Many years of playing and studying every aspect of them, from source manuscripts to different tempos, embellishments, fingerings and bowings, have brought Demenga to the heart of the music – which Bach himself described as the only goal. This new account of the music was recorded at the Hans Huber Saal in Basel. (ECM Records)

Thomas Demenga / Erich Höbart THOMAS LARCHER Naunz

Austrian composer Thomas Larcher, born in 1963, has the singular ability to write music that can sound sweet without sounding naïve or simplistic. Larcher can also certainly write music that's powerfully assertive, but if his work has a characteristic sound, it could be described as emotionally expressive in a meditative, often melancholy way. Naunz, for piano (1989), couldn't be called easy; Naunz's musical logic tends to be unpredictable and is seldom immediately obvious, although close attention reveals an emotional through-line, and it is full of beautiful, clarion major thirds that are used utterly unconventionally, but that help keep the listener anchored. Similar compositional approaches are evident in each of the works recorded here, which reward close and focused listening and are emotionally honest and make sense on a subliminal, if not always rational level. The most substantial work on the album is Kraken, in which pianist Larcher is joined by cellist Thomas Demenga and violinist Erich Hobarth. The variety of instrumental colors available to the trio, which Larcher deploys with the utmost delicacy, opens up an even broader range of expressive possibilities than the solos works. The brief Antennan-Requiem für H. inhabits much the same contemplative world as the other pieces, but it is performed entirely inside the piano. Larcher's work should appeal to fans of new music that defies easy categorization and that expresses a distinctive, communicative compositional voice. The sound of the ECM album, produced by Manfred Eicher, is characteristically immaculate and lively. (Stephen Eddins)

HEINZ REBER Mnaomai, Mnomai

The Swiss composer Heinz Reber (1952-2007) cut a fascinating figure in the world of sound. He began his career as a music therapist for psychiatric patients before turning to more public forms of audible expression. Reber would even combine the two in a 1975 play for Swiss radio, the cast of which was culled from those same patients. Such ruptures of identity would characterize his output to come. For the spiraling exegesis that is Mnaomai, Mnomai, Reber assembled a handful of equally committed (no pun intended) instrumentalists and vocalists for an intriguing mélange of sound and spoken word. The word mnaomai (pronounced “mnah’-om-ahee”) appears in the New Testament and means “to bear in mind” in Greek. Reber lifted his title from Jean-François Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy. Although the source texts are interesting in and of themselves—ranging from Beckett to Chinese protest poetry written by Tschin Zhang, one of the album’s vocal performers—they constitute a set of linguistic entities whose orthographic shapes are as equally important as their verbal ones. Thomas Demenga’s viola seems to struggle through its opening while a low groan stretches in the background. Demenga scrounges for phonetic footholds as Zhang’s voice rings out like a light to show the way. Jon Christensen and Terje Rypdal each take their own direct approach, even while Demenga continues to wrestle with his communicative role. Zhang’s voice soars through a field of strings with the surety of a homing pigeon, while that of Ellen Horn creeps in from above, percolating through Zhang’s as if to strip these languages of their semantic egos. Sometimes the voices are present, other times they are distant, but they never stray from their message. Part III consists of a repeated figure on viola, as if Demenga’s instrument has finally found a solid phrase and is reveling in its repetition. This is followed by a final spurt of poetic energy that fizzles out into a delicate cello strum.

In closing, I should like to address a concern I have over a particular way in which this piece has been interpreted. Mnaomai, Mnomai contains a fair amount of spoken Mandarin, and for those of us who don’t speak the language it’s all too easy to over-romanticize Chinese for its rhythms and other idiosyncrasies. This seemingly impenetrable barrier is further strengthened by the addition of Horn’s quieter recitations, of which Steve Lake writes: “When bringing Ellen Horn’s voice into the ensemble, Tschin Zhang’s poem was converted into Norwegian, another ‘alien’ tongue, to keep the text as a pure play of sounds.” But “pure” to whom? Surely, heritage speakers of either language will have a difficult time treating the text as a meaningless, if enchanting, jumble of phonemes. Rather, they will hear a skillful recitation of a heartfelt poem written in a time of great political upheaval. Are they somehow missing the point? I doubt it. In spite of Reber’s supposed interest in the “Far East,” I don’t feel as if he is using the world’s most populously spoken language just for the sound of it. Otherwise, what would be the purpose of using words at all? Chinese is itself no more “beautiful” or “musical” than any other language, and any assertions to the contrary are simply a matter of opinion. In the end, Reber cannot be said to be tapping in to some mystical linguistic core, but rather creating a new and personal juxtaposition of music and speech as a means of teasing out the narrative potential in both. Neither can we ignore that the musicians, and Demenga in particular, are also “speaking” through a multi-instrumental conversation. Still, I think Lake is getting at the heart of this record: namely, that language’s fundamentally arbitrary vocabularies are like composed matter—static and silent until they are enlivened by human rendering. It all comes down to the transparency of the utterance. This is music interested not in its legacy, but in its disintegration, for as the title reminds us, we do well to “bear in mind” that meaning exists only insofar as it holds our interest. (ECM Reviews)

Rosamunde Quartett THOMAS LARCHER Ixxu

The four chamber works by Austrian Thomas Larcher recorded here show that's he's a composer to watch out for. His compositional voice is strikingly unencumbered by adherence to any orthodoxy, and his work is direct in its emotional and intellectual communication. My Illness Is the Medicine I Need, for soprano, violin, cello, and piano, is particularly effective; its aphoristic texts come from a Benetton "Colors" magazine that included photographs of psychiatric hospitals and quotations from their patients. Larcher's understated text setting allows the voices of the patients to be heard with unaffected bleakness and it is strongly moving. Even though it uses a contemporary harmonic language, the string quartet Ixxu (1998-2004) is old-fashioned in its emotional clarity. Its last movement, "ruhig," is genuinely peaceful and brings to mind the serenity of Arvo Pärt's Fratres. His 1990 quartet Cold Farmer is similarly direct and generous in inviting the listener in, and here again the slow movement is especially deeply felt and engaging. The Rosamunde Quartett performs Ixxu and Cold Farmer with passion and conviction. In the other works, soprano Andrea Lauren Brown, violinist Christoph Poppen, cellist Thomas Demenga, and the composer at the piano give comparably intense and committed performances. ECM's sound is intimate and clean. (Stephen Eddins)

Thomas Demenga / Thomas Zehetmair / Christoph Schiller J.S. BACH - B.A. ZIMMERMANN

Cellist Thomas Demenga continues his Bach project by juxtaposing the Baroque master’s d-minor Suite No. 2 with the work of Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970), one of the most important non-Darmstadters after World War II. As ever, Demenga makes a convincing argument for the pairing (interestingly enough, most of the criticism of Demenga’s project sees the Bach as filler). In this case, Zimmermann is something of an effortless choice, for his fondness of quotation and respect for tradition were at the heart of his artistry. His approach to time in this regard was particularly significant, drawing on intersections of influence through a wide range of trends and idioms.

Thus do we find ourselves in the comforting waters of Bach’s generative whispers from the moment we dive in. For this performance Demenga adopts the approach of a viola da gamba player (to greatest effect in his raspily inflected Courante). This sound draws out the music’s inherent gaseousness, in which one feels something dark and cosmic taking shape. Demenga’s notecraft ensures that every molecule feels connected through a legato of silence. He digs as deep as he can for those distinct Bach lows, plows double stops as if they were fertile fields, and maintains subtle independence of line in the Sarabande. He bows the Menuets as if with shadows, then elicits one of the finer renderings of the Gigue I’ve yet heard, striking a fine balance between jubilation and regret.

The boldness of this architecture may seem an ill fit to Zimmermann’s sonatas, which despite their meticulous scoring also call for an improvisatory approach. This puts the musician in a potentially compromising space, though if anyone is up to the challenge, it’s Demenga. Many of Zimmermann’s works were considered unplayable when first written, the Cello Sonata of 1960 not least of all. Drawing from his usual pool of spatial and temporal concerns, the piece moves beyond the Romantic notion of cello as vox humana and into the realm of speech, action, and embodiment. In his liners, Demenga notes a particularly difficult passage in the first movement, which encompasses three distinct time-layers: “while the upper voice, played on the bridge, produces a continuous ritardando, the middle one is the most striking, because of its very large range and numbers of notes played pizzicato, and then the lowest, played on the nut of the bow, sounds like a scarcely perceptible accelerando.” Despite its brevity, unpacking the finer implications thereof took Demenga weeks to perfect. (ECM Reviews)

Gidon Kremer EDITION LOCKENHAUS

Five-CD limited-edition box set, issued in time for the 30th anniversary of the Austrian chamber-music festival. “Edition Lockenhaus” returns long out-of-print titles to the catalogue, with some of the finest musicians of the New Series, including Gidon Kremer, Kim Kashkashian, Heinz Holliger, Thomas Zehetmair, Thomas Demenga, Robert Levin, Eduard Brunner and many more. Gidon Kremer: “The artistic atmosphere in Lockenhaus soon has everybody speaking on the same wavelength.” The set opens with previously unreleased recordings – from 2001 and 2008 – with Sir Simon Rattle and Roman Kofman conducting Kremerata Baltica in revelatory performances of Richard Strauss’s “Metamorphosen” and Olivier Messiaen’s “Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine”: the committed interpretations convey the spirit of Lockenhaus. Discs two through five focus on music of César Franck, André Caplet, Francis Poulenc, Leos Janácek, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Erwin Schulhoff. Original liner notes, an interview with Kremer, and new texts complete a very special edition. (ECM Records)

Thomas Demenga / Hansheinz Schneeberger / Tabea Zimmermann JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH - SÁNDOR VERESS

Under Demenga’s bow, Bach’s Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello in G Major flickers with candlelit intimacy, honed like the wood from the instrument through which it emotes in that distinct and mineral tone. One imagines the room where it was first practiced, walls dancing in a quiet play of light and shadow: the player’s arched head, swinging hands, lithe fingers curling about the neck of the one who sings. As to the later suites, Demenga brings a unique mix of fluidity and rusticity to his sound, but above all pays attention to negative spaces in a way that any accomplished Bach interpreter must. We hear this in the pauses of the Courante and in the substantial attentions of the Sarabande, which he suffuses with a downright soulful air. And through the subtle dramatic shape he imparts to the Menuets he dances his way to a reflective brilliance in the Gigue.

With this perfect tetrahedron so thoughtfully folded before us, Veress’s 1935 Sonata for Violin may seem to break the symmetry. Yet the sonata, among Veress’s first published works, more importantly reveals an economy of notecraft on par with the Baroque master. Its slow-fast-slow structure betrays a more complex and organic geometry that begins with a jig of Bartókian proportions and seeps through the Adagio’s quicksand, only to rise again, grabbing the tail of gorgeous gypsy air into the fresh air of the final leap. Violinist Hansheinz Schneeberger, who made his ECM debut with Demenga on the latter’s first Bach pairing, plays this jewel with an intensity and focus familiar to anyone who enjoys Kim Kashkashian’s take on solo Hindemith. Despite the meager comparisons I’ve attempted to draw to other such composers, this music thrives with a forward-looking robustness all its own.

The light at the end of this tunnel comes in the form of Veress’s Sonata for Cello. Composed in Baltimore, the 1967 piece also takes a three-movement structure, this time marked “Dialogue,” “Monologue,” and “Epilogue,” which, as Holliger notes in an accompanying essay, takes us through an inner turmoil on the path toward self-liberation. For me, the most solitary movement is the Dialogue. Its dirge-like density betrays an ecstatic turmoil while keeping a hand cupped to the ear of some cherished and unrecoverable stillness. By contrast, the Monologue seems almost resolute as it traces fingers blindly through the ashes, from which the final movement rises in its own agitated way with assertion on the tongue. As a student of Veress, Holliger no doubt took on some of his mentor’s quirks, and the influence of said Epilogue rings clearly in Trema.

Violist Tabea Zimmermann joins the roster for the Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello, backing us into 1954. The 20-minute piece takes two movements, the first of which moves like molasses into a dulcet and spectral territory ahead of its time, while the second brings the patter of urgency to a journey of immense detail and brilliance.

Of this journey the lowly reviewer can make no definitive claims. Naysayers of the modern may make a delightful discovery or two along the way, even as they cling to Bach, while defenders of the twentieth century will immediately recognize that its music would be nowhere without him. Either way, I can only commend Demenga and ECM for an ongoing commitment to bring their programming alive with the benefits of (im)possibility. (ECM Reviews)

Thomas Demenga / Thomas Larcher / Teodoro Anzellotti CHONGURI

Cellist Thomas Demenga offers up a colorful program of encores in Chonguri. From the pizzicato tour de force of the title piece by Sulkhan Tsintsadze, which imitates the selfsame four-stringed instrument of the composer’s native Georgia, it’s clear we’re in for a lively and eclectic treat. Pianist Thomas Larcher accompanies Demenga for most of the program, which includes nods to the familiar and not so. Of the latter, Catalonian composer Gaspar Cassadó’s Danse du diable vert is among the more spirited pins in the album’s geographic and chronographic spread. Two Chopin nocturnes give us a taste of home, in a manner of speaking, with the c-sharp minor presented to us in one of the more beautiful arrangements one is likely to find (though I’ll always be partial to Bela Banfalvi’s). The balance here is superb. A dash of Webern keeps us on our toes, his three Little Pieces sparkling with a charm that is, I daresay, romantic. Of romance we get plenty more in the three Fauré selections sprinkled throughout, of which Après un rêve is a highlight, and in Liszt’s evocative La lugubre gondola.

Four Bach chorales, in Demenga’s arrangements, for which he is joined by accordionist Teodoro Anzellotti form the album’s roof.Sounding somewhere between an organ and a hurdy-gurdy, the sheer depth of tone from Demenga’s cello in these is inspiring.He also offers two pieces of his own, of which the programmatic New York Honk is a delightful end.

Demenga’s playing is such that one can feel the lineage that binds all of this music together into a masterful patchwork as idiosyncratic as it is (seemingly) inevitable. Such programming epitomizes the ECM New Series spirit insofar as it charts the contemporary while paying due respect to the antique in what amounts to one of Demenga’s finest recordings to date and a label landmark. (ECM Reviews)

GIYA KANCHELI Diplipito

“If you can imagine a flower that makes its way through asphalt, that’s exactly what you find in my compositions. In my works I’m always trying to get the flower through the asphalt.”
Giya Kancheli

The present disc features premiere recordings made – as has been the case with all of Kancheli’s ECM recordings – with the participation of the composer. “Valse Boston”, written in 1996, bears two dedications, one to its conductor and pianist Dennis Russell Davies, the other to the composer’s wife (“with whom I have never danced”). If Kancheli has made a point of avoiding the dancefloor he has created a piece that moves uniquely, if not in ¾ time, and makes sometimes devastating use of the abrupt dynamic contrasts that have become almost a trademark. Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich in the liner notes:

“The metaphor of ‘dancing’ should be interpreted less as a profound than as an ironic comment – but it is also an allusion to the vast distance that separates Kancheli’s music from the apotheosis or demonic fury of the dance. The Boston Waltz is generally associated with the louche, slightly faded realm of urbane entertainment; for Kancheli this is at most a ‘distant echo’ buried beneath the rubble of the ages.” Kancheli has, however, said that he was inspired, in writing this piece, by the visual image of Davies conducting this piece from the piano stool, half standing, gesturing with a free arm or nods of the head while playing; this was also a dance of sorts. Jungheinrich: “Three-quarter time is never used as the vehicle, elixir and essence of dance-like energy. What does occur at the beginning is a slow triplet movement; but instead of introducing spirited movement, the consistently gentle sonorities retain a heavy, clinging, glutinous quality. The first violins seem to want to counter the persistent, grinding slowness of the tempo with their own abandoned song, a mercurial line in the highest register.”

Davies and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra have included “Valse Boston” in their touring programmes on both sides of the Atlantic. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “Don't let the innocuous title fool you: Giya Kancheli's ‘Valse Boston’ is a powder keg of a piece. It is a secular prayer veering between extremes of dynamics, tempo and mood. One moment the piano is goading the strings to produce angry, stabbing dissonances. The next moment, it is quieting the orchestra with tiny fragments of waltz-time, deceptively merry. Nobody conjures troubled landscapes in sound like Kancheli. He has given us a bleak, very Eastern view of modern existence, but the effect is cleansing.”

“Diplipito, written in 1997, is named for the little, high-tuned Georgian drums – in the range of the darbouka or the bongos – that are frequently used to accompany dancing. And the percussive syllables that Kancheli gives to American countertenor Derek Lee Ragin are a kind of concrete poetry inspired by the drum’s rhythm patterns. Giya Kancheli was greatly impressed by Ragin in 1999 when he sang the world première of the composer’s “And farewell goes out sighing”, alongside Gidon Kremer with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Kurt Masur and the countertenor was an essential choice for the recording of “Diplipito”, where he is partnered with Thomas Demenga. Ragin makes his New Series debut here while Demenga has been a mainstay of the label since its inauguration.

Jungheinrich: “The vocal part in ‘Diplipito’ finds an equal partner in the solo cello. The orchestra rarely play tutti, there are no winds or brass at all, and the guitar, piano and percussion come in individually, functioning alternately as solo and secondary presences. The terse, tentative figures in the cello contrast with the cluster-like chords typifying the piano line. For long stretches, the sonic space is chromatically measured – often in small, careful interval steps…. The mood of tranquillity, even latent immobility, that dominates the first half of the piece is suspended by the entry of a vigorous ornamental figure on the guitar (which is immediately picked up by the cello), followed by several explosive fortissimo passages. The soft murmur of a bongo rhythm increases the restlessness. This is the preparation for the final phase, the disembodiment of sonic materiality.”  (ECM Records)

Patrick Demenga / Thomas Demenga 12 HOMMAGES A PAUL SACHER POUR VIOLONCELLE

This unique collection features compositions written to celebrate the 70th birthday, in 1976, of Paul Sacher, Swiss conductor and arts patron. Presented together on disc for the first time, the 12 pieces on this double album are effectively a landscape of modern cello music.

Each of the composers were asked to write a piece using, as a starting point, a motif of the 6 letters of Sacher’s name. New Series soloist Thomas Demenga - acclaimed for his sequence of albums juxtaposing Bach and contemporary composers - and his brother Patrick Demenga are the performers.

Nearly two decades ago, Mstislav Rostropovich asked a dozen composer-friends to write short works for him to play as part of the celebration of the 75th birthday of Paul Sacher, arguably the century's greatest patron of music. The theme, based on six notes translated from letters of the name of the honoree, was to be developed by Benjamin Britten for variations by Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, Alberto Ginastera, Cristobal Halffter, Witold Lutoslawski and others.

The composers, however, responded differently in terms of the form, length and, in one instance, number of musicians for their pieces, and Rostropovich never played all of them. Some were recorded by other artists; the present release is the first to offer them in a musical "bouquet," as intended.
Few listeners will want to hear the entire program in a single 83-minute sitting. But the music is for anyone who loves the Bach Cello Suites or the Kodaly solo Sonata. Despite touches of academic severity, there's tremendous variety of sound and expression, with playing of the highest order. It's a challenging collection to come to terms with before the observances of Sacher's 95th birthday next March. (August 06, 1995 / Alan G. Artner)

Thomas Zehetmair / Thomas Demenga BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMANN Canto di Speranza

Three keyfigures from ECM’s contemporary music roster – Heinz Holliger, Thomas Zehetmair, and Thomas Demenga – team up for an exceptional recording of three works by German post-war composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann. Zimmermann, almost half a generation older than the serialists such as Boulez and Stockhausen, integrated state-of-the-art compositional methods in his writing while constantly following his own independent, highly expressive musical language. The rhythmically energetic violin concerto (1950) which is partially based on twelve-tone models and cast in three movements, was soon hailed as a model for a post-war solo concerto, while “Canto di Speranza” (1953/57), a one-movement cello concerto, acccording to Zimmermann, emphasizes monologue and introvert meditation. “Ich wandte mich…” on the other hand is Zimmermann’s last work, finished only a few days before his suicide in 1970. Labelled by the composer as an “ecclesiastical action”, the 35-minute oratorio on biblical verse and the famous parable "The Grand Inquisitor" from Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov” is a deeply pessimistic “performance art” work - of the kind that flourished in Germany’s ‘Fluxus’ scene around 1970 - involving recitation, singing, and both gestural and acrobatic action.