Silencio

After all, one has to agree with John Cage when he points out that "There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot."

What then does it mean to call an album "Silencio"?

I think what it means is that the music in this album tries not to communicate something to its listener, but rather aims at helping one communicate with one's Self. This lack of intentional outward interaction, and the parallel promotion of introspection, I think, is intended to be thought of as a silence. Indeed, the emotional landscape it allows us to observe is, perhaps, the closest thing to silence, for it is a still and timeless picture, void of any matter, absorbed in a heartbeat alone.

Technically this album is superb, with Gidon Kremer and his disciples proving to be, as always, up to the highest of expectations. The prepared piano in Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa deserves praise as well - I have never heard the piano sound so beautiful, evocative and majestic at once. As for Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and Vladimir Martynov, they are, of course, a handsome lot to be found combined in one CD, with 68 minutes of music at a reasonable price by Nonesuch's standards. The nature of these composers, however, is what makes this album a product that not everyone is likely to care for. I feel quite certain that anyone who likes minimalist music - in the style of Gorecki or Kancheli, for instance - will find this album enticing. On the contrary, I recommend those who believe simplicity to be a symptom of stupidity to spend their money in a different way, for the music in this album is indeed a minimalist delight.

In addition to "Tabula Rasa", there is another work by the Estonian composer Part, "Darf Ich" (or "May I"), "Company" by Philip Glass in an arrangement for string orchestra, and "Come In" a piece commissioned by Kremer from the little known Russian composer Vladimir Martynov. But aside from the opening Part work, I find that the intimate tone of the CD is too consistently bland for my taste. There are better quiet works out there, that reach into a deeper place beyond the mere superficiality of Martynov's lengthy but unengaging "Come In". Although he began his career in an interesting way, moving from early efforts involving serialism, to electronics, to the composition of a religious Russian rock-opera, at some point he embraced the ideas of "holy minimalism" and from my perspective seems to have eliminated all traces of interest in his work. It is difficult to appreciate a composer who comes out of the soviet oppression with the attitude Martynov expressed when discussing another of his works, "I was once told that man touches the truth twice. The first time is the first cry from a newborn baby's lips and the last is the death rattle. Everytthing between is untruth to a greater or lesser extent. So why not try to go all the way from the death rattle to the first cry, from the last opus to the first? But that might lead us to see Stalin standing on the Mausoleum as innocent and lofty as a swallow, and a swallow gulping a mosquito in flight would seem no less nightmarish and monstrous than Stalin, who destroyed millions of lives. All this is terribly confusing and it is much better to forget all the conundrums and sink into sweet melancholy. And let this melancholy last as long as possible; I suppose that's the only answer to the question of reality." In the work presented here, Martynov sinks into sweet melancholy again, which is pretty enough, but to my ear as bland as wallpaper. For the three or four minutes any single movement lasts it is fine, but the entire 6 movement work lasting 27 minutes is all exactly the same, without any contrast. Why would a composer in this century be composing music like this? Where is the artistry, the vision, the craftsmanship? All of the great Romantic composers, from Beethoven to Mahler, did this same thing long ago and so very much better. And of the Glass piece presented here, the less said the better. Even the fabulous performance by the Kremerata Baltica, surely one of the finest string orchestras around, cannot raise my interest in a piece (written as incidental music to a Beckett play) which simply rehashes the same Glass harmonic and rhythmic formulas he has been working on for 40 years now. As I listen to this, I can't help but think that Glass forgot to write the melody. To be honest, I find the piece so lacking in any artistic merit that I will not even play an excerpt for you. I hate to be a Grinch about this, but this is a CD that I hope I don't find in my stocking this Christmas. I know it is not popular here at Amazon to be critical of the CDs one reviews, but there is so much better music out there, even with this same introspective aesthetic, that I cannot recommend this at all except as a superb performance of the Part Tabula Rasa, which has in fact been recorded by Kremer before. It's not that I dislike contemporary music, or minimalism, or intimate introspective music; quite the opposite--it's that I find these pieces very poorly done, and extremely disappointing examples of their ilk.