Azmeh / Barash / Chacon / Dufallo - Journaling 2 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Journaling, the follow-up to violinist Cornelius Dufallo's solo innova debut Dream Streets, present six of the most compelling pieces from his concert series of the same name alongside two of his own works for violin and digital loops. Dufallo began the Journaling series in 2009 as a way for the violinist to draw from his rich experiences as a performer in renowned ensembles such as ETHEL, the Flux Quartet, and Ne(x)tworks in order to create a new repertoire of violin music. Encompassing compositions by established and up-and-coming luminaries, Vijay Iyer, John Luther Adams, Joan Jeanrenaud, John King, Huang Ruo, and Kenji Bunch, the series displays a tremendous breadth of influence and direction-a riveting display of what is possible with the violin in today's musical universe.

Born in Danzig in 1626, Balthasar Erben was a cosmopolitan. When he applied for the position of Kapellmeister of the main church of St. Marien in his hometown at the age of 27, the council granted him a generous scholarship so that he could Inchlook around the world and perfect himself as a composerInch. For five years, Erben traveled throughout Europe, visiting all the centers of musical culture of the time, including Rome. His compositional style, which was developed during this time, is correspondingly distinctive a combination of different influences, cleverly interwoven. The Abendmusiken Basel offer an impressive collection of instrumental and sacred works by the composer who is unfortunately little known today.

Ed Martin's Ravello Records debut Journeys could not be more aptly titled. This album of highly original piano compositions invites the listener on a voyage through mysterious realms where the limits of the sensual and the intuitive dissolve - a journey that is at times epic, and at other times epically quiet. The album commences with Three Pieces for Piano (2006), a modernist mélange whose gamut ranges from dissonant serenity to rhythmic agitation. They're perfectly, intimately rendered by pianist Jeri-Mae G. Astolfi, who performs the entirety of Journeys with great clarity, structural insight and precision, never losing touch with the primal, emotional appeal of the compositions. Swirling Sky (2014), dedicated to the pianist, displays the collaboration between the performer and the composer at it's most fruitful. Martin has sculpted and captured the peculiar sensation of looking at clouds in the sky with seeming effortlessness; Astolfi performs them with a paradox combination of lightness and depth that is most appropriate. The album's namesake and centerpiece, however, is the recent, eleven-piece piano cycle Journey, composed in 2015-2017. In more traditionalist terms, one might call this Inchvariations on a themeInch - and one would fall horrendously short, considering the vast artistic and psychological scope of the work. The starting point, Soul, whose main idea centers around a humble minor third, is subsequently transformed in the most diverse of ways The motive appears, recognizable but ever-changing, in deep sorrow in Lament, desperate to the brink of madness in Vexed, collected in Revelation, and cheerfully delusional in Manic. Eventually, a new thought - Conviction - leads to a Metamorphosis and ultimately culminates in the final Transcend, the cycle's (and album's) musical catharsis.