Oleg Malov/ Keller Quartett, Tatiana Melentieva / Andrei Siegle ALEXANDER KNAIFEL Svete Tikhiy

If I were a betting man, I'd use my money to back the success of an ECM disc of music by the Russian composer Alexander Knaifel - the Piano Quintet "In Air Clear and Unseen" but more particularly a work for soprano and sampler, "Svete Tikhiy". It's music that's steeped in the spirit of the Russian Orthodox liturgy ... wonderfully evocative... Simplicity itself, but ethereal and haunting.
(Rob Cowan, BBC Radio 3)

ECM's documentation of outstanding music from the former Soviet Union continues with Svete Tikhiy, the first of several albums from the Uzbekistan-born and St Petersburg-based composer, Alexander Knaifel. This recording - featuring the distinguished Keller Quartett with pianist Oleg Malov, and the voice of Tatiana Melentieva processed by Andrei Siegle - brings together important new developments and impulses in Knaifel's music. The Keller Quartet play with the conviction and imagination they also brought to their prize-winning and critically acclaimed New Series recordings of the string music of György Kurtág ("Musik für Streichinstrumente") and Bach's "Die Kunst der Fuge". (ECM Records)