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)

ALEXANDER KNAIFEL Lukomoriye

The fourth New Series album from Russian composer Alexander Knaifel may be his most wide-ranging to date, voyaging from the sacred to the secular and back again via several inspired detours. It includes two Prayers to the Holy Spirit, movingly performed by the Lege Artis Choir. The composer’s wife, Tatiana Melentieva, sings Bliss, based on Alexander Pushkin’s poem, and the great Russian poet is cross-referenced with St Ephraim the Syrian in O Lord of All My Life (A Poem and a Prayer) sung by Piotr Migunov. Oleg Malov, one of Alexander Knaifel’s closest associates for more than thirty years, accompanies both singers and is called upon to internalize texts - playing as if singing, a Knaifel speciality - in four further solo piano pieces. A mad tea party lives up to its title, with a surreal Alice in Wonderland spirit. This Child (after the Gospel of St Luke), A Confession and title piece Lukomoriye (both after Pushkin) are luminously quiet, and quietly magical. The scope of the musical material – by turns playful, devotional, lyrical – defies typecasting, just as it testifies to Kanifel’s eclectic imagination. “The music comes from up there,” Knaifel has said, pointing skyward, “what’s important for a composer is to listen to it, and get it down on paper.”

Alexander Knaifel was born in 1943 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, but grew up in St. Petersburg. His music, described by the Frankfurter Rundschau as "one of the most important revelations of recent years", belongs to that circle of near-contemporaries and associates from the former Soviet lands which includes Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, Tigran Mansurian, Valentin Silvestrov and Sofia Gubaidulina. But, although critics have found echoes of Pärt, Tavener and Górecki in Knaifel’s quest for musical beauty, he has an idiom that is entirely his own, with its own expressive power.

ECM’s documentation of Knaifel’s work began with Svete Tikhiy (recorded 1997 and 2000), with the Keller Quartet, pianist Oleg Malov, and Tatiana Melentieva. Amicta Sole, recorded 2000 to 2001, featured the great Mstislav Rostropovich, who had been Knaifel’s cello teacher at the Moscow Conserbatory; Rostropovich was subsequently the dedicatee of the 2006 recording Blazhenstva, which also featured The Lege Artis Choir. (ECM Records)

ALEXANDER KNAIFEL Blazhenstva

The third ECM album pioneering Alexander Knaifel’s highly personal œuvre after “Amicta Sole” and “Svete Tikhiy” (released in 2003 and 2005, respectively) offers an important addition to the label's wide-ranging spectrum of Post-Soviet music. Two starkly contrasting yet spiritually interrelated compositions – both of them, according to Knaifel, following the same path and forming a "united way" – are presented in exemplary interpretations from some of his long-standing collaborators, especially from cellist and conductor Ivan Monighetti. "In my opinion this recording is one of the best ones we ever did", says the composer who took part in all production stages.

While the heavy chords in “Lamento” for solo cello tend to evoke an almost orchestral density of sound, the subtle sonic hues of “Blazhenstva” for soloists, orchestra and choir often verge to silence. The 18-minute cello piece, a central example of Knaifel’s expressive early style, depicts an impressive development from vehement rage to almost transcendent tranquillity. Towards the end, the (male) player is asked to sing with closed mouth in the cello register. “Lamento” was written in 1967 when the composer, originally a cellist himself, was still studying in Leningrad. It was revised twenty years later and dedicated to the memory of the influential Russian choreographer Leonid Jakobson who had died in 1975.

“Blazhenstva” was composed in 1996 and is dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, Knaifel’s former teacher and mentor. Representative of Knaifel’s mature style it is a very sparse and completely quiet score of 37 minutes in slow tempo throughout. Relinquishing all ornamental elements it creates an incomparable sonic space of almost narcotic intensity. The biblical verse from the Sermon on the Mount (Gospel of St. Matthew) in Russian language are set for solo voices and different choral groups and enhanced by extensive string interludes. “Feasible comprehension of these immeasurable words seemed to me the best gift to the 70th anniversary of the great musician and great person Mstislav Rostropovich”, writes Knaifel in a short note for this recording. (ECM Records)

Keller Quartett CANTANTE E TRANQUILLO

For Cantante e tranquillo Keller Quartett leader András Keller and producer Manfred Eicher developed a carefully balanced program based entirely upon slow movements from a wide range of works from different eras. Across the centuries, beyond generic boundaries and the lives of their creators, the movements reveal remarkable similarities of expression that perhaps only become apparent in this new context.

At the same time the selection documents the quartet's 20-year collaboration with ECM and its growing maturity. Its performances invariably approach the works with integrity and an imaginative power rooted in close listening and subtle interaction. More recent readings of Beethoven's op. 130 and 135 have been augmented with fresh recordings of György Kurtág and combined into an album with older and newer renditions of Alexander Knaifel, György Ligeti and Johann Sebastian Bach.

 But there is another feature that unites the works and movements beneath the heading 'Cantante e tranquillo' (an expression mark from Beethoven's F-major String Quartet, op. 135): a sense of the ineffable. Music history knows few compositions more enigmatic in their essence than Beethoven's late quartets.

Johann Sebastian Bach's Art of Fugue has likewise kept its secrets to the present day. Is there anything more astonishing, and yet more consummately wrought, than this opus summum that resists all speculation? As late as 1993 Peter Schleuning could write of Bach's late magnum opus that 'the history of The Art of Fugue is a history of solitude, of quests and discoveries, of experimentation and research – and of failure. The work grew old with Bach and died with him.' Yet scholars and performers alike have remained vitally alive to The Art of Fugue.
A prime example is the present quartet arrangement of several of its numbers. In any event, the part-writing of the four instruments almost has the character of a musical analysis, much like Anton Webern's arrangement of the Bach Ricercar.
Bach, to quote Alfred Einstein, was a rock on which many composers have built their works, including Alfred Schnittke and Alexander Knaifel. Also among them is György Kurtág. His epigrammatic works function like punctuation marks in the dramatic structure of the recording. As does György Ligeti with the multi-layered counterpoint of his entire oeuvre.
The CD's booklet text sums it up: 'A wistful charm imbues this entire recording of pieces which, though not written together, seem to have been predestined for each other.' (ECM Records)

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)