Two works from Austrian pianist and composer Elisabeth Harnik sharing a subtle and complex aesthetic balancing acoustics & electronic instruments through extended approaches while accommodating composed and improvisation sections: Holding Up A Bridge commissioned by Viennese ensemble Studio Dan; and Superstructure performed by ALL Ears Area Ensemble.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2021 Country: Austria Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Track 1 recorded live at Radio Kulturhaus, in Vienna, Austria, in 2007, by Anton Reininger and Florian Rosensteiner. Track 2 recorded in 2018, by Werner Angerer and Xizi Wang.
"Austrian pianist and composer Elisabeth Harnik is part of the avant-garde music cooperative Catalytic Sound, but Superstructure - Holding Up A Bridge brings together two pieces of her compositional work that are separated by a decade and yet share an unclassifiable, exploratory vision. Superstructure dates from 2006, though recorded a year later, and features Harnik playing with All Ears Ensemble, a six-piece group. Although it's a recording of a live performance, the sounds that make up Superstructure often barely seem to relate to the actual line-up of piano, clarinet, accordion, violin, double bass and electronics that made it. Focused on texture and atmosphere rather than melody, it's an absorbing and sometimes nerve-jangling piece of music.
The album opens slowly, with ominous sawing bass noise and tinkling sounds, gradually gaining momentum, and although the feel is improvisatory, it remains a tightly controlled piece. There are passages that seem almost playful, with bustling bass and percussion forming and reforming around Harnik's jittery, sometimes jazzy piano, but even during these passages something - electronic elements, violin or accordion - will create a counter-mood that is edgily tense or dissonant. It's a piece of music that presumably requires intense listening on the part of the musicians involved, and repays it on the part of the listener. Experienced just as a wash of sound, Superstructure can be disorienting and unsettling. But engaged with and listened to in a more focused way, the interrelationships of the different components reveal a sense of structure that is sometimes no less forbidding, and fascinating too. In its barest moments, especially during the second half of its 28-minute running time, Superstructure is reduced to a bass hum and some high, scraping strings and unidentifiable noises. And yet, although sometimes minimalist, it never feels aimless or empty, and its complex, unsettled mood lasts long after it has faded into silence.
Holding Up A Bridge, recorded in 2018 by Studio Dan - that is, Thomas Frey (flute), Viola Falb (alto saxophone), Dominik Fuss (trumpet), Daniel Riegler (trombone), Michael Tiefenbacher (piano), Hubert Bründlmayer (drums), Sophia Goidinger-Koch (violin), Maiken Beer (violincello) and Philipp Kienberger (double bass) - has similar ingredients but a very different feel. The range of the sound is broader (not least because of Fuss and Riegler's outstanding playing), but the piece is, if anything, even more restrained than Superstructure and has an almost hypnotic droning quality at its heart. It's a more dynamic piece too, with dramatic, cinematic elements punctuating the drone, as well as unexpected moments of Ornette Coleman-like free jazz. Although significantly shorter than Superstructure with a running time of 18 minutes, it's still a substantial piece, and it holds the attention easily, somehow catching the listener by surprise with twists that are both unexpected and logical. For the most part, its mood is a kind of expectant foreboding, but in its last movement, Holding Up A Bridge is unexpectedly overwhelmed by a feeling of reflective melancholy, thanks especially to some genuinely beautiful playing by Riegler.
Taken together, both pieces reveal a subtle, exploratory musician who harnesses both improvisation and composition to make work that is stimulating and enigmatic, although arguably better at posing interesting musical questions than resolving them. But perhaps that's the point: to open frontiers and possibilities, not to give comfort by establishing more boundaries. As an album, Superstructure - Holding Up A Bridge is rarely an easy listen, but it's a fascinating one."-Will Pinfold, Spectrum Culture