Lux

Wolfgang Rihm - Et Lux - Huelgas Ensemble, Minguet Quartett, Paul Van Nevel (2015) {ECM New Series 2404}
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© 2015 ECM Records | ECM New Series 2404
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Choral / Chamber Music / Strings

From a composer whose vast output plunders the stylistic gamut of western musical history and then some, here is a single movement requiem full of clean lines and troubled introspection. Et Lux is a 2009 composition for voices and string quartet in which Rihm dwells on certain phrases of the Latin death mass – particularly the notion of eternal light, which he calls “comforting yet deeply disturbing”. The same could be said of Et Lux as a whole. Tropes waft in from across the ages: this music treads the line of tangibility, with sudden rushes of anger or fondness and the messy half-memories that come with grief. The strings complete phrases that the singers can’t seem to summon. Conductor Paul van Nevel doubles the vocal parts to create broad, generous textures that sound lovely and lush against the strings’ icy clarity – all qualities that ECM’s engineers are expert at capturing.

On his third offering for Warp, Brian Eno returns to ambient music once again. He displayed it on his label debut, 2010's Small Craft on a Milk Sea, but the various pieces on it were either rejects from The Lovely Bones soundtrack or developed with Leo Abrahams on the Everything That Happens Will Happen Today tour. The music on Lux is a single, 75-minute composition divided into four segments that are just over 18 minutes in length or under 20. They were composed to accompany an exhibit of Eno's visual art in Turin. While the music on Lux adheres to his ambient principle of making music that is "rewarding attention but not being so strict as to demand it," and there is an elemental drift in all four parts of this work, that's not all there is.

Boogie-woogie pianist Meade Lux Lewis' next-to-last record was his first recording in five years and his final opportunity to stretch out unaccompanied. This solo Riverside set as usual finds Lewis generally sticking to the blues (with "You Were Meant for Me" and "Fate" being exceptions), mostly performing originals. On a few of the songs Lewis switches effectively to celeste. It apparently only took Meade Lux Lewis two hours to record the full set and the results are quite spontaneous yet well organized, a fine all-around portrait of the veteran pianist in his later period.