Santana Pierre Favre Trio

It's hard to imagine that a group as bottom-heavy as percussionist Pierre Favre's new ensemble could actually sound light and ethereal. But Fleuve does just that. With a septet featuring two basses, tuba/serpent, percussion and, at times, bass clarinet, there's no shortage of warmth and depth. But with guitar, harp and soprano saxophone fleshing out the middle and top end, Fleuve manages to have both weight and an airy ambience that works, in no small part, due to Favre's carefully crafted compositions and the kind of sonic transparency that's long been a defining aspect of the ECM aesthetic.

The Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191, is the last solo concerto by Antonín Dvořák. It was written in 1894 for his friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan, but was premiered by the English cellist Leo Stern. The Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90, B. 166, (also called Dumky trio from the subtitle Dumky) is a composition by Antonín Dvořák for piano, violin and cello. It is among the composer's best-known works. At the same time it is a prominent example for a piece of chamber music deviating strongly from the customary form of classical chamber music – both in terms of the number of movements and of their formal construction.

On Oct. 12th 1971, the music for this album has been recorded at Horst Jankowski's studio, Stuttgart, Germany. In those days, it was the pianist Joe Haider's biggest desire to record a trio-album. Consequently, this musical portrait has been realized and recorded by his good friend and producer Otto B. Hartmann.
During several years, Haider stayed at a house bearing that awkward name of 'Katzenvilla'. Nevertheless, the pianist recalls to have spent good and significant times there. Each title of this album relates to a story of this man's human and musical development during an important period of his life. To assure a truly spontaneous recording of his material, Haider called upon his friends from Switzerland, bassist Isla Eckinger and drummer Pierre Favre…

How often do you walk into a situation without knowing what will happen? Do you fear it? Or do you embrace it? The unknown is a ubiquitous phenomenon that can be found in the essence of a person, place, or thing. Many musicians welcome musical situations where they are unaware of what will happen. That could be during improvising or performing with musicians for the first time. Both take an incredible amount of vulnerability and trust. The unknown seems to drive them into a space and time that controls them, not the other way around. And more than likely, that’s what they want it to do. Musicians prefer the unknown to utilize them as vessels to reach their audience or even to experience their own liberation.

The greatest of Mozart's wind serenades and the toughest of Alban Berg's major works might seem an unlikely pairing, but in an interview included with the sleeve notes for this release, Pierre Boulez points up their similarities. Both works are scored for an ensemble of 13 wind instruments (with solo violin and piano as well in the Berg) and both include large-scale variations as one of their movements - and Boulez makes the comparisons plausible enough in these lucid performances. It's rare to hear him conducting Mozart, too, and if the performance is a little brisker and more strait-laced than ideal, the EIC's phrasing is a model of clarity and good taste. It's the performance of the Berg, though, that makes this such an important issue; both soloists, Mitsuko Uchida and Christian Tetzlaff, are perfectly attuned to Boulez's approach - they have given a number of performances of the Chamber Concerto before - and the combination of accuracy and textural clarity with the highly wrought expressiveness that is the essence of Berg's music is perfectly caught.