Paddington

Recorded live at St Francis of Assisi Church, Paddington NSW in December 2016, this is a Christmas celebration like only the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Choir, under their charismatic artistic director Paul Dyer, can create.

Jon Rose and Chris Abrahams (of The Necks), after four decades of being parts of other projects, finally got around to recording as a duo. Jon uses a number of violins, including the bird - a specially made tenor hardanger fiddle with sympathetic strings; his tunings are non-standard, and create complex microtonal dissonances with the standard keyboard. Abrahams is unfazed and somehow manages to make the conversation coherent; they’re still speaking one language – probably because these are both virtuosi and they’ve been around the block a few times. So this is not easy music; the simple problems aren’t stimulating, so these negotiations begin at masterclass level. Though pitch and counterpoint are the main topics, the third extended piece pushes timbral exploration to the edge; piano and violin are typecast as ‘classical’ but here they sound more electronic and industrial. Probably not for everybody, but the real innovators seldom are.

German composer Volker Bertelmann–aka Hauschka–writes imaginative, pop-derived experimental pieces for piano that truly sound like nothing else out there. Compositionally, he works in a mode similar to that of Harold Budd, alternating between subtle melodic movement and rhythm-focused circularity, but his piano–which is often chopped and jerry-rigged and tampered with–possesses a unique timbre.