Sol Ridriguez

David Grubbs & Jim O'Rourke’s long-dormant Gastr Del Sol returns with a first “new” release in 25 years, an epic 3LP/2CD box set collecting previously unreleased recordings and rarities influenced by Derek Bailey’s free improv as much as hallowed jazz staples and musique concrète, like some irresistible force ploughing through the increasingly approachable, you might even say polite, output of their post rock contemporaries back in the late 90’s. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it sounds better now than ever, too.

David Grubbs & Jim O'Rourke’s long-dormant Gastr Del Sol returns with a first “new” release in 25 years, an epic 3LP/2CD box set collecting previously unreleased recordings and rarities influenced by Derek Bailey’s free improv as much as hallowed jazz staples and musique concrète, like some irresistible force ploughing through the increasingly approachable, you might even say polite, output of their post rock contemporaries back in the late 90’s. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it sounds better now than ever, too.

This album celebrates a musical rapport that has lasted for twenty years and, above all, a true friendship: ‘We’re like two sisters, on stage and in life’, as Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta like to say. In parallel with their dazzling solo careers, they have frequently got together for concerts in trio or double concerto formation (like the one written for them by Francisco Coll, recently released on ALPHA580). But they have conceived their new recording for a rather rare combination, the violin cello duo – with the aim of choosing pieces they found interesting either stylistically or for the way they use the instruments.

Sol Gabetta’s first recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto, with the Danish National Symphony, was much admired when it appeared six years ago. This one, taken from a concert in the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus in 2014, is a far glossier affair orchestrally. Simon Rattle’s tendency to overmould the phrasing is sometimes too obvious, but Gabetta’s playing is intense and searching, less introspective than some performances in the Adagio, perhaps, but epic in scale in the outer movements, and always keenly responsive. Those who possess her earlier disc might not think they need to invest in this one, but would then miss Gabetta’s vivid, pulsating account of the Martinů concerto, which went through a quarter of a century of revisions before the definitive 1955 version she plays here, with Krysztof Urbański conducting. She finds real depth and intensity in it, both in the slow movement and in the introspective episode that interrupts the finale’s headlong rush.