Skip to content
Independent music since 1986.
Independent music since 1986.

Language

244: AKI TAKASE – AYUMI PAUL. Hotel Zauberberg

Intakt Recording #244 / 2014

Aki Takase: Piano
Ayumi Paul: Violin

Recorded, mixed and mastered January and May 2014 by Kulturradio vom Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg.

Original price CHF 12.00 - Original price CHF 30.00
Original price
CHF 30.00
CHF 12.00 - CHF 30.00
Current price CHF 30.00
Format: Compact Disc
More Info

The project ‘Hotel Zauberberg’ arose out of Aki Takase’s and Yumi Paul’s shared admiration for the writer Thomas Mann. It mostly consists of notated compositions, with some improvised parts as well. Eleven of the eighteen pieces were penned by Aki Takase, another five are collaborations with Ayumi Paul. Additionally, there are adaptations of a Mozart Minuet and a Bach Partita.

Aki Takase reacts to the polyphony of the novel with a variety of stylistic elements. She has never been a purist anyway; she’s never been shy of contact. She is an avant-gardist drawing on tradition. She’s got both claws and finesse.And, most of all, she’s got a sense of humour.

Aki Takase and Ayumi Paul’s first collaboration stands out through its light-footed intelligence as well as a sense of the abysses of the ‘Magic Mountain’, which turns into a world-theatre of love, illness and death. Thomas Mann, whose work includes music as a subject in itself as well as a language, would have enjoyed it.

Album Credits

Cover art and graphic design: Jonas Schoder
Liner notes: Manfred Papst
Photo: Mariko Saga, Vanessa Franklin

Recorded, mixed and mastered January and May 2014 by Kulturradio vom Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg.
Radio producer: Ulf Drechsel. Sound supervisor: Wolfgang Hoff. Recording engineer: Nikolaus Löwe. Digital cut and mastering: Ulrich Hieber.
Produced and published by Intakt Records, Patrik Landolt

Customer Reviews

Based on 17 reviews
100%
(17)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
S
Stephen Smoiar
Examiner

Memorable recordings in 2015
2015 was the year of my sharpest departure from the nominations for the GRAMMY awards. My assessment article about those nominations revealed a generous amount of overlap with recordings that had been discussed on this site; but, since my criteria for this particular article involves the memorability of my listening experiences, I was more than a little dejected to realize that I could only recall what I had written about most of those recordings with the aid of a search engine. Indeed, the most vivid memory did not involve a nomination for a recording. Rather it was the nomination for producer Judith Sherman, one of whose projects in 2015 was Anthony de Mare's recording Liaisons: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano. While I would not begrudge Sherman her nomination, my personal memories were primarily of de Mare and his project, rather than the production work behind the album.

Indeed, much of what was memorable as I skimmed the headlines of my articles on this site involved what might be called "imaginative rethinking," exercised in a variety of different domains. Most imaginative of all may have been Zoë Black, Assistant Leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra. She asked jazz pianist Joe Chindamo to add a violin line to Johann Sebastian Bach's BWV 988 set of 30 variations on an aria best known as the "Goldberg" variations. Chindamo clearly knew his Bach very well; and, more specifically, he knew how to think about each of Bach's variations as a contrapuntal fabric involving two or more voices. It is not too hard to imagine Bach himself presenting one of his students with a sample of counterpoint and challenging that student to add another line; so, from that point of view, Chindamo was basically a Bach student separated from the master by several centuries.

The results were released on a recording entitled The New Goldberg Variations. One has to listen to only the first few variations to appreciate that Chindamo's efforts were anything but a clever parlor trick. Even if not all of the notes were written by Bach himself, this album is more about Bach than many of the recordings of BWV 988 made by ostensibly more "serious" pianists.

An entirely different approach to rethinking can be found in a new Intakt album of jazz pianist Aki Takase released this past February. The title of the album is Hotel Zauberberg; and it basically amounts to using the time-based medium of making music to consider the extent to which Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain is a story about time itself. The result is an eighteen-movement suite for violin and piano with eleven movements written by Takase and five written collaboratively with violinist Ayumi Paul. The remaining two movements are Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's K. 1 minuet in G major and the Preludio movement that begins Johann Sebastian Bach's solo violin partita in E major (BWV 1006).

I have to confess that, while all of my other Takase albums sit very comfortably in my jazz section, I felt the only appropriate place for this one was in my classical section, where she could rub shoulders comfortably with Toru Takemitsu. I was not surprised that the GRAMMY judges did not know what to make of the album; but, in my book, this was one of the most absorbing recordings of recently composed music that I encountered in 2015. I hope that Takase and Paul can take this on the recital circuit and bring this music to concert stages in the United States. When it comes to original composition, this music scales a very high bar.

Another new approach to composition could be found on the new MicroFest Records label. MicroFest calls itself "The world's premier festival of microtonal music." It was founded in 1997 by John Schneider and is co-directed by Schneider, pianist Aron Kallay, and composer Bill Alves. One of the first releases on this label was an album of two compositions for violin and gamelan by Alves entitled Mystic Canyon. Alves was far from the first to explore the microtonal possibility of a violin playing in a gamelan setting. Lou Harrison is probably his best known predecessor. However, each of the two compositions on Mystic Canyon has a distinctively unique voice that would not be confused with the work of other composers drawn to Javanese music. This music becomes fixed in memory because lends itself to repeat listening experiences.

However, where modernism is concerned, the "mother lode" for 2015 would have to be all the attention doled out to Pierre Boulez. Most important was the decision of Universal Music Classics to release a ten-CD anthology of the Domaine musical performances performed and/or organized by Pierre Boulez between 1956 and 1967. In many respects this was a crucible of modernism in the decades following the end of the Second World War. As interesting as the studied but always expressive performances in this collection is the scope of repertoire that spans from Arnold Schoenberg through Igor Stravinsky (particula...

B
Bernie Koenig
Cadence Magazine

This is a classical record, with compositions by the two performers with two classical pieces added to the mix. I really enjoyed the record, both because of how much I like duos and because the music held my attention throughout.
I really enjoyed the four pieces in succession beginning with the Mozart piece and ending with “Veranderung.” One thing these pieces show is how contemporary Bach sounds. His work fit right in. And the other pieces provide a nice contrast to the delicate melodies of Mozart.
The rest of the CD is a mix of short pieces reflecting different styles of contemporary classical music with the occasional bow to romanticism I also liked the recurring theme of “Zeit”, once played by solo violin, once by solo piano and then in unison. Another highlight is the great bow work by Paul on “Donnersclag.”
Definitely for fans of the violin and of contemporary classical music.

Reviews in Other Languages

M
Maurizio Zerbo
All About Jazz Blog

Ascoltare la pianista nipponica Aki Takase è sempre una esperienza foriera di sorprese, grazie ad una creatività e disposizione al rischio davvero rare. Lo spirito avventuroso della sua composita cifra artistica ben si sposa con lo spirito esplorativo della label che ha prodotto questo sinestetico progetto, fra suggestioni sonore e letterarie.

L'idea è quella di trasporre sul piano musicale la storia ed i personaggi del massimo capolavoro di Thomas Mann, "La montagna incantata." Aleggia così sul progetto l'aura musicale austro-germanica tanto amata dallo scrittore ed in particolare il riadattamento per pianoforte di temi bachiani e mozartiani. Il tutto viene intriso non di estetica jazzistica, ma di retaggio classico euro colto contemporaneo.

Piano e violino eseguono per lo più rigorosamente parti scritte, debitamente soggette a variazioni estemporanee. Il duo dà così vita ad un percorso musicale ispirato, suggestivo e coinvolgente per esaltare tutta la ricchezza timbrica degli strumenti impiegati. I lettori si chiederanno a questo punto cosa c'è di jazzistico in questo CD. La risposta risiede nella variazione continua della spazialità, del colore e della dinamica sonora da parte della Takase.

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/hotel-zauberberg-aki-takase-ayumipaul-intakt-records-review-by-maurizio-zerbo

J
Jean Buzelin
Cultur Jazz Magazine

La pianiste Aki Takase dialogue, quant à elle, avec le violoniste Ayumi Paul, qui travaille habituellement dans le champ classique et contemporain. L'atmosphère de leur disque se situe dans un esprit très "milieu du XXe siècle". Ainsi sont évoqués Satie ou Stravinsky, mais Bach et Mozart ne sont pas oubliés non plus. Mais qu'on ne s'y méprenne pas, il s'agit de création musicale, et de la plus belle manière qui soit : « Hotel Zauberberg »

http://www.culturejazz.fr/spip.php?article285

G
Guido Festinese
Il Manifesto

Resistenze radicali

Anelli di resistenza al luogo comune mai concilianti, prendere o lasciare. Cosi si potrebbero definire le uscite dell'etichetta svizzera Intakt, che continua a documentare su cd istanze radicali del jazz europeo, non disdegnando di gettare un orecchio anche oltre oceano, dove il free jazz è ben più vivo di quanto vorrebbero farci credere. Di sicuro Alexander von Schlippenbach al pianoforte, Evan Parker al sax tenore e Paul Lovens alla batteria usata come set percussivo a tutto campo, la banalità la sfuggono come la peste. Nel set documentato su Features non aspettatevi solo torridi e incendiari muri di suono improvvisato, ma anche giochi di incastri col silenzio di gran gusto, quasi uno scheggiato percorso melodico. Un altro pianoforte assai radicale, quello della giapponese Aki Takase incontra il violino eccellente di Ayumi Paul in Hotel Zauberberg, sorta di tributo per pannelli musicali diversi allo scrittore Thomas Mann. Curiosamente tornano gli alberghi in un altro bel titolo Intakt: Hotel Grief del batterista Tom Rainey, dal vivo con Ingrid Laubrock ai sax e Mary Halvorson alla chitarra.

// SCRAMBLED //