Bryce Dessner: Solos. Bryce Dessner (guitar), Katia Labèque (piano), Anastasia Kobekina (cello), Colin Currie (percussion), Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Lavinia Meijer (harp), Nadia Sirota (viola). Sony Classical 19802806551. Total time: 1:16.
DIGITAL REVIEW — Bryce Dessner’s newest album, Solos, is deeply personal, but its title is ironic. The album is a series of solo works that Dessner calls an “intimate diary,” yet the miniatures represent more than the compositions at hand. The 12 works are chosen for their personal connections — connections that might represent a special rapport with a musician, a city that has a particular resonance, or a familial relation.
It also pays equal if unconscious homage to the compositional influences of Dessner’s classical-music career. The voices of Dutilleux, Reich, Satie, Ravel, and Pärt hover. In this sense, the album is a compendium of dedicated works, most of which have been expressly written for close musical allies and reveal more than the title implies. It’s an album that celebrates the power of collaboration.
The multifaceted strands of Dessner’s musical life — from his Grammy-award-winning turns in his band The National and contributions as an orchestrator for Taylor Swift’s album Folklore to his direction of music festivals — all show up in this album. As co-producer, Dessner has curated an invitation that is akin to a biography. It says this is who I am, this is who I am now, and these are my people.
The album opens listeners to a sonic world where diverse genres and styles sit side by side. The recording begins with a shimmer. Lullaby for Jacques and Brune — a piano solo written for the twin godchildren of his wife, Pauline de Lassus (pseudonym Mina Tindle) — sets us off into an enigmatic land of cinematic otherworldliness. Performed by longtime collaborator Katia Labèque, the elegant falling motives of this three-quarter time lullaby, with its Satie-esque and Ravel-esque left hand, draw us into a wistful atmosphere. The lulling, harmonically pleasing mood carries us into the next track, Francis, a guitar work, which Dessner plays himself. Dessner’s effortless execution belies the technical complexity.
At this moment, you appreciate Dessner’s astute skill — no doubt acquired from his rock-musician career — for writing pieces that never last longer than the material warrants. It’s savvy. It’s also here that we understand the curatorial vision of the album. Solos brings together Dessner’s output for film alongside his concert-music compositions. The harmonically agreeable and completely beautiful cinematic tracks act as intermezzi for the so-called serious music. At the same time, this vision presents the tug of war in your listening journey. There is truly one part of yourself that selfishly wants the mood music of the piano and guitar solos to take over the album in the vein of, say, a record of Philip Glass Etudes or a Keith Jarret disc. But might this idea be the kernel for a next album?
There are five “serious-music” tracks. Tuusula, written for cellist Anastasia Kobekina, its title inspired by a Finnish town, demonstrates the connections between performer and composer. Commencing with short, rhetorical melodic fragments that connote a certain yearning, the work then quickly move to a grittier texture that juxtaposes a series of antiphonal calls contrasting muscular, low-set motifs with high-tessitura moments.
Percussionist Colin Currie brings sensitive musical fluidity to the marimba solo Tromp Miniature, a breath of a work that offers a hymnal quality. Dessner brings a set of variations to his humble motif, climaxed by a series of arpeggiated chords and ending with a sparse deconstruction of the theme. Currie takes marimba playing to the next level of lyrical percussion artistry.
Ornament and Crime I, II and III, written for violinist Pekka Kuusisto, melds the best influences of Bach and Pärt together with Kuusisto’s personal affinity and love for the folk songs of his home country. Once again, we can feel the collaborative compositional spirit. Dessner brings raw immediacy to simple scalewise passages via repetition and the gamut of string techniques from double stops to harmonics, allowing Kuusisto to contribute his customary verve and ability to make notated music sound like improvisation. The same folk-like quality can be found in Delphica I and II for violist Nadia Sirota. There is a balalaika-like quality to the writing — and, as in Tuusula, Delphica I and II — Dessner oscillates between the lowest tessitura of the instrument to harmonics. There’s an added earthiness developed through the use of double-stop melodies that conjures a ruminating soulfulness.
Sirota’s execution — as in all of the performances on this album — captures the essence of Dessner’s vision. Dutch harpist Lavinia Meijer contributes her own brand of virtuosity to On a Wire — a multi-track, electro-acoustic work inspired by a film of the same name about the tightrope walker Philippe Petit. There’s a Reich-like inflection in the repetition, but it’s not a facsimile. On a Wire is mesmeric for sure and points to the richness of the recording as it asks us to listen in. This quality is both the vice and virtue of the album. Our ears in the gentler tracks want to luxuriate in a relaxed state, but the classical-music tracks implore us to take notice.
