Bucolic

The lonely shepherd on the beach, waiting for his beloved, blowing on the double reed, calling, lamenting: bucolic associations of this kind run through one's mind from the very first note. Letter from afarwhich György Kurtág wrote in memory of the harpist Ursula Holliger, who died in 2014. Her husband, Heinz Holliger, intones this piece on the oboe in a heartbreakingly elegiac manner. It is no coincidence that we encounter a similar mood several times among the 37 tracks on this CD, in Kurtág's ...a Sappho fragment for example, or in ...(Hommage à Tristan) - The cor anglais appears in Act 3 of the opera. Holliger, for his part, takes up the intense and warm tone. It is often about memories of the deceased, tributes to friends, reminiscences of music history, very touching, calling out, calling after, imploring, lamenting, sometimes in delicate, sometimes in dark colors, in the playing of Holliger and Marie-Lise Schüpbach on oboe and/or cor anglais, and especially when Ernesto Molinari's double bass clarinet joins in. There are also instrumental dialogs and pairings, beautifully performed, with character, precisely drawn.

Dialogues is the title of the CD that the ECM label is dedicating to Holliger on his 80th birthday. Both Holliger's and Kurtág's names appear on the cover. It is a testimony to a long artistic friendship. At first, it may come as a surprise when Holliger says that their compositional styles are similar. Many of the older works seem completely different, and yet the two have grown closer in recent decades. After all, they had the same teacher in Sándor Veress. This very harmonious CD tells the story. And just when you think the whole thing sounds very homogeneous, you discover nuances, mysterious ones. The references become richer and closer. At times, the pieces go back and forth between the two. The Swiss set to music The Ros' by Angelus Silesius, and the Hungarian responds with another setting sung by Sarah Wegener.

Finally, another artist joins the conversation. Poet Philippe Jaccottet recites seven of his poems, which Holliger takes on in a "Lecture pour hautbois et cor anglais". In it, he follows the words, but with each Air a bit further, into the microtonal and in the last piece Oiseaux ... It is music that reaches out into the distance and seeks out a distant horizon.