Dobrinka Tabakova: Sun Triptych

Maxim Rysanov, Dasol Kim, Roman Mints, Kristina Blaumane, BBC Concert Orchestra

Dobrinka Tabakova: Sun Triptych
Release date: 26.09.2025 ECM 2670
CD18,90 €add to cart
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Sun Triptych is the eagerly-awaited second ECM New Series album by British-Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova. The first, 2014’s String Paths, made an immediate impact, picking up a Grammy Nomination and superlative reviews, The Strad praising its “glowing tonal harmonies and grand, sweeping gestures,” while the Washington Times hailed it as an “exciting, deeply moving, original and triumphant” recording.  The new album embraces a still broader expressive range, as is immediately evident from the opening Whispered Lullaby and Suite in Jazz Style, both for viola and piano, the first a yearning song, the second an imaginative chamber meditation on jazz gestures, atmospheres and textures.  Spinning a Yarn, for violin and hurdy-gurdy, has a touching, archaic folk-like quality.  A Fantasy Homage to Schubert, with Tabakova conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra, transfigures Schubertian melody and directs it heavenward, conjuring images of slowly turning planets.  Organum Light, also for strings, draws inspiration from Gibbons and Purcell.  The concluding, radiant Sun Triptych evokes the play of light on the natural world over the course of the day.  The album, recorded in Berlin and Watford, was mixed in Munich, and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Sun Triptych ist das mit Spannung erwartete zweite New Series Album der britisch-bulgarischen Komponistin Dobrinka Tabakova. Ihr erster Wurf String Paths aus dem Jahr 2014, sorgte für großes Aufsehen, wurde für einen Grammy nominiert und erhielt hervorragende Kritiken. The Strad lobte die „strahlenden Harmonien und großartigen, schwungvollen Gesten“, während die Washington Times von einer „aufregenden, tief bewegenden, originellen und triumphalen“ Aufnahme sprach. Das neue Album umfasst eine noch breitere Ausdruckspalette, was sich bereits im eröffnenden Whispered Lullaby und der Suite im Jazzstil für Viola und Klavier verdeutlicht – erstere ein sehnsüchtiges Lied, letztere eine fantasievolle kammermusikalische Meditation über Jazz-Gesten, -Stimmungen und -Klangfarben.  „Spinning a Yarn“, für Violine und Drehleier, hat eine berührende sowie archaisch-volksliedhafte Qualität. Für „A Fantasy Homage to Schubert“ dirigiert Tabakova das BBC Concert Orchestra und verklärt die Schubertsche Melodie, steuert sie gen Stratosphäre, wobei interstellare Eindrücke heraufbeschworen werden.  „Organum Light“, ebenfalls für Streicher, ist von Gibbons und Purcell inspiriert. Das abschließende, strahlende „Sun Triptych“ erinnert an das Spiel des Lichts in der Natur im Verlaufe eines Tages. Das Album wurde in Berlin und Watford aufgenommen, in München gemischt und von Manfred Eicher produziert.
Featured Artists
  • Maxim RysanovViola
  • Dasol KimPiano
  • Roman MintsViolin, Hurdy Gurdy
  • Kristina BlaumaneVioloncello
  • BBC Concert OrchestraOrchestra
  • Dobrinka TabakovaConductor
Recorded

August 2020 & July 2021

Original Release Date

26.09.2025

  • 1Whispered Lullaby
    (Dobrinka Tabakova)    04:54
  • Suite in Jazz Style
    (Dobrinka Tabakova)
  • 2I Talk04:40
  • 3II Nocturnal06:03
  • 4III Dance04:36
  • 5Fantasy Homage to Schubert
    (Dobrinka Tabakova)    04:32
  • 6Organum Light
    (Dobrinka Tabakova)    05:18
  • 7Spinning a Yarn
    (Dobrinka Tabakova)    06:40
  • Sun Triptych
    (Dobrinka Tabakova)
  • 8Dawn07:53
  • 9Day04:28
  • 10Dusk07:59
Dobrinka Tabakova’s ECM New Series debut, String Paths, made an immediate impact on its release in 2013. The Washington Times hailed it as an “exciting, deeply moving, original and triumphant” recording, while The Strad praised its “glowing tonal harmonies and grand, sweeping gestures.” Music from String Paths was incorporated in Jean-Luc Godard’s films Adieu au langage (Goodbye to Language) and Le livre d’image (The Image Book), and the album received a Grammy nomination.
 
The British-Bulgarian composer’s new album, again produced by Manfred Eicher, brings back some of the String Paths cast, including close associates violist Maxim Rysanov, violinist Roman Mints and cellist Kristine Blaumane.  Friends and colleagues since conservatory days at the Guildhall School, all now leading soloists in their own right, they have grown up with the expressive language and colours of Tabakova’s music and are among its ideal interpreters.
In addition, the BBC Concert Orchestra, with whom she held the position of Composer-in- Residence from 2017 to 2022, presents her works Sun Triptych and Fantasy Homage to Schubert. In the album’s musical constellation, these works have a central role, with the more chamber-like pieces – including Whispered Lullaby, the Suite in Jazz Style and Spinning a Yarn – surrounding or connecting them, “growing out of this nebulous, still world, and melting back into it,” as Tabakova says.
 
Two pieces for viola and piano open the album: Whispered Lullaby is a gentle, yearning song, originally composed for a children’s opera, Midsummer Magic. The Suite in Jazz Style, an imaginative chamber meditation on jazz gestures, atmospheres and textures, is a successor to the Suite in Old Style on String Paths, also written for the wide ranging skills of violist Maxim Rysakov.
 
Spinning a Yarn, a piece with a touching, archaic folk-like quality, features Roman Mints on both violin and hurdy-gurdy, “a beautiful, interesting - and capricious! - instrument. To have that link to a folkloric past is also very important to me.” As the Washington Times remarked: “Tabakova may be using the musical materials of tradition, but through them she has broken new paths”
 
The Fantasy Homage to Schubert recontextualizes Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major, originally for violin and piano, resetting its opening melody “in a completely transfigured environment,” and directing it heavenward. Conjuring images of slowly turning planets, Tabakova paints a picture of “floating in space, free of gravity – comets and celestial bodies passing by. And, as the Schubert melody is heard for the first time, we catch a first glimpse of Planet Earth.”
 
The radiant Sun Triptych evokes the changing play of light on the natural world over the course of the day. Dobrinka Tabakova: “The solace I find in nature permeates this work. The first movement builds up gently, ascending lines in the solos, increasingly denser and richer chords in the
 
strings...The sustained textures of the first movement become hazy tremolos in the second movement, ‘Day’, as the shimmering of the strings suggest the buzzing of insects and the heat haze when the sun is at its strongest. In the final movement, a retrograde of some of the gestures in the first movement is applied to bring the close of the journey with ‘Dusk.’”
 
Organum Light was written in response to a commission from vocal group Opus Anglicanum; since the piece drew inspiration from the polyphonic viol consort works of Gibbons and Purcell, transferring the music to a string ensemble was, Tabakova notes, a very natural step.
 
*
Dobrinka Tabakova was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, in 1980 and moved with her family to the UK in
1991; she has lived in London since then.  She studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department and at the age of 14 won the Jean-Frédéric Perrenoud composition prize at the Vienna International Music Competition. Tabakova graduated from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and King’s College London, and also participated in master classes with composers including Iannis Xenakis, John Adams and Louis Andriessen.
 
A meeting with Manfred Eicher at the Lockenhaus Festival – where her Suite In Old Style was performed in 2007 – led subsequently to the recording of String Paths, the first album devoted entirely to Tabakova’s music.
 
For five years from 2017, Tabakova was Composer-in-Residence for the BBC Concert Orchestra, also taking over the role of conductor at the end of this period.
 
Whispered Lullaby, Suite in Jazz Style and Spinning a Yarn were recorded at Berlin’s Meistersaal in August 2020. Fantasy Homage to Schubert, Organum Light and Sun Triptych were recorded at Watford Colosseum in July 2021. The album was completed and mixed at Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich in January 2025 by Manfred Eicher and Dobrinka Tabakova with Michael Hinreiner (engineer).
 
CD Booklet includes a liner note by Dobrinka Tabakova, and recording session photos.
 
YEAR DATE VENUE LOCATION
2025 December 11 Prinzregententheater Munich, Germany