Il Pergolese

Maria Pia De Vito, François Couturier, Anja Lechner, Michele Rabbia

EN / DE

Il Pergolese pays tribute to 18th century composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 – 1736), and considers his relationship to the art music and the popular music of Naples, from a highly contemporary perspective. The text of the Stabat Mater – translated into Neapolitan by Maria Pia De Vito – and the opera arias, are transformed into songs and vivid narrative, open frames providing the key to reinterpreting Pergolesi. François Couturier’s arrangements widen Pergolesi’s structures, offering space for improvisational interaction. But this is a real group project, a discourse among acoustic sounds, with rhythms of drums and metals, and sampled and real-time electronics. Sound textures grow dense with the richness of instrumental counterpoint or are set free in electronic soundscapes and along coloristic, percussive lines, as cello becomes voice or voice becomes an instrument. The project was commissioned by the Festival Pergolesi-Spontini of Jesi in 2011. The present version was recorded in Lugano in December 2012, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

‚Il Pergolese’ ist ein klingender Tribut an Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 – 1736), der die Beziehung dieses Komponisten zur Kunst- wie zur volkstümlichen Musik Neapels von einer ausgesprochen heutigen Warte aus betrachtet.
Der Text des ‚Stabat Mater’ – von Maria Pia De Vito ins Neapolitanische übersetzt – und die Opernarien werden in Songs und eine lebendige Erzählung verwandelt, wobei hier sehr offene Rahmen den Schlüssel zur Pergolesi-Interpretation liefern. François Couturiers Arrangements erweitern Pergolesis-Strukturen und schaffen so Raum für die Interaktion der Improvisatoren.
Es ist dies ein wirkliches Gruppenprojekt, ein klingender Diskurs von akustischen Klängen mit gesampelten Sounds und Echtzeit-Elektronik. Die Klangtexturen verdichten sich dabei, je reicher der instrumentale Kontrapunkt wird, und werden dann wieder in elektronischen Soundscapes und entlang kolorierender Percussionslinien aufgelöst, wenn das Cello zur Stimme oder die Stimme zum Instrument wird. Das Projekt geht ursprünglich auf eine Kommission des Festival Pergolesi-Spontini of Jesi im Jahr 2011 zurück, und wurde in seiner heutigen Form im Dezember 2012 in Lugano mit Manfred Eicher als Produzent aufgenommen.
Featured Artists Recorded

December 2012, Auditorio RSI - Radio Svizzera, Lugano

Original Release Date

25.10.2013

  • 1Ogne pena cchiù spietata
    (Giovanni Battista Pergolesi)
    05:57
  • 2Amen / Fac Ut Portem
    (François Couturier, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi)
    11:20
  • 3Sinfonia for violoncello
    (Giovanni Battista Pergolesi)
    10:02
  • 4Chi disse ca la femmena
    (Giovanni Battista Pergolesi)
    04:42
  • 5Tre giorni son che Nina
    (Giovanni Battista Pergolesi)
    08:43
  • 6Fremente
    (Anja Lechner, François Couturier, Maria Pia De Vito, Michele Rabbia)
    03:13
  • 7In compagnia d'amore I
    (Maria Pia De Vito, Michele Rabbia)
    04:11
  • 8In compagnia d'amore II
    (Anja Lechner, François Couturier, Michele Rabbia)
    03:46
  • 9Dolente
    (François Couturier)
    07:18
Fragility is not usually a characteristic associated with improvised music, but the sounds on this new recording seem at times to be  as delicate as fine porcelein. Il Pergolese is a highly original interpretation of works by the 18th Century Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. [...] The nine tracks are inspired by Pergolesi works including the celebrated ‘Stabat Mater’, with Maria Pia De Vito’s rich and warm voice floating exquisitely over the gentle piano chords, the long, yearning cello notes, and the subtle whispers of percussion. One of the most effective tracks is ‘Chi Disse Ca la Femmena’, from Pergolesi’s musical portrait of women, ‘Lo Frate ‘nnamorato’. The theme is stated simply, but then the group doubles the tempo – the effect is almost startling – and De Vito’s voice begins a delightful sequence of punchy scatting over the lively pulse of the instruments. An absorbing album, well worth exploring.
John Watson, Jazz Camera
 
For five minutes or so, this dedication to 18th-century Italian opera and sacred-music composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi sounds like a respectfully operatic and relatively straight tribute to its subject – then Italian drummer Michele Rabbia's muffled-hoofbeat drumming begins to edge in. Though the music regularly returns to Pergolesi's arias and passages from his Stabat Mater (handled by the classically schooled Neopolitan vocalist de Vito with understated aplomb), the early material is used as a jumping-off point for various improvisations – from the unobtrusive melodic twists of French pianist Francois Couturier and German cellist Anja Lechner, to de Vito's whoops, gasps, and scat-like squirmings. Watery sounds and ghostly cello swirls usher in Amen/Fac ut Portem; Sinfonia for Violoncello is a showcase for Lechner; Chi Disse ca la Femmena is given a suitably playful treatment by de Vito at first, before becoming an exciting uptempo chase for cello and voice. [..] both opera and improv listeners may find much to enjoy in it.
John Fordham, The Guardian
 
Maria Pia de Vito, Anja Lechner, Francois Couturier und Michele Rabbia gehen auf dieser CD ganz klar in Extreme. Ihre Experimente klingen mal nach Jazz, mal nach traditioneller Volksmusik, mal nach Luciano Berio. Das macht dieses Album zu einer Herausforderung für den Hörer: Mit Nebenbeihören ist es nicht getan, um wirklich etwas von 'Il Pergolese' zu haben, muss man sich in die CD verbeißen und ihre musikalische Strukturen verfolgen. Wer das tut, merkt  ziemlich schnell, dass nichts auf 'Il Pergolese' willkürlich ist, keine Klangfarbe, keine tonale Abweichung und kein Stück Improvisation. Und dann ist es plötzlich doch möglich, sich in diese Musik einfach fallen zu lassen, denn wenn die Hürden einmal überwunden sind, wird klar: Die vier Musiker begegnen den technischen Herausforderungen von Pergolesis Musik nicht nur mit Selbstbewusstsein und absoluter Perfektion, vor allem zelebrieren sie ihren Einfallsreichtum und ihre Schönheit.
Desiree Löffler, WDR
 
The musicians participating in this experiment bring together a relatively unconventional set of resources. On the one hand there are pianist François Couturier and cellist Anja Lechner, who have background in performing chamber music together (and recording their performances on ECM New Series). They are joined by percussionist Michele Rabbia, who also controls electronics, primarily in the form of samples of ‘concrete’ sound, and Neapolitan vocalist Maria Pia De Vito, who sings in Neapolitan, rather than the published source text. Much of the music on this album is the product of improvisations by these four musicians. [...] These pieces are decidedly not performances of Pergolesi refracted through a jazzy rhetoric, in the manner, for example, of past efforts by The Swingle Singers. Indeed, they are not so much performances of Pergolesi at all as they are the exploration of fragments of his music through the improvisatory skills provided by each of the performers. One might say that these improvisations allow one to listen to Pergolesi as he might be examined through the auditory version of a kaleidoscope.
Stephen Smoliar, Examiner.com
 
Entstanden ist ein grandioses Album, das Grenzgänge zwischen Barock und Jazz präsentiert, wie sie in dieser Homogenität selten zuvor zu hören waren. Das Quartett erweist dem Komponisten mit viel improvisatorischem Freiraum, aber auch respektvoller Sensibilität seine Reverenz. Anja Lechners sehnsuchtsvollem Cello-Ton und Maria Pia De Vitos hingebungsvollem Gesang zu lauschen, ist Labsal für die Seele. Couturiers perlende Pianoläufe und Rabbias raffinierte Rhythmen fügen sich wunderbar in die fein gewebten Klangtexturen ein.
Georg Spindler, Mannheimer Morgen
 
Neapolitan singer Maria Pia de Vito’s first recording for ECM sees her joining forces with three of the label’s regulars, and the results are imaginative, varied and wholly satisfying. Pergolesi is never far away – his thumbprint is there in recognisable fragments from the ‘Stabat Mater’ and ‘Pulcinella’, as well as less predictably in a batch of less well-known opera arias – but the quality of these four musicians is such that they can take his distinctive melodic energy and carry it into an improvisatory world very much of their own making.
De Vito sings it relatively straight some of the time, her voice tending more towards a sweet folk-like sound than a jazz one, but at other times she reels off into an expressive spectrum of riffs, scats and virtuoso extended vocal techniques; Anja Lechner, formerly of the Rosamunde Quartet, improvises with extraordinary  lyrical beauty; François Couturier contributes cool wisdom and gentility; and Michele Rabbia’s ‘concrète’ and transformative electronics add atmospheric magic. This isn’t ‘jazzed-up’ baroque but high-class contemporary improv that draws on those styles to create a fascinating range of sounds and textures that constantly develops within a certain emotional framework of restrained intensity. [...] This is one of the most creative projects of its kind that I have come across.
Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone
 
Paying tribute to the short-lived 18th century Italian composer Giovanni Batista Pergolesi (1710-1736), this ECM debut from Italian vocalist, composer and arranger Maria Pia de Vito scores highly for its daring and its judicious reshaping of the source material. Joining the singer are three terrific musicians, all of whom have previously recorded on ECM [...] Of the three group improvisations, ‘In compagnia d’amore I’, with its juxtapositions of acoustic and electronic sounds, is especially striking.
Peter Quinn, Jazzwise
A project paying tribute to 18th century composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710 – 1736), Il Pergolese presents new arrangements and improvisation inspired by opera and sacred music. Singer Maria Pia De Vito, pianist François Couturier, cellist Anja Lechner and percussionist Michele Rabbia also consider Pergolesi’s relationship to the art music and the popular music of Naples from a contemporary perspective,. The text of the Stabat Mater – translated into Neapolitan by Maria Pia De Vito – and the opera arias, are transformed into songs and vivid narrative, open frames providing the key to reinterpreting Pergolesi. François Couturier's arrangements widen Pergolesi's structures, offering space for much improvisational interaction. For Il Pergolese is a real group project with creative from all partucipants, a discourse among sounds with rhythms generated by drums and metals and sampled and real-time electronics. “Sound textures grow dense with the richness of instrumental counterpoint or are set free in electronic soundscapes and along coloristic, percussive lines, as cello becomes voice or voice becomes an instrument” says Maria Pia De Vito in a performer’s note in the CD booklet.

The project was commissioned by the Festival Pergolesi-Spontini of Jesi in 2011. Reviewing the premiere performance, Augusta Franco Cardinali of Voce della Vallesina wrote of “unforeseen impressions for the listener. Crystallized sound fragments expand into flares of notes like meteors. Pergolesi’s music emerges, becomes increasingly recognizable until it is transformed into prayer... This music, in which different styles are blended together, cannot be categorized. It would be inexact to call it ‘experimental music’, since its sound material, both vocal and instrumental, is treated with uncommon sensitivity, competence, intelligence, and stylistic elegance as well as technical expertise...” The improvisational component ensures that each performance of Il Pergolese is unique. The present interpretation was recorded in Lugano in December 2012, with Manfred Eicher as producer.

Three of the protagonists of Il Pergolese – François Couturier, Anja Lechner and Michele Rabbia are well-known to ECM listeners. German cellist Lechner has appeared on more than twenty ECM recordings playing everything from tango with Dino Saluzzi to compositions of Mansurian and Silvestrov with the Rosamunde Quartet or arrangements of Gurdjieff with Vassilis Tsabropoulos. At home with both improvisation and the classical tradition, Lechner is, with Dino Saluzzi, the subject of the documentary film “El Encuentro” made by Norbert Wiedmer & Enrique Ros and recently issued by ECM on DVD.

French pianist François Couturier is the founder-composer of the Tarkovsky Quartet, of which Anja Lechner is a member, and also plays in duo with the cellist (ECM recording in preparaion). Couturier’s other ECM albums include a solo recording Un jour si blanc, and a duo disc with violinist Dominique Pifarély, as well as recordings with Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem.

Italian percussionist Michele Rabbia has been the principal drummer of Stefano Battaglia’s projects since 2000 and appears on several ECM discs with the pianist including Raccolto, Re: Pasolini and Pastorale a disc of duets incorporating his live electronic treatments. Rabbia has collaborated with numerous musicians, the long list including Enrico Rava, Charlie Mariano, Antonello Sallis, Dominique Pifarély, Rita Marcotuli, the Italian Instabile Orchestra, Sainkho Namchylak, Paul McCandless and many others.

Singer Maria Pia De Vito makes her ECM debut with Il Pergolese. She has long been active in improvisation and jazz with musical partners including John Taylor, Ralph Towner, Rita Marcatouli, Norma Winstone, Steve Swallow, Paolo Fresu, Gianluigi Trovesi, Giorgio Gaslini, Colin Towns and many more. Musical research, exploring beneath the work’s surfaces, has been a key element of her performances from the outset, whether the music at hand has been jazz of the American songbook, idiosyncratic Neapolitan vocal music (De Vito is herself a native of Naples), adaptations of Monteverdi with Bruno Tommaso or – as on the present disc – Pergolesi as an improvisational resource.