The German pianist Dietrich Eichmann works both as a free-improvising musician and as a composer. This CD is a recording of the 1999 world premiere of Eichmann’s Entre Deux Guerres, a “concerto for solo piano and fourteen instrumentalists.” The score contains no elements of improvisation or indeterminacy, and the scrupulously atonal musical language is drawn from the vocabulary of contemporary composition; this is thus a disc that falls more or less outside of Cadence’s remit. Yet the impact of the players like Cecil Taylor or Eichmann’s piano teacher Alex von Schlippenbach on the piece’s piano part (expertly played by Christoph Grund) is unmistakable, and Eichmann’s unusual choice of instrumentation (electric guitar and two percussionists sit alongside a string quartet, an accordion and various woodwinds) is clearly influenced by his interest in jazz and rock.

This is a piece – as the title announces – preoccupied with the wars of the 20th century. If I have a bone to pick it is primarily with its rather narrow manner of dealing with that subject-matter: the score carefully avoids lament or satire, opting instead for a continuous dissonance which rarely rises to all-out sonic violence but scrupulously avoids any sense of musical resolution. If this is a “concerto for piano” it is nonetheless a piece informed by the post-Schoenbergian questioning of traditional hierarchies of foreground and background, soloist and accompaniment; in the absence of such musical hierarchies the pianist stands out from the other instruments primarily through the greater rhythmic freedom and complexity of his part. Entre Deux Guerres is divided into four parts that run continuously; it’s not easy (given the composer’s careful avoidance of obvious structural logic or repetition) to intuit the design of the piece as a whole, but certain landmarks are clear. The centre of the piece finds the ensemble splitting apart: part IIb finds the pianist dropping out for a prolonged period, while part III is a seven-minute piano solo full of ghostly ruminations. The lengthy final section starts almost schematically with two extremes: an abrupt descent into silence, and an equally abrupt blast of noise. But the movement thereafter, for all its busyness of texture, enacts a gradual withdrawal rather than a climax or summing-up, very gradually sputtering out into silence.

An interesting disc, within its chosen aesthetic territory. One minor criticism is in order: however justifiably proud Eichmann is of his piece, he ought to have shown a more self-restraint in his role as a producer: the disc ends with two solid minutes of very loud applause. An earlier fade-out would have shown a little more taste.

Nate Dorward

Cadence, December 2002