Joachim Kühn, the senior partner, is over thirty years older than
his piano-playing compatriot Michael Wollny but their admiration
is mutual and admits of no restrictions. Back on 10 September
2008 at Schloss Elmau they were recorded together by ACT’s Siggi
Loch in a duo performance now released to wide listenership.
They are both strong
improvisers and with the exception of the two solo tracks spend
about twenty-six minutes in each other’s company. Inevitably
perhaps - though the more combustible duo of Stan Tracey and
Keith Tippett would doubtless disagree – the longest tracks
are solo.
For newcomers the
music can be difficult to categorise so a few descriptive passages
may help. The Colours of the Wind is spare with some
brisker chordal patterns from both men. Elmau is more
obviously romantic and feints to baroque paragraphal points;
one wonders how improvised they were or whether they were predetermined
pillars. Seawalk invites one to smell the sea spray and
salt before locking into a more extended groove after its quasi-impressionist
opening.
Kühn’s Chaconne
from the Partita by Bach is a strange affair, haltingly
articulated and with plenty of spread chords. Some ensuing improvisation
is more obviously tangential but the return of the Chaconne
‘theme’ leads to genuinely exploratory and interior, withdrawn
investigation. It’s the antithesis of Busoni’s piano arrangement
and alternately puzzling and refractive. Michael Wollny’s solo
piece is Hexentanz and his piece, playing with Liszt as Kühn
played with Bach, perhaps indicates a certain ‘stance’ by these
two Germans towards the classical muse. Rolling drive and steady
left hand patterns animate this one, now tremolandi, now limpid
colour, as well as key strumming in time-honoured modern fashion.
It’s got plenty of drive; the question is has it got anything
else?
This isn’t one for
out and out improvisers or indeed for stylistic extremes. Its
appeal is more to colourists and prismic aficionados and admirers
of two piano empathics with a yen for seascape and the eternal
verities of cadence and colour.
Jonathan Woolf
Joachim Kühn¹
(piano) and Michael Wollny² (piano) – duo performances unless noted
