Dear friends,
a turbulent, exciting and very different year is drawing to a close, the second of this pandemic, in the midst of the tunnel on our way to something world-changing.
As so often, I seek my personal answers in music. And this time also in architecture. Two places where the differences between vertical and horizontal structures become very evident.
It is the vertical structures we remember: the leaning tower of Pisa, the skyscrapers of New York or the perpetual Notre Dame, legendary and rusty mediterranean harbour cranes or tall ships bringing us to afar places, all man-made. Somehow they all seem so much more mind-catching than the fields and endless oceans surrounding us, than the iced continents of our poles, than the roads, rails and rivers connecting our countries. All of them present and utterly important but not in the same way eye-catching.
In music, I have been listening vertically this year: the winding stairs of Bach’s enhanced harmonic circle, becoming a spiral. Or the Escher-inspired musical drawings of G.F. Haas’ in vain, the cuts of an axe in Beat Furrer’s spazio immergente or canti della tenebra, Freddie Hubbard’s tour-de-force (and never-ending) solos of The Hub of Hubbard, reaching for the stratosphere.
Below, I have put together a list of five of my most memorable listening experiences of this year and wish that you will become as inspired by them as I am. I sincerely hope that we will meet, share, discover and re-discover music together in the most thrilling ways also in 2022!
Brad Mehldau - After Bach
Freddie Hubbard - The Hub of Hubbard
Cantus Cölln, Dir: Junghähnel - Bach Motetten
Joni Mitchell - Blue
Klangforum Wien, Dir: Cambreling - G.F. Haas: in vain
I wish you a great last couple of days of 2021, a meditative morphing into 2022, freshness, curiosity and flow as ever!
Yours,
Mikael