Night Song is a brilliantly appropriate title for the latest ECM outing from pianist Ketil Bjornstad and cellist Svante Henryson. The disc contains 16 duets between piano and cello, and was recorded in Oslo, Norway in 2009. Like so many releases from Manfred Eicher’s ECM label, the resulting music is not easily described. It is obvious that he as a producer gently pushes his artists towards their best work, it is also just as clear that the visions of the musicians are of paramount importance in the process.
The 16-song cycle Night Song is a pure example of this approach. According to Bjornstad in the liner notes: “It is always special for a musician when an ECM production evolves through a dialog with Manfred Eicher from the very beginning. It can perhaps be compared to what an actor feels when working with a film director. His own aesthetic sense and creative techniques can be so compelling that the actor, or musician, willingly defers to a conceptual universe that may have a wider scope than the ideas he or she may have been working on.”
While I have no way of knowing what (if anything) was altered from Bjornstad’s 12 compositions, or Henryson’s four - it seems that a way was found to blend them into individual pieces which nontheless tell a fascinating story. Again in the liner notes, Bjornstad reflects on what his ideas were at the time of composition. “I took my own ideas of Schubert as a point of departure…Night Song was conceived as a musical dialogue with Schubert and as a tribute to him.”
The disciplined chamber music Bjornstad and Henryson belie the wealth of emotion texture each track evokes. In fact, one of the more enjoyable elements of listening to this incredibly soothing piece of work is picking out the various “quotes” (mostly indirect) that the composers utilize in realizing their own sense of nighttime.
From the very beginning, Night Song is meant to evoke the hours between sunset and sunrise. This is set forth with track one, “Night Song (Evening Version).” The piano of Ketil suggests a slowly darkening horizon, while Svante’s cello traces the steps beside him - with both walking out of the light and into the dark together.
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