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The River
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Track Listing
- The River: I
- The River: II
- The River: III
- The River: IV
- The River: V
- The River: VI
- The River: VII
- The River: VIII
- The River: IX
- The River: X
- The River: XI
- The River: XII
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #136558 in Music
- Released on: 2000-05-16
- Number of discs: 1
- Format: Original recording reissued
Customer Reviews
So beautiful
This is without a doubt a wonderful CD.. It takes you through a beautiful, soulful journey . I find it one of the most centering CD's I own, and one I greatly treasure. If you are a David Darling fan, this is a must have.
Meditative and intimate - a pure flow of stark Nordic melody
Improvisatory duet for cello (Darling) and piano (Bjornstad) forms part of a water-themed ECM cycle based around Bjornstad and assorted partners. Darling and Bjornstad were reunited in the subsequent album Epigraphs, although I don't think it quite captures the magic of this effort. They are also heard in the soundtrack to Jean-Luc Godard's film "Forever Mozart".
After working on the earlier album "The Sea", Bjornstad wrote about the processes that lead to "The River": "I spent the winter of 1994/5 researching and playing music of the late renaissance, paying particular attention to the clarity of William Byrd's and Orlando Gibbons's melodic invention, trying to 'translate' some of this into a modern idiom, trying to find a contemporary language for further dialogues."
This album deserves to share the higher profile of other ECM artists like Jan Garbarek & the Hilliard Ensemble. See also the soundtrack music of Eleni Karaindrou (Music for Films, Ulysses Gaze,...) for other richly textured marvels in the ECM roster.
At times, wonderful
I only have one other David Darling album (Cello) and none by Ketil Bjornstad. I cannot comment on other works (of course.)
Obviously I bought this because I knew Darling, and I am not disapoited by his performance. His Cello work is indeed evocative. However, Bjornstad on the other hand occasionally slips into the worst (for me) of New Age. That is, trite melodies. Darling saves all of the tracks for me. Whenever Bjornstad would trip up, Darling stopped him from falling.
That leaves me with a CD which I enjoyed, and that's good! It's not perfect, by any means. But few things are.
