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Aki Takase La Planete: Flying Soul
ByThe album boasts a vacillating current, featuring Takase's animated ostinatos; dainty or somber free-form cadenzas and Sclavis' carefree articulations amid the strings performers brisk unison breakouts and many other dynamics. And the quartet exercises an off- center spin on the Italian tarantella folk dance "Tarantella," spiced with frisky improvisational passages and disciplined choruses. The lone non-Takase composition is German avant-garde pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach's "Twelve Tone Tales, featuring Sclavis and violinist Dominique Pifarely's mystical storylines, nestled within the pianist's pensive articulations and cellist Vincent Courtois's classical undercurrents. However, Sclavis also lightens the panorama with whimsical phrasings over-the-top. In effect, the program rings like a multipart suite, enacted with comprehensive mosaics, and offset with rambunctious exchanges and flotation-like thematic evolutions. In less capable hands, these scenarios could seem muddled or contrived, but Takase's ensemble triumphantly morphs a sense of immediacy with sheer eloquence, graceful authority and mind-bending interplay.
Track Listing
Into The Woods; Rouge Stone; Wasserspiegel; Onigawarau; Finger Princess; Morning Bell; Turtle Mirror; Reading; Intoxication; Schoolwork; Flying Soul; Tarantella; Twelve Tone Tales; Moon Cake; Piece for “La Planete.”
Personnel
Aki Takase
pianoAki Takase: piano, celesta; Louis Sclavis: clarinet, bass clarinet; Dominique Pifarely: violin; Vincent Courtois: cello.
Album information
Title: Flying Soul | Year Released: 2014 | Record Label: Intakt Records