inwards...(2009)

One thing that is striking about the music on this CD is its great dynamic range. John Palmer makes us listen intently to the quietest nuance, the smallest gesture, but then sometimes dramatically its mirror, striking us directly with a much more elaborated and extended response. Schoenberg described Webern's music as being like extending 'a sigh into a novel' or expressing 'a joy in a breath'. So here the theme of the breath is both literally in sound and more remotely as the great fundamental mechanism that brought speech and song - effectively music - into existence. The bass flute in Inwards starts the journey at its roots, focused and centred, yet growing - or perhaps floating - outwards and upwards. To find an accordion piece following may be a surprise - this is a kind of mechanical lung but one which can move much faster when asked to do so. Drang shows this drama at its most virtuosic and dynamic - an extraordinary tour de force where a complex conversation takes place at breakneck speed. The listener is quite out of breath by its conclusion. Transient returns us to a more meditative world, a kind of requiem where breath is emblematic of life itself. Our fear of its absence may lie behind cries of agony or despair which articulate mourning in many cultures. Transfiguration harnesses the breathing and talking trombone of Vinko Globokar in an extraordinary canvas. It moves from concrete representation to sound-based abstraction in a kind of cinematic fusion. Language disintegrates, yet expression is always present, reassembled from the pieces. Portuguese fado, too, shouts real human defiance from the depths of the soul (and the lungs) in the face of a sometimes impossible destiny. Fado, the final work on this CD, does not try to imitate but to meditate on some of its melancholy. The piano is finally infused with the breath of the human performer. For the works on this CD Palmer takes his inspiration - in all senses! - from the breath. He has created an extraordinarily varied, colourful and sensitive world which invites and rewards our deep listening.

Simon Emmerson
London, September 2008