Sunday 8 January 2017

Toni Edelmann in Maisema / Landscape form 1982 Finland





It starts off unpromisingly with a tangled mesh of melodies, probably improvised, as well as aimless shamanlike chanting upon a cold and dark atmosphere befitting the land of origin before the piano of Edelmann takes up the famed half-diminished chord of Wagner's Tristan (here Eminor7 flat5) to a B minor 9, which slowly atonally builds up until tutti orchestra brings on the light in harps and gliassandos.  This leads nicely into the second track introduced with crystalline vibes playing the first electromagnetic radiation in the visible spectrum, called Aamu (Morning):





And later the song builds again with the entire string section and a luscious sax solo, very similar to excerpts from the recent Aaltonen / Donner Strings masterwork.

Information on this composition here.  Notice that he cedes the piano player's bench to others on most tracks, and that famous Finn Esa Helasvuo (Think-Tank-Funk-- a very similar album minus the funk, and Q) plays on the last one.

Toni's output overall is quite mixed if you look at his discography, presumably this was his magnum opus.

A difficult, but necessary piece of music, in my opinion.



4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beautiful. Teddy Lasry meets ECM/Jan Garbarek, something for a foggy winter's day.

    ReplyDelete
  3. https://www.sendspace.com/file/vt5mrr

    ReplyDelete