To Be the Chime
This is post-modern music, akin to 20th Century classical but somehow more immediate and earthy. Etienne Schwarcz creates a dizzying, indie-like work of contemporary music here. The strings of the piano resonate as if you were at the keyboard, or in it, and you are pulled along and driven forward as if flying over a wildly varied landscape. Some of it is dreamy and calm, even lovely, but there are also frightful caves and dangerous passes to negotiate with your heart in your throat. This latter sort of experience takes up a fair portion of "Laurie (pts. 1 & 2)", whilst the more dreamy material is in the two parts of the "Symphonie Pour Une Femme Seule". Regardless of which you prefer, there is a definite French quality to the music; a French cadence and choice of chords. Any way you slice it, it is contemporary or post-modern music and has a very interpretive, almost improvisational feel to it. Needless to say, repeated listenings help expose its complex structure. Highly recommended.
