Bruce Brubaker: Eno Piano
InFiné
Recognized as a foremost interpreter of Philip Glass's music, American pianist Bruce Brubaker now turns his attention to Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno. A promo video for the album reveals that the pianist brought his usual care to the project as well as a thorough understanding of Eno's sensibility and approach. In the piece we see Brubaker enthusing about a treatment capable of transforming his instrument into an Eno piano, specifically that by suspending an electromagnetic bow over its inner string, a vibration is generated that allows it to produce a long tone free of the usual diminuendo of a struck note. Such a detail reflects his grasp of Eno's contention that music is not just about the notes played but the complete sound environment of which they're a part.
Brubaker's twelfth studio album—its title identifying it as a natural companion to 2015's Glass Piano—is not, however, an entirely satisfying affair. Eno Piano covers a modest number of bases in featuring selections from Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) and three other albums. “The Chill Air” originally appeared on the joint Harold Budd-Eno release Ambient 2: The Plateaux Of Mirror (1980), while “Emerald and Stone” first appeared on Small Craft On a Milk Sea (2010), created with Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams, and “By This River,” a collaboration with Cluster's Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, on Before and After Science (1977).
At forty minutes, the album's duration is adequate, yet certainly room was available to include ten to fifteen minutes more. It's puzzling that three but not all four of the Music for Airports pieces appear, and including only three other tracks seems like an opportunity missed when Eno's catalogue suggests so many more could have been added. An alternate version of the release would see the fourth Music for Airports part, “1/2,” included, as well as treatments of, say, “Spider and I” (Before and After Science), "Some of Them Are Old” (Here Come the Warm Jets, 1974), "Everything Merges with the Night” (Another Green World, 1975), and so on, the possibilities vast. The three-and-a-half-minute treatment “By This River” receives also feels like potential unrealized when a ten-minute exploration could have been so much more transporting and immersive.
Let's not overlook the fact that the album does reward in one very real sense, with the performances having much to recommend them. As acoustic piano is already so central to “1/1” on the original Music for Airports, Brubaker's version doesn't depart dramatically from Eno's, but that's an observation, not a criticism. The pianist made the right choice in hewing to the original rather than contriving some radical re-imagining, and the sonic tinting that colours Eno's likewise illuminates Brubaker's. The arrangements of “2/1” and “2/2” do, on the other hand, re-configure the material into pianistic form, the delicate and peaceful former sounding as if realized using both piano and church organ and the latter suitably contemplative and time-suspending.
At two minutes, “The Chill Air” is over quickly, but the pianist's hypnotic presentation is lovely nonetheless as well as beautifully textured, and even in its truncated form “By This River” exudes all the lilting grace and spellbinding quality of the haunting original, Eno's vocal lines smoothly translating into pianistic form. Still, as much pleasure as Brubaker's sensitive renditions bring, one nevertheless comes away from the album imagining what might have been as opposed to what there is. Perhaps a follow-up volume—if there's to be one—will be a more satisfying portrait when their combined contents provide a more comprehensive account of Eno's music.December 2023