Lukas Lauermann: I N
col legno

Lukas Lauermann (b. 1985) approached the recording of his second solo album with great deliberation while at the same time remaining open to new ideas as they presented themselves. The result, the cellist's follow-up to 2017's How I Remember Now I Remember How (col legno), is a highly personalized recording that satisfies on both experimental and listening grounds. His classical training at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna and the Anton Bruckner University in Linz combine with his explorative sensibility on the new release, which distills Lauermann's open-ended approach into a compact, compelling statement. Here's a case where intellect and intuition are equally imperative to the undertaking.

The title alone reflects the deliberate mindset in play, with I N referring to both the process of turning inward and the reception of external input. To that end, the cello pieces Lauermann perform originate from within as self-authored material but are also modified externally using tuning forks, synthesizer, piano, and electronics; for this project, then, the cello is both sound-generator and sounding board. Strategies are deployed at times in the music's construction, with binary codes, for example, translated into rhythms. Chord sequences, tone rows, and loop patterns were used as building blocks, making for an hour-long recording where connections emerge between the pieces.

Cello sonorities at their most gorgeous distinguish the stately “trusion / clusion,” with Lauermann's refined technique used to amplify the music's beauty. Immediately thereafter, “ception, clue” presents the first stirrings of an experimental approach when minimal drone-like gestures are punctuated by staccato ripples of electronically treated sounds. In the twenty concise pieces that follow, the musical style alternates between elegant classical expressions and explorations of a more abstract nature. Hushed passages and aggressive sequences likewise alternate but not so artlessly that the recording takes on the character of an unsubtle exercise in contrast.

Some pieces play like experimental sketches, others fully developed compositions, albeit of an abbreviated kind; differences aside, most are memorable for one reason or another. Whereas the pairing of arpeggios and lilting rhythms, for instance, lends “finite distinct” a flowing, almost dreamlike character, music box timbres imbue “lusion / existence” and “nocent” with a gentle, childlike aura. “formation / arration” arrests in its coupling of delicate bowed phrases and plucked rejoinders; “dulgence / eglection” does much the same, though this time in pairing extended cello notes with bright piano phrasings. In “fluence / dependence,” softly shimmering string drones give the material a meditative quality, and in settings such as the mournful “herent / full” and “dividuality / to be,” vibrato-heavy cellos are layered to intensify the elegiac effect. The one-two punch of “otion / deology” and “press / consequence” pushes that to the limit for eight captivating minutes.

October 2020