Nuït

One of the great strengths of this album lies in the many quiet moments of communion between cellist and pianist where in hushed tones they explore the possibilities of the encounters between them. Throughout there is a directness of communication, between performers and to us the audience, that cuts through issues of modernity. I very much hope that those who normally turn away from contemporary music give this a try even if only on a streaming platform. I will be very surprised if anyone sampling it will fail to buy. This is heartfelt, tender, hypnotic music. Try section XIX which is as wrenching as anything in Shostakovich. Fridman and van Veen don’t do anything in half measures on this record.

Can you like a work of music without understanding it? Indeed, yes. I don't claim to yet understand what Maya Fridman and Maarten van Veen have created in Nuït, their new release from TRPTK. But I do like it, and I plan to continue listening to come to grips with it. It is a wonderful experience of primal cacophony resolving into nuance, delicacy and beauty, yet undeniable strength.

Much of the listening experience is the exploration of sounds and moods. Our performers push the capabilities of their instruments to explore resonances, contrasts, subtleties, and extremes. Each speaks and responds, blends and contrasts, challenges and submits. It is all a wonderful dialog and exploration.

When Maya blends her lovely voice into the repeating refrains in XXXI (the ninth track), we experience a moment of rare beauty and peace. The final movement, XVIII, begins in silence. Then, at about 0:26, there is the very quiet plucked note of the cello, followed quietly by a note, then two, very low on the piano. This is almost inaudible, so listen carefully. Gradually the volume of the cello and the piano builds with each passing note. All seems almost plaintive, certainly meditative, with yearning long bowing strokes on the cello before all fades to silence and the work concludes.

The virtuosity and creativity of the performers makes this all work.

I am enchanted.

Improvisation was once commonplace in classical music, but in the course of the nineteenth century, when composers increasingly felt the need to record everything that had to be played, it became increasingly rare.

In the classical world, making music eventually became pure reading music. When composers wrote in their scores that something had to be improvised in certain places, you could create the discomfort of the faces during rehearsals.

In that sense, the meeting of pianist Maarten van Veen and cellist Maya Fridman was something special. They planned to play through a list of contemporary pieces, but something else happened. When they discovered that they both liked to improvise, they put the scores aside and started playing something that came into being in the moment. They were so surprised by the result that they changed their plan. They would make an album based on improvisations.

Fridman offered the idea of ​​Nuit, the goddess of the starry night, ruler of infinity, and thus a fifty-minute piece was created, composed of several spontaneous musical dialogues, trimmed at the end of the meetings and arranged in a dramaturgically satisfying order. were placed.

The result is wonderful. Van Veen and Fridman sense each other telepathically.