Catalogue 2013 - Index of - ECM

Sounds and Silence
Travels with Manfred Eicher
A Film by Peter Guyer and
Norbert Wiedmer
Multi_lingual original version,
subtitles German, English, French,
87 min.
ECM 5050
DVD 2769886
Blu_ray 2769887
The film is not merely proof of Eicher’s
refusal to accept the limits of generic
“borders” in music; it’s also a revealing
study of what a sympathetic, imaginative
producer can bring to a recording or
concert. […] Beautifully crafted in its
own modest and impressionistic way
(the road_movie sequences are even
reminiscent of ECM’s distinctive cover
art), Guyer and Wiedmer’s film impresses
both as a revealing look at the processes
of musical creativity and a portrait of one
man’s abiding passion for the miracles
that music, in all its diversity, may give
rise to.
Geoff Andrew
Sight & Sound, Londo
A genuine visionary, Manfred Eicher has
certainly revolutionized the world of
music through his ECM label, which has
aimed since its inception at capturing the
most beautiful sound next to silence. For
40 years, ECM, guided by Eicher’s vision
and aesthetics, has released some of the
most important jazz, experimental, world
and modern classical recordings. “Sounds
and Silence” is an intimate musical portrait
of this legendary label owner and
producer, whose presence is the common
factor in the careers of not a few musical
giants. Swiss filmmakers Norbert Wiedmer
and Paul Guyer followed Eicher over
a period of five years and the result is a
sonic journey that captures the artistry of
one of the most distinctive and celebrated
producers of our time.
Nenad Georgievski
All About Jazz
Dino Saluzzi / Anja Lechner
El Encuentro
A film for bandoneon and violoncello
by Norbert Wiedmer and Enrique Ros
Multi_lingual original version,
subtitles German, English, Spanish,
52 min.
ECM 5051
DVD 076 2841
“El Encuentro” follows bandoneonist Dino
Saluzzi and cellist Anja Lechner to locations
in Argentina, Germany, Armenia,
Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
“Your perception of music and your way
of playing music change when you travel,”
says Anja Lechner. The camera joins the
journey and underlines the point, illuminating
the processes of music making in
very different contexts.
They come from backgrounds that could
hardly be more diverse – Saluzzi from
South American tango and folk traditions
and Anja from the world of European
classical music, but have worked closely
together since the mid_1990s, beginning
with the “Kultrum” alliance between Saluzzi
and the Rosamunde Quartett.
The film offers insights into the life of
these travelling musicians seen here in
concert, in rehearsal sessions, at recording
studios, and in informal settings,
variously joined by a cast that includes
composer Tigran Mansurian, arranger
Levon Eskenian, pianist George Gruntz,
and Saluzzi’s brother, saxophonist/clarinetist
Felix Saluzzi.
The journey culminates in a concert of
Saluzzi’s music with the Metropole Orchestra
in Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw.
A musician who has created a unique
personal idiom, “I compose with hopes
and memories”, says Dino Saluzzi, as he
shapes a forward_looking personal idiom,
coloured by remembrances of things past.
150 151
Jean_Luc Godard
Anne_Marie Miéville
Four Short Films
ECM Cinema, a new DVD series, is
launched with a release dedicated to the
work of filmmakers Jean_Luc Godard and
Anne_Marie Miéville. It brings together
four short films made between 1993 and
2002. Four short films, as writer Michael
Athen notes, “that encompass everything:
art and freedom, presence and memory,
violence and passion. Four symphonies
composed of images, tones, quotes, and
soundtracks. Four essays in which the
cinema itself seems to speak to us, in
friendly dialogue with painting, literature
and music – as a brother to all the arts.”
The DVD Four Short Films is issued with a
120_page hardbound book, incorporating
the complete text of Jean_Luc Godard’s
and Anne_Marie Miéville’s narration (in
French and English translation), an essay
by Michael Althen (in German, French and
English), and more than 70 stills from
the films, in black and white and colour.
ECM Cinema 5001
DVD 987 3185
ISBN 987_3_00_018563_2
Call it jazz, world music, contemporary
classical … for nearly four decades,
Manfred Eicher’s ECM label has been
giving us some of the most adventurous,
rewarding and best_produced music
around. Small wonder, then, that when
Jean_Luc Godard was offered the use of
any ECM fare suitable for his films, he
accepted … Eicher released CDs of the
“Nouvelle Vague” and “Histoire(s) du
Cinéma” soundtracks. The fruitful collaboration
continues with ECM’s first DVD,
a typically elegant and sympathetic
package of four Godard shorts … “De
l’origine du XXIe siècle”, made for millennial
Cannes, is one of Godard’s finest and
most succinct recent efforts, blending
Bergman, Rossellini and Ophüls with
archive footage to present a sorrowing
account of our absurd obsession with
war and destruction. “The Old Place” …
is a meditation on the relationship between
art, reality, economics and ethics
… “Liberté et Patrie” is a more modest
but unusually engaging look at the life
and work of Aimé Pache, a painter from
the couple’s hometown Rolle, while the
very brief “Je vous salue, Sarajevo”
dissects a photograph to telling effect.
All the print transfers are good, and the
whole comes with a sumptuous booklet
in English, French and German which
contains essays and translations for the
movies.
Geoff Andrew, Time Out
Heinz Bütler / Manfred Eicher
Holozän
With Erland Josephson, Sophie Duez
Photography: Giorgos Arvanitis
Music by Johann Sebastian Bach,
Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich,
Paul Hindemith, Keith Jarrett,
Jan Garbarek
Co_directed by Heinz Bütler and
Manfred Eicher, this film adaptation
of Max Frisch’s 1979 novella “Man In
The Holocene” – a book described by
the York Times as “a luminous parable,
a masterpiece” – was awarded the
Special Prize of the Jury at the 1992
Locarno International Film Festival.
Filmedition Suhrkamp
DVD 600 3514
ISBN 978_3_518_13514_3
In a mountain village in Ticino, cut off
from the rest of the world, an old man
takes a stand against forgetfulness. Herr
Geisser cuts out articles on paleontology
and geolology and more, and pins clipping
after clipping to his walls. In
integrating these notes into his narrative,
Max Frisch linked the history of humanity
with individual decline. With subtle
camera movement, elliptic storytelling
and editing, and inspired use of music
and environmental sound, the film “illuminates
the associative and synaesthetic
layers of its literary model” (FAZ).