Modest Mussorgsky was inspired by an exhibition of pictures of a deceased friend to the piano cycle Pictures at an Exhibition. To this day, this piano cycle as original and in plural beefed up piano versions as well as in not much less plural orchestral forms, not at least however also thanks to the 1971 live recorded rock version of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, is one of the most frequently played and recorded pieces of classical music. Also Glauco Venier's piano cycle Miniatures owe their existence to the friendship to a painter. In the context of a documentary about the painter and sculptor Giorgio Celiberti, Venier was invited to his studio to improvise live on pictures hanging there. The ECM's Manfred Eicher was inspired by the film-studded studio concert, which is characterized by bell-like sounds in response to string-like metal crosses, to invite Glauco Venier to a recording project, which can now be listened to as a solo album of this very special musician on the ECM label.
Glauco Venier comes from the classic side of the world. "My approach to music was through the organ in our local church. I fell in love with this sound and the composers of organ music ... I have good memories of how I played on the organ in the church in dark, cold winters." After studying the organ at the Udine Conservatory, Glauco discovered Vernier the music world of the Italian Renaissance and the Baroque, then he worked his way through the centuries of musical history to the organ music of the present, to Olivier Messiaen, and on the horizon, jazz appeared on the horizon and Glauco Vernier gave up his life as a church musician for jazz. Truly an unusual development for a musician, who seemed to have laid a life with classical music almost in the cradle.
And his view of jazz, as one can hear on the ECM album, is as much unusual as one may think of. Whether solo on the piano or beating gongs, bells and tuned metal objects, Glauco Vernier, in his Miniatures, recounts at one time atmospherically, and at other times quietly flowing from a fantastic, slightly beyond world, in which the paintings and sculptures of his painter friend Giorgio Celiberti, but also an unspecified one painting by Tiziano in Tiziano's Painting, are taking place as well as the organ music of composers of past centuries.
Starting with the beginning the gentle rendition of the first title Ritual, the listener enters the fantastic sound world of Glauco Venier, which may not open until the second entrance, too unusual is what is offered, beginning with metal objects gently made sound before piano chords take over the sound. Tiziano's Painting continues the sound journey in a similar way. Then the piano in Madiba takes over the role of the tour guide until shortly before the end of the title metal sound again makes clear, where we are located. In the question-and-answer game, piano and bells in Visible Spirit and Deep And Far reveal some secrets of the strangely fascinating Claudio Venier world, before, in the end, in Abstractio, new secrets are set in the way by bells and gongs exclusively without dissolution of the secrets.
Anyone who understands to adapt to the uncommon and unaccustomed without preoccupation comes at its own expense listening to Miniatures. Strong recommendation for all adventurers. In a well-known way, the ECM sound magicians ensure that the adventure traveler can go safely through this high-resolution download from start to finish.
Glauco Venier, piano, gongs, bells