ALF HAGGKVIST – Blue Serge
Losen Records: LOS 172-2
Alf Haggkvist: piano
Recorded: September 2016, Rissnekyrkan.
Solo piano recordings can be trepidatious events; playing the rhythm, the melody and keep time on a single instrument means that there is no safety net and no one else to point to if this go amiss. This requires a cool head, calmness and a determination to keep going until the end is reached. Some players respond to the challenge of soloing by breaking a piece into bite-size chunks, so the listeners can almost hear the breathing of the pianist working up the solo and then hesitating between bursts of activity. In other recordings, like this one, it much more difficult to listen for the joins – each piece is played and recorded as a seamless whole. So intact is each piece that one could easily take for granted the mastery behind the playing – if there are no pauses, or gaps, or missed opportunities in the solo then the listener could simply forget that these remain possibilities, and then forget that each problem has been expertly skirted around. This either requires the player to have mastered their instrument so completely that the chance of error is minimal, or to understand intimately the texture of each piece being played. On this recording, the listener has the luxury of hearing both approaches: some of the pieces are improvised (or, perhaps, ‘composed-in-real-time’ might be a better description) while others are standards that are played with integrity but also with interesting interpretations. So, you ‘Stella by Starlight’, ‘Autumn Leaves’, ‘There is no Greater Love’ – all of which would be stale and staple cocktail piano repertoire – played in ways that find new meaning in their well-known structures, as well as the somewhat lesser known ‘Blue Serge’.
On these pieces, Haggkvist has a very clear, bell-like tone with each note played in clear separation from the others. There is a very classical tone, as if the pieces have been filtered through a Chopin Nocturne. Then, just as you think you have the measure of his playing style, there are pieces like ‘Freely one’ (track 3) and ‘Freely two’ (track 5) in which he strums the strings inside the piano and plays rills and slurs on top of this, together with some electronic clicks and distortion, in a challenging modernist style. At first the juxtaposition of styles is disconcerting, but after the second piece this feeling shifts into a sense of an entire collection of pieces that have been planned and fitted together. This feeling is reinforced by the ways in which the pieces segue into each other, so the more experimental pieces become, in a sense, commentaries on the ‘standards’. What I like about this is the way that this helps to reframe the familiar through the shifting backdrop of these odd and unfamiliar, but entirely complimentary intercessions.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Losen Records: LOS 172-2
Alf Haggkvist: piano
Recorded: September 2016, Rissnekyrkan.
Solo piano recordings can be trepidatious events; playing the rhythm, the melody and keep time on a single instrument means that there is no safety net and no one else to point to if this go amiss. This requires a cool head, calmness and a determination to keep going until the end is reached. Some players respond to the challenge of soloing by breaking a piece into bite-size chunks, so the listeners can almost hear the breathing of the pianist working up the solo and then hesitating between bursts of activity. In other recordings, like this one, it much more difficult to listen for the joins – each piece is played and recorded as a seamless whole. So intact is each piece that one could easily take for granted the mastery behind the playing – if there are no pauses, or gaps, or missed opportunities in the solo then the listener could simply forget that these remain possibilities, and then forget that each problem has been expertly skirted around. This either requires the player to have mastered their instrument so completely that the chance of error is minimal, or to understand intimately the texture of each piece being played. On this recording, the listener has the luxury of hearing both approaches: some of the pieces are improvised (or, perhaps, ‘composed-in-real-time’ might be a better description) while others are standards that are played with integrity but also with interesting interpretations. So, you ‘Stella by Starlight’, ‘Autumn Leaves’, ‘There is no Greater Love’ – all of which would be stale and staple cocktail piano repertoire – played in ways that find new meaning in their well-known structures, as well as the somewhat lesser known ‘Blue Serge’.
On these pieces, Haggkvist has a very clear, bell-like tone with each note played in clear separation from the others. There is a very classical tone, as if the pieces have been filtered through a Chopin Nocturne. Then, just as you think you have the measure of his playing style, there are pieces like ‘Freely one’ (track 3) and ‘Freely two’ (track 5) in which he strums the strings inside the piano and plays rills and slurs on top of this, together with some electronic clicks and distortion, in a challenging modernist style. At first the juxtaposition of styles is disconcerting, but after the second piece this feeling shifts into a sense of an entire collection of pieces that have been planned and fitted together. This feeling is reinforced by the ways in which the pieces segue into each other, so the more experimental pieces become, in a sense, commentaries on the ‘standards’. What I like about this is the way that this helps to reframe the familiar through the shifting backdrop of these odd and unfamiliar, but entirely complimentary intercessions.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
