Twilight - for Solo Piano

Zbigniew Preisner and Dominik Wania

 
" Twilight is an exceptional pairing of the talents of Preisner and Wania "

Written by Joep de Bruijn - Review of the regular release

Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner´ new solo piano album Twilight is a collaboration with pianist Dominik Wania. They were first introduced to each other while working on the 2015 W poszukiwaniu dróg. Nowe i stare kolędy (Searching for new ways, New and old carols) album and onward collaborated for a wonderful score to the film La Reina de España. Preisner´s previous solo piano project with Leszek Możdżer (10 Easy Pieces for Piano) was born out the desire of Preisner to write music that would give Możdżer more freedom to improvise, which was a means to deal with his ´unfulfilled´ feelings in their musical sidings. Twilight is in a sense created out of a similar feeling, giving a stage to Wania to shine, but without the need for much improvisation and more closely following the composer´s notes.

Twilight is an illustrative piano album that reflects on the memories and emotions of various places and times the composer holds close to his heart. He feels he is now in the twilight of his musical career, hence the title of the album. There´s a delicateness and great level of warmth in the track Spring in Jamna, suggesting his residing place is where he feels most comforting. It´s an exemplary composition of the album, devoid of musical embellishments and foremost concentrating on unsophisticated, yet idiosyncratic music by Preisner. Dominik Wania´s efforts to bring each individual piece to life with reflective and radiant qualities, is by all means mesmerizing.

Summer in Gennadi is an exceptionally bright and elegant Spanish flavoured piece, which shows resemblances to A tune of the day (10 Easy Pieces for Piano), and might as well have been written for La reina de España. In contradiction to such a delightful piece and the overall tone, which does have its share of melancholy, is the truly saddening To Lose a Friend. The piece is a musical testimony to the deceased singer Ania Szałapak, who he worked with in Krakow´s cabaret  Piwnica pod Baranami and had developed a very close friendship with. Also, she was the singer of his very first written Christmas Carol 40 years ago. Its dramatic content is an understudy into human grief, marked by familiar Preisner touches as vibrations, pauses and re-echoing effects, perfectly captured by the playing of Wania.

Twilight is an exceptional pairing of the talents of Preisner and Wania. In addition to his two original piano albums, I can also recommend the daunting interpretations of the composer´s music by Dutch pianist Jeroen van Veen. Thus far, 2019 proved to be a remarkable year for Preisner in terms of releases; Caldera records released two scores (A História da Eternidade/The History of Eternity and Shi Gu/ Lost and Love) and Supertrain records released Twilight, his new single Psalm and Melody of Youth (with Lisa Gerrard and again Dominik Wania) just now.


Tracklist
1. Winter in Morgins 4:19
2. Transient 5:46
3. To Lose a Friend 6:37
4. Time Machine 5:56
5. Bobowa's Memories 5:11
6. Spring in Jamna 4:29
7. Autumn 1:41
8. Summer in Gennadi 2:25
9. Twilight 7:26


(written 6-10-2019)
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(total of 2 votes - average 5/5)

Released by

Supertrain records (regular release 2019)