Misha Alperin

From the binge: Misha Alperin, Her First Dance. Pianist Alperin was another accidental discovery. Many years ago, I came across a used copy of his North Story CD in a used record shop in Buffalo, NY. Used copies of ECM recordings in good condition are a rare find, so I scooped it up despite some serious reservations about Alperin's awfully Russian-sounding name. He did prove to be Russian-ish - originally from Chişinău in Moldova - but his recorded output was created entirely in the West. North Story was impressive, and though it never became a staple in my CD player, I became interested enough to start keeping up with his releases. Alperin is not prolific - a CD every five years or so - but most of them have at least something, usually a lot, that is worth hearing.

Her First Dance, Alperin's latest, is nominally a trio record with Arkady Shilkloper, another Russian, on French horn and flugelhorn, and German cellist Anja Lechner. All three have recorded together before, on Lechner's Night, which I also have and will comment on some other time, plus Alperin and Shilkloper go back many years and have recorded together as long ago as the 1980s. You barely hear all three playing at the same time, however - Her First Dance is essentially an album of solos and duets in various combinations of instruments. It also ends up being, unintentionally I am sure, avant-garde for the iPod generation. Although Alperin does have a recognizable style on the piano, there is little unity to the album as a whole; the record is not a coherent work in and of itself. Individual tracks, however, almost always stand up to intense scrutiny and each ends up being a complete statement.

Although Her First Dance was issued under mainline ECM imprint, instead of their New Series sub-label which focuses on "classical" music (most of it contemporary), Alperin is first and foremost a composer, not an improviser. Only on "Lonely in White," a solo piece, Alperin extemporizes in a semi-conventional fashion over a repeated figure in the left hand. Even here, however, he never plays with reckless abandon the way most self-respecting jazz musicians would strive to do - everything is perfectly controlled and fitted precisely into the four and a half minutes he allots himself. "Jump," another solo, sounds spontaneous on the surface, but again the spontaneity is shallow - Alperin takes a couple of clumps of notes and tosses them back and forth for a while. On the rest of the tracks, all but one composed by Alperin himself, two characteristics are readily apparent. One is his obvious concern with structure and contrasting themes. The other is the fact that he writes amazing melodies. The latter characteristic is always in evidence. The former - only sometimes, which gives the record its somewhat disjoint character.

Alperin's melodies are not catchy in a conventional sense. You will not walk away humming any of them. They are beautiful, however. Sparse, in that inimitably Nordic way that ECM fosters so well and then captures expertly on tape, with space between the notes accorded just as much importance as the notes themselves. Harmonically, the melodies are often ambiguous, but they are not dissonant. While they may not carry an inexorable logic of a more conventional tune, they do not puzzle or agitate. They are dark and often sad, but always meaningful and conclusive.

Alperin's fellow musicians' (with Lechner on cello, I can't call them sidemen, can I...) playing is top-notch throughout. Shilkloper is a known virtuoso, supposedly; a long-time principal of a major Russian orchestra (it escapes me for the moment which one it is). French horn is an infamously difficult instrument (believe me, I know - J. has been playing it for close to twenty years) and does not lend itself to complex soloing, and aside from a few embellishments on the title track, where he plays flugelhorn, Shilkloper doesn't try. But his tone is gorgeous, his intonation absolutely perfect, and he imbues each note with a ton of feeling. Both French horn and flugelhorn are amazingly expressive instruments, and Shilkloper takes full advantage of them.

The same goes for Lechner. Her tone is beautiful, and the controlled but intense emotion of her playing fits Alperin's music perfectly. One of the more interesting tracks is "The Russian Song," a Lechner-Shilkloper duet. Both are playing single-line instruments, but you never miss the lack of a real chord. Helped by ECM's moist, echoey mix, they fill an amazing amount of space with just two notes at a time (maybe three with Lechner's occasional double stop). Elsewhere, like on "A New Day" and especially on "Frozen Tears," Lechner's playing, accompanied by Alperin's piano, bears more than a passing resemblance to stuff David Darling did with Ketil Bjornstad on Epigraphs, my long-time reference for cello-piano duets.

Complaints are few, and they happen to book-end the CD. The opening "Vayan" is a prefect example of Alperin's preoccupation with contrasting themes, but the secondary theme, busy and chaotic, while contrasting alright, is not particularly enjoyable. The closing "Via Dolorosa," also for solo piano, is sufficiently heavy to justify its title, but at over seven minutes gets a little monotonous. These are minor quibbles, however. On balance, Her First Dance is excellent - beautiful and distinctive, with all three musicians playing at the top of their game.