Thomas Demenga, Heinz Reber - Cellorganics (1981)

This album of music for cello and organ by Swiss cellist/composer Thomas Demenga dates from 1980, during something of a heyday for the German label ECM. It was made during the early days of digital recording, and it may be of interest to audiophiles for this reason alone. The music hasn't attracted much attention from theorists of the avant-garde, but it has hung on through several reissues now; someone must be listening to it, and it's quite attractive. Demenga's basic stylistic model is Messiaen, and his music borrows Messiaen's long lines, open harmonies, dense organ writing, and general sense of a serenity leading to ecstasy. But despite the blankly numbered Cellorganics titles, an unfortunate reminder of the times when composers were all pretending to be little quasi-scientists, Demenga extends Messiaen's language in each of the four pieces in the set. The first piece, beginning with a series of open fifths on the cello answered by the subtlest of decoration in the cello, is spacious and delicate. The second work adds Romantic passion to the cello part, with an entirely tonal opening, as well as a few jazz accents that probably commended the music to ECM. The third piece is a pointillistic soundscape with the cello contributing birdlike appogiaturas high in its range, while the final "Cellorganic" is a mixed bag that opens with a long pizzicato passage in the cello and proceeds into an alternation between melancholy tonal triads and landscapes punctuated by bright flashes of light from cello and organ together. The music is consistently absorbing, well recorded, and entirely worthy of wider attention.