«unfurling» is a 53-minutes piece composed and performed by Welsh violinist Angharad Davies, Austrian harmonium player Klaus Lang and British cellist and visual artist Anton Lukoszevieze (he did the cover art), recorded during their residency at Dai Hall in Huddersfield in March 2020. Davies, Lang, and Lukoszevieze are all composers of experimental music, but only Davies has extensive experience with free-improvised music. Davies and Lukoszevieze collaborated closely in recent years, most recently with Ensemble Grizzana, performing compositions by Magnus Granberg and Jürg Frey («Early to Late», Another Timbre, 2018), and this album is their first collaboration with Lang.

The title «unfurling» captures faithfully the essence of this immersive piece, as the music – literally- emerges and unfurls as the trio keeps playing. The loose structural ideas of it were discussed briefly before Davies, Lang, and Lukoszevieze began to play. The sound world, form, and pitch material became clear as the trio played. And this process of music-making blurs the distinction between contemporary and new music and instantaneous, free-improvised music.

Davies, Lang, and Lukoszevieze settle immediately on a minimalist interplay. The piece radiates bewildering feeling. It sounds at times focused but also unfocused and allows the listener to feel lost within the acoustic sounds of the instruments blended into an abstract, drone-like entity, or to feel lost within this kind of subtle and intimate form of music. The pieces begin with an atmospheric and spacious segment; moves into a sparse segment that highlights the extended techniques and offers cyclical waves of abstract, meditative sounds; and concludes first in an even looser, sometimes chaotic and dissonant interplay, later in a delicate and lyrical, chamber mode, and finally in a quiet yet urgent and dissonant coda. All performed with poetic and arresting elegance.

Eyal Hareuveni

Angharad Davies (vio), Klaus Lang (harm), Anton Lukoszevieze (c)