Richard Beirach

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Insert and obi included.

Of all the pianists ECM gathered in the seventies, Richard Beirach was the one most openly in dialogue with European classical music: Scriabin and Debussy sitting alongside the Bill Evans inheritance, harmony worked out in long suspended clusters rather than in changes. Hubris is Beirach in exactly that mode, and Manfred Eicher's production gives every decay in the piano somewhere to go. Slow, deliberate, occasionally severe, with a sense of line that never breaks even when the pulse is barely there. Not a record that shouts for attention, which is precisely why it keeps its hold.

Japanese ECM pressing, superb surfaces and the full gatefold artwork. One for late evenings and good speakers.