Bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi had for decades been writing music for other instruments, and Imágenes is the first album devoted to his works for piano. The ten pieces date from 1960 to 2002 and were conceived in Salta, Buenos Aires, Stuttgart and on tour. They are played by the Argentine pianist Horacio Lavandera, at home in both the classical repertoire and contemporary music. Heard apart from the bandoneon, Saluzzi's melodic and storytelling gifts appear in a new light.
Lavandera studied with Maurizio Pollini and Charles Rosen and has worked on contemporary music with Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel. The album was recorded in October 2013 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, with the composer present at the sessions. Manfred Eicher produced and Jan Erik Kongshaug was the engineer. The booklet has an essay by Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich and a note by guitarist Pablo Márquez. Jungheinrich suggests that in this more formal setting Saluzzi's musical pictures take on an almost cubist quality, like one image seen from several sides.
The title piece of 2001 opens the disc and is the longest, at ten minutes. It moves from rolling arpeggios and a broad, almost cinematic romanticism into heavier textures, then to a severe theme in slow counterpoint. Montañas, from 1960 and the oldest piece here, is sparsely written and spacious, and closes in an uneasy lyricism. At the other end of the scale, Moto perpetuo lasts barely a minute. The programme also includes the slow Vals para Verenna and the short, tuneful Romance, before ending with Donde nací, "where I was born".
Dominy Clements, reviewing the disc for MusicWeb International in 2015, wrote that "there is a singing quality to much of this music". He noted that "each piece does have its own individual character", although he felt the reflective mood could become too inward over a full hour. Tyran Grillo, on ECM Reviews, heard in the title piece "fragments: of memory, of place, and of time". The album appeared in the same month as the composer's 80th birthday, on 20 May 2015.
CD edition of ECM New Series 2379, released on 15 May 2015.
