On The Following Morning the German bassist and composer Eberhard Weber sets his partnership with pianist Rainer Brüninghaus inside arrangements for cellos, French horns and oboe. There are no drums. The result is a slow, orchestral record of four long pieces, each over seven minutes. According to ECM, the rapport between the two players was rarely better displayed than here.
Weber plays his electric upright bass, the customized five-string instrument he had adopted in 1974. Brüninghaus is on piano, and the orchestral parts are played by members of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. The album was recorded in August 1976 at Talent Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. All four pieces are Weber's. The two musicians had already worked together on Weber's ECM debut The Colours of Chloë (1973). They would meet again in his group Colours and later in the Jan Garbarek Group.
T. On A White Horse opens with Weber's bass over electric piano, while oboe lines float above droning cellos. The title piece, at twelve minutes the longest, begins with ambient room sound and a reversed piano chord. It then moves through bowed string harmonics and an exchange between piano and bass, and at one point an acoustic bass appears. A French horn closes it. The two parts of Moana frame this centre, the second with echoing horns and a piano and bass duet.
Without a drummer the music depends on colour and line rather than pulse, and reactions have varied for that reason. Writing on AllMusic, Paul Collins found the album "quite subtle and slow to unfold" and added that it "can reward close listening". Tyran Grillo of ECM Reviews dwelt on its textures, from the "aquatic electric piano" of the opening to the horns of the final part. In the same years Weber was also a member of Gary Burton's band, with which he had recorded Ring in 1974.
This CD (ECM 1084) is part of the 2019 Touchstones series, 50 classic ECM albums reissued in cardboard gatefold sleeves for the label's 50th anniversary. The album was first released in 1977.
