Zimmermann: Voces Abandonadas

Album review

Composed between 2001 and 2006, Walter Zimmermann's piano works on this Wergo release reflect the composer's original but abstruse methods. Holding himself aloof from the serial procedures of the avant-garde in the 1970s, Zimmermann developed personal ways to organize his materials, which included diatonic and tonal elements that were verboten at the time. The resulting pieces on Nicolas Hodges' 2016 album are rather easy to appreciate, despite their angularity and disjointed qualities. While Zimmermann's gestures and pitch combinations are often dissonant and lack any sense of key, the music of Voces Abandonadas is generally sparse, punctuated by silences, and generally kept to a soft dynamic, so the overall effect is introspective and mysterious, rather than harsh. A good piece to sample is The Missing Nail at the River for piano and toy piano, which holds together rather well because the gnomic exchanges between the instruments create a coherent dialogue. The quietest piece is Blueprint, a short study of isolated pitches and close harmonies that seldom rise above mezzo-forte. If Zimmermann's music seems slight and rarefied, listeners accustomed to more conventional procedures might find the Fuga from AIMIDE to be an entry point to Zimmermann's delicate and elusive music.

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