The album’s title says it all, or at least offers a glimpse into the processes determining the revivifying forces behind this music’s creation. It’s rare that a duo’s complete synchronization comes across so clearly, but like the title’s season and transitional mode, these miniatures speak to endless invention and absorption of myriad traditions channeled in the service of joyous and reflective spontaneity.
The titular piece alone can set the scene. Gianni Mimmo’s soprano saxophone doesn’t so much enter as swell from the attendant silence, traversing patterns in several modal spaces before Nicola Guazzaloca’s piano joins in kind. Mimmo’s tone is warm, like melting butter even in multiphonics mode, and Guazzaloca’s articulations travel equally emotive terrain, leading to the rapid magic of an ascending scale and to the saxophone sustain following at 1:42. Even more astonishing is the unity throughout as that opening pattern returns in many guises, registers, and at multiple dynamic levels, the whole a fantasy of infinite variety amidst the interweaving of fragile but strong connective threads. Mode and center pose no problem to musicians of this caliber, and they are navigated with absolute assurance at tempos too irregular even to be proportional. Like Ravel’s “Scarbo,” all vanishes as quickly as it appeared, leaving only assessment and evaluation.
None of this is to privilege the title track, only to present it as a blueprint for the duo’s explorations, some of which Mimmo and Guazzaloca organize into groups. The four that deal with rain are full of points and arpeggiations, fits and starts in flowing dialogue that finally digs way down into the gutbucket, bringing blues conflagration to “The Rain of the Last Few Days.” In the set called “Four Lieder,” we hear what sound like very subtle nods to the book of standards, the descending cadences on “I Didn’t See You At All” bringing to mind similar motion in “My One and Only Love.” Then, there is the heartbreak of “Second Longing,” almost painful to hear as it moves from ballad to rhapsody and back again, dark harmonies bolstering the pleas of single pitches and reiterated phrases in tortured repetition. As might be expected, there’s no satisfactory resolution. Nothing prepares for “First Longing”’s tempest, which actually ends the mini song cycle. Again, it rages only to fizzle, rendering that final saxophone sustain all the more poignant.
It’s difficult to tell whether or not these pieces are composed, improvised or explore areas in-between. The duo’s listening is so thoroughgoing, so intuitive, that all musical parameters are instantly assimilated to the point where discussion of motive and creation becomes moot. Extra-musical concerns, like the afore-mentioned extended saxophone techniques and some subtle piano preparation, are kept to a minimum and consequently made special, like the vibrato in historically informed performance practice recordings of Baroque works. Like Mujician or the middle 1970s Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the level of communication is such that repeated listening proffers rewards far beyond similar efforts from collaborations of less ability. This is a wonderful disc from start to finish, replete with invention and emotion in equal measure.