Credits:

Michael Wollny

Description:

In April 2020, while the world is quiet due to the corona... a special solo work facing the piano in a studio in Berlin. 15 pieces of mixed austerity and beauty that recall Michael Collins, who waited alone on the Apollo 11 spacecraft for his crew to return from the moon. Since his first release on yvp in 2002, he has released 12 works as a leader. He has released numerous high-profile works, including trio works and a duo album with maestro Joachim Kühn, but this is his first solo piano work. The recording took place over two days in April 2020 in a large live room at the Teldec Studios in Berlin. At a time when the whole world was under the influence of Corona, the recordings were made in a hotel with no staff, driving through a deserted city, and facing the instrument alone in a studio with no other musicians.There is something special about this work, a mixture of the tension of facing solitude, the intimate sound world created from the depths of the artist, and a certain kind of joy generated from playing the piano under difficult circumstances. From the opening of the piece, which opens with a delicate trill, there is something unusual and tense about the sound spun by facing the keyboard and concentrating on it, and it has a beauty that is even mysterious at times. The intensity generated by the bass part and the beautiful harmonies that emerge suddenly and peacefully amidst the shivering treble phrases are very moving. This solo work is also deeply moving in that the solitary recording situation is superimposed on that of Michael Collins, the third astronaut to remain on the Apollo 11 spacecraft and await the return of his fellow astronauts, without ever standing on the moon's surface.

Tracklisting:

1.Lunar Landscape
2.Father Lucifer
3.Things Behind Walls
4.Sonatine Nr. 7 / 2. Satz
5.Velvet Gloves & Spit
6.Tale
7.Mondenkind
8.Enter Three Witches
9.Schliesse mir die Augen beide
10.The Rain Never Stops On Venus
11.Un animal imagine par Melies
12.Cyrano
13.Sagee
14.Spacecake
15.Mercury