Nach seinem im August 2016 erschienenen siebten Studioalbum »Partners« schließt Peter Broderick das Jahr 2016 mit der außergewöhnlichen EP »Grunewald« ab, die wie gewohnt via Erased Tapes veröffentlicht wird.

Für alle die Hall mögen, ist »Grunewald« ein wahrgewordener Traum. Die fünf Tracks entstanden in nur einer Nacht in den majestätischen Räumen der etwas abgelegenen Berliner Grunewald-Kirche. Sie erkunden die faszinierende Partnerschaft zwischen der Raumakustik und Brodericks Solo-Darbietungen auf dem Klavier und der Violine. Während des Mischens der Aufnahmen wurde kein künstlicher Hall oder Delay benutzt, nur der natürliche Klang des epischen Kirchenraumes kommt zur Geltung.

Die Größe des Kirchenraumes und dessen natürliche Interaktion mit den genutzten Instrumenten wiederspiegelnd, ist die »Grunewald«-EP zugleich auch eine Hommage an einen ungewöhnlichen Ort, der Zufluchtsstätte für eine ganze Generation zeitgenössischer Komponisten geworden ist. Tatsächlich war die Kirche zwischen 2008 und 2011 ein Hotspot für eine bestimmte Künstlergruppe um Nils Frahm.

Composer Peter Broderick has spent the past ten years crafting consistently strong post-classical music, but on last August’s piano-only Partners he seemed to uncover a new gravitas and substance in his limpid, clear language. The inherent challenge with producing minimalistic music is figuring out how to infuse humanity and new ideas into work with only a handful of notes, and to avoid a reliance on vacant “prettiness.” On Partners, Broderick’s music remained stirring and evocative, but there was something new in it: a deeper injection of his personality, and a larger sense of how that plays into his relationship with his own compositions. Now, just a few months later, he returns with follow-up EP Grunewald, but rather than continue to expand on Partners’ developments, it sees him returning to the less vital, more ephemeral work of his past.

To be clear, Grunewald is less of a regression for Broderick than an amiable walk down memory lane. This graceful-but-slight release collects five tracks previously issued across two discs (one Japanese, one Taiwanese) that were taken from a single day’s live recording in Berlin. Grunewald takes its name from a beloved local church which functioned as a hub for other Berlin-based experimentalists from the Erased Tapes label constellation like Nils Frahm, seeming to provide inspiration for all those who passed its door, including Broderick here. As a result, Grunewald is Broderick’s way of marking the importance of both the place and time in the lives of him and the other musicians who’ve been impacted by it.

Like Partners, Grunewald is an entirely solo effort, featuring Broderick unaccompanied on piano, violin, and—on the opener “Goodnight”—a bit of vocals. Broderick’s use of his voice on Partners provided one of that album’s highlights, an arresting cover of Irish folk singer Brigid Mae Power’s “Sometimes.” On “Goodnight,” one of four piano-only numbers, he doesn’t quite sing as much as moan and coo on top of slow, plaintively struck chords. Broderick’s instincts for when to use vocals to enrich his minimalist performances are strong—sometimes he will even drop in a snippet of conversational speech, such as on Partners’ “Sometimes.” But the instrumentation of “Goodnight” is so bare and simple as to make it a trivial confection, more ambience than song. “Violin Solo, No. 1,” positioned as the middle of five tracks, provides another nice textural break amidst the four piano tracks, but is no more than advertised—a nice and brief minor key solo on violin.

The dark-night journey “Low Light” and the reflective “Eyes Closed and Traveling” offer entrancing melodies and more depth than “Goodnight,” but Grunewald’s clear highlight is “It’s a Storm When I Sleep.” Buoyed by Broderick’s thundering take on Alberti-style bass, he produces a cacophonous-yet-soothing drone that carries on for nearly eight minutes. A shorter version would have been interesting on its own, but stretched out here, it becomes formidable, challenging, and meditative. Though marooned amidst the lighter pieces here, it is suggestive of some of the new directions Broderick would take in making the leap from “pretty” to “profound.”

(www.pitchfork.com)