Five years after the recording of "Officium", the Hilliard Ensemble and Jan Garbarek returned to the monastery of St Gerold to renew, in the words of singer John Potter, their "encounter with the unknown." The resultant, very beautiful, double-album, "Mnemosyne", is wider in scope than its predecessor, and the improvised component of the music is expanded. Repertoire now spans 22 centuries, from the "Delphic Paean" of Athenaeus to the "Estonian Lullaby" of Veljo Tormis, via folk song fragments from North and South America and Spain, freely developed, as well as pieces by Tallis, Dufay, Brumel, Hildegard von Bingen, Jan Garbarek, a Russian psalm, a Scottish ballad of the 16th century, and much more. "We did it for each other in the absence of an audience, and these are complete one-off performances which will never sound the same again." |