David Greilsammer’s new album venture, "Labyrinth", is a project that he has been developing since 2017 in a number of concerts given in New York, at the Ravinia Festival, Illinois, in Lancaster and Sheffield, and at the Flagey in Brussels. In 2005, the pianist – then still in his twenties – released his "Fantasie_Fantasme", and in 2014 he uniquely intertwined the sonatas of Scarlatti and John Cage.
Here in this sensitively intimate new recital he shares a dream that has haunted him for many years, a dream where he makes his way through a musical labyrinth. The fascinated listener can follow this trail here, while keeping hold of the thread and following the light, encountering composers both well and less well known, from every period and style, with whole works and ephemeral fragments cunningly interwoven. While reconnoitering music by Beethoven, Janáček, Satie and Bach, we also have the surprise of a first world performance of Repetition Blindness by Ofer Pelz – specially commissioned for the programme – and of a piano arrangement by Jonathan Keren of Chaos by Jean-Féry Rebel (also a first performance) as well as George Crumb’s mesmeric Magic Circle of Infinity.
This programme has all the character of a rite of passage, but without any psychoanalytical frenzy. If David Greilsammer blurs conventional boundaries with his subtle alchemy of atmospheres and colours, he also invites us to enjoy anew the pleasures of symmetry, balance and the echo. El amor y la muerte by Granados is a keystone work around which he conjures up a sequence of pieces of increasing density such as Scriabin’s Vers la flamme which ends the recital.
This creative programme, underpinned by playing both incisive and poetic showing mastery every conceivable style, prompts us quite simply to listen differently. © naive classique