The title
Passage doesn't communicate much, but the notes to this American release of international new compositions are more forthcoming. The piano trio
Longleash explores works for traditional instruments whose potentialities are imagined in new ways. Intriguingly, this does not indicate extended technique, but rather that, in the words of annotator
Nils Vigeland, "Instruments as sound producers rather than as bearers of melody and harmony inspire new forms as well." The works, from Italy, the U.S., Mexico, and Japan, are atonal, but their organization in terms of instrumental sonority and register is generally clear. You might not catch the "fractal systems of chaotic behavior" in
Juan de Dios Magdaleno's Strange Attractors, but sample the work and enjoy the way it tries to "sustain resonance until it reaches a crisis." In
Yukiko Watanabe's ver_flies_sen, the piano plays mostly single notes, and in
Francesco Filidei's deceptively simple Corde Vuote, it is withheld for much of the piece.
Christopher Trapani's Passing Through, Staying Put deploys the instruments in service of just those two states. "Is it possible that the term 'common practice,' used to describe western music's wildly differentiated four-hundred-year use of the tonal system, could now be used to describe an instrumental usage available to composers of very different expression?" It's an ambitious aim, but one interestingly realized here.