For years, Alex Ross, the New Yorker's resident music critic, has been writing that so-called classical music deserves a slice of the groupies, the hype, indeed the popular appeal, that the so-called popular music scene has hogged since the 20th century saw a revolution in the way music was played, enjoyed and listened to. For years he's been arguing that classical music doesn't have to be about stale music chambers, stuffy audiences and sniffy superiority complexes; that classical music, just as much as pop music, can move the common man.
But whilst Ross has written much about appreciating the classics of classical music, in the last few years, supported in particular by releases on three British labels (FatCat's 130701 imprint plus 4AD and Erased Tapes), another movement, unrestricted by snobbery, class concerns or musical pigeon-holes, has also been industriously pouring out releases, blending "classical" tropes, an eye for the cinematic and a desire to explore mood in all its variations. Artists such as Max Richter, Hauschka, Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds, Peter Broderick and Jóhann Jóhannsson have all produced music that pushes for a wider acceptance, an acknowledgement that classical, far from being the dirty word we think it is, doesn't actually mean anything at all. To this list should be added Dustin O'Halloran (whose canon also includes work as one member of Californian band Devics). Perhaps best known for his "Piano Solos" (in two volumes) and a couple of tracks for Sofia Coppola's achingly hip Marie Antoinette, "Lumiere", his first release on FatCat's 130701 imprint, sees him look to augment the solo piano of his previous work with a little help from the American Contemporary Music Ensemble.
It's a bold move that sees O'Halloran not only throw delicate strings into the mix, but also brushes of electronica, guitar (from Stars Of The Lid's Adam Wiltzie) and contributions from two of the aforementioned artists, Broderick (who brings his violin) and Jóhannsson (on mixing duties). Combining vignettes of his own, more "traditional", solo work (such as the gently elegiac "Opus 44", the Einaudi-esque "Opus 43", and the elegantly vivacious "Opus 55") with wide-screen orchestral compositions, "Lumiere" plots a course through territory that can perhaps most appropriately be described as "music for reflection". At its best, as on the restrained majesty of "Snow + Light" and the beautifully contemplative "We Move Lightly", it's a fragile joy to behold.
Brief but head-spinningly enchanting, the latter is built around a melodically lapping piano; the merest hint - a soupçon - of gentle, ghostly strings offer a glimpse of the song's development, before they gradually move out of the shadows. The anchored, rhythmic left-hand, key to the melody's hypnotism, stays rigid as the ethereal strings and crisp right-hand delicately fold into the metronomic loop.
Whilst O'Halloran's subtle piano remains at the core of "Lumiere", Jóhannsson's influence can nevertheless be felt. Opener "A Great Divide", a shimmering kaleidoscope of bells, venerable but flawed strings and shifting electronics that sound like time itself has been given a voice, swells with the same majesty of "Fordlândia", Jóhannsson's paean to creation and destruction, whilst "Quartet N. 2", a more traditionally formed piece, aches with a similarly pervasive anguish.
The overall tone is sombre - gliding between wraith-like delicacy and more substantial, swooping melancholy - perhaps the only real criticism that can be levelled at the album. O'Halloran's variety manifests itself subtly, with fluctuations in texture more than in temper. The precisely judged clip of harpsichord offers an unexpected but brief touch of period flamboyance to "Fragile N. 4", which blossoms from crisp and dainty ivory into a decidedly solid sound that speaks of sorrow and transition. The spritely "Quintette N. 1", a five-minute piece of movement and movements, conceals an exercise in motion, a rush of broken chords and flurried violin activity that fizzles out sharply into a stately string overture, before itself giving way to more of O'Halloran's metronomic piano.
"Snow + Light", which closes the album, embraces space more than most. The invocation of snow and light is masterful: O'Halloran's piano evolves from notes as pure and fresh as powder, to a sustain pedal-bolstered blanket. Light and space filter through the pauses in the score whilst a soft electronic hiss, like rain melting a morning frost, gently but ineluctably emerges out of the dissolving melody.
Much will be made of the soundtrack-esque tone of the album, a state of affairs that is not likely to change following the Sundance success of An American Affair and O'Halloran's original score. But "Lumiere" exists in that space beyond central narrative and stylistic theme, a space that, encouraged by O'Halloran's light touches, allows wistful reflection to breathe. This isn't classical music of vertiginous plummets, bombastic leaps or monumental crescendos, but rather pensive studies in mood, a contemplative pause made for meditation and absorption.
