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EDITOR’s RECOMMENDATION December 2000
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Zbigniew PREISNER
Aberdeen
guitar, John Parricelli - bass, Andy Pask - Piano, Leszek Mozdzer - alto saxophone,
Jerzy Glowczewski - electronic keyboards, Stefan Sendecki - percussion,
Wojciech Kowalewski - voice, Stina Nordenstam
conducted and produced by the composer
Silva Screen SILKD 6028
[41:16]
Aberdeen, the album, is one of three scores issued simultaneously by Silva Screen
as the Preisner Edition, the other two being The Last September and Dekalog. Aberdeen,
the film, is a British Norwegian co-production and the first English language feature
by Hans Petter Moland, the director of the acclaimed (if little seen in the UK)
Secondløitnanten (1993) and Zero Kelvin (1995). This drama is an introspective
road movie following a journey from Norway to Scotland and stars Stellan Skarsgard,
Lena Headey, Ian Hart and Charlotte Rampling. The music by Zbigniew Preisner is both
very much what those who have been following the composer's career have come to expect,
yet unlike anything Preisner has presented before.
There have been similarities between Preisner's music and that of Norwegian jazz saxophonist
Jan Gabarek in the past, perhaps most notably in the saxophone parts in the Requiem for
my Friend (1998). This time; maybe it is something in the Norwegian air. Maybe coincidence;
perhaps homage. But there seems to be a more specific echo of Gabarek here than ever before,
as if this disc is almost a spiritual sequel to Gabarek's 1988 album Legend of the Seven Dreams,
itself a soundtrack awaiting a movie if ever there has been such a thing. The earlier album's
line-up of bass, percussion, keyboards and saxophone is here expanded by guitar, and on a
handful of tracks by the voice of singer/lyricist Stina Nordenstam; yet here is the same
distant, icy-clear glittering sound, with Jerzy Glowczewski's alto sax often having an
uncannily Gabarek-like tone and phrasing. None of this is to suggest Preisner's music
is in anyway deliberately derivative of Gabarek, only that though Preisner is Polish,
he seems here to have captured something essentially Norwegian. Here you can feel the
cold, and the landscape in the wide open sound pictures. Apart from the sax, Priesner's
main lead melodic instruments are piano, guitar and beautiful metallic synthesiser patches,
the voices woven together with several enchantingly lovely melodies; climaxing in the
6-minute extended workout of 'Wandering in Time and Space'; itself worth the price of the album.
Aberdeen is one of the most coherent, fluid and thoroughly enjoyable soundtrack albums
Preisner has yet released. It builds on his established style - one of the most distinctive
in all film music - while taking it further into the modern jazz territory familiar from
the ECM label than most of his past work. Nordenstam's vocals are very attractive too,
suggesting with Priesner's fairytale shimmer, a spiritual dimension beyond the confines
of the on-screen events. The recorded sound is spacious and filled with subtle detail,
superbly complimenting the precise, spare nature of the scoring. The booklet contains
some notes by the director, and, shares with the other albums in the Preisner Edition,
a brief biography of the composer.
Gary S. Dalkin
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