Carlos CipaAll Your Life You Walk
Denovali

- Earlier this year, Ben Frost claimed that all you need to call yourself a ‘neo-classical’ composer these days is ‘sad piano and some kind of electronic atmosphere,’ ideally backed up with a healthy dose of Arvo Pärt or Erik Satie. Frost was taking aim at a whole crop of artists, such as Nils Frahm and Hauschka, who have recently gained widespread recognition for their minimalistic compositions, which seem to attract dour post-rock fans more readily than serious concert-hall types.

It’s a strange time for modern classical music: at the same time as a raft of electroacoustic artists and composers are twisting art music into thrilling new shapes, a number of young pianists are just claiming to make beautiful, Reichian music that’s only really labelled ‘classical’ because no one really knows what else to do with it.

Maybe all that’s really changed is the packaging. After all, the solo piano has always been capable of moving people to great emotional heights: just look at the immediate and enduring power of Keith Jarrett’s 1975 live album The Köln Concert. Likewise, the legendary Lubomyr Melnyk has enjoyed something of a second life recently, his radical piano style stripped back and rebranded by English label Erased Tapes.

Overall, there’s a lot going on in piano music at the moment. Which brings me to All Your Life You Walk. This record is the second full-length offering from young German composer Carlos Cipa. It fits right in with the current trend toward simple ‘neo-classical’ beauty, yet at times also promises to break out into something more ambitious.

You can file Carlos Cipa as a more engaging Olafur Arnalds, without the string duo and (mostly) without electronics or percussion to hide behind. Basically, the guy just plays his heart out on the fifteen tracks showcased here. And, like on Sakamoto Ryuichi’s recent collaborations with Christian Fennesz, the outright passion of Cipa’s playing sets him apart, particularly on pieces like the evocative And Gently Drops the Rain and the darker A Broken Light for Every Heart.

At its best, it’s lovely, if familiar and unobtrusive. At its worst, it resembles the sort of sentimental Hans Zimmer or Radiohead piano reinterpretations that lurk all over YouTube.

Further, what Cipa’s patient playing does gain in dynamics, it does lack somewhat in space. There’s little silence here; every inch is crammed with tidy, repetitive arpeggios. Many of the tracks thus end up sounding a little familiar, making All Your Life You Walk a challenging listen as a whole. The five best tracks here would have made a great record on their own.

So Carlos Cipa works comfortably in a very confined box, yet I would like to see him pushing at its edges. But, despite what Ben Frost may think, the sheer gorgeousness of his playing shines through: he shows that we haven’t reached peak neoclassical yet. There is still power in the humble solo piano.

- Henry Reese.

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