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  • Brian Eno (b. 1948), Roger Eno (b. 1959) & Traditional
  • 1Wanting To Believe (Oh Holy Night)04:32
  • Peter Gregson (b. 1987):
  • 2Taladh Chriosta03:20
  • Snorri Sigfús Birgisson:
  • 3Sleep for Mama (Icelandic Folk Song)02:36
  • Hania Rani (b. 1990) & Dobrawa Czocher (b. 1991):
  • 4Jezus Malusieńki (Reworked by Hania Rani & Dobrawa Czocher)04:15
  • Rob Lowe (b. 1988) & Michael A. Muller:
  • 5Coventry Carol03:26
  • Christian Badzura:
  • 6Mitt hjerte alltid vanker (Arr. for Solo Violin and Ensemble)03:51
  • Michael Praetorius (1571 - 1621):
  • 7Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming02:30
  • Dustin O'Halloran (b. 1971) & Bryan Senti (b. 1983):
  • 8What Gently Flutters02:06
  • Thomas Muis (b. 1994):
  • 9Nu Zijt Wellekome03:58
  • Jessica Jones & Tim Morrish:
  • 10Carol of the Bells01:52
  • Christian Badzura:
  • 11Maoz Tzur (Winter Tales Version)03:15
  • Joep Beving (b. 1976):
  • 12Sinfonia (After Bach, BWV 248)04:40
  • Total Runtime40:21

Info for Winter Tales



Deutsche Grammophon presents Winter Tales – a new seasonal album featuring music from some of the label’s star composers, who were invited to reimagine the music of Christmas and Chanukah, drawing inspiration from their childhoods and homelands. The album comprises 12 very personal responses to that creative challenge, all of which have something fresh and timely to say about winter’s promise of renewal and light’s power over darkness.

The album opens with Roger and Brian Eno’s Wanting to Believe – a brand new vocal track from the duo and the perfect prelude to music by composers as diverse as Peter Gregson, Víkingur Ólafsson, Hania Rani and Dobrawa Czocher, Balmorhea, Mari Samuelsen, Ane Brun, Dustin O’Halloran and Bryan Senti, ABBOTT, Vanbur, Classical Sundays and Joep Beving. “In our dark times, we light a light and we leave it to shine” (‘Wanting to Believe’ – Roger Eno & Brian Eno)

Roger Eno was drawn to the music of Adolphe Adam’s ‘O Holy Night’, but not to its original words. Working with his brother, composer and producer Brian Eno, he crafted ‘Wanting to Believe’, whose new, secular lyrics still express hope for the future, but a hope, he observes, that is “seen to be held within our own hands”.

Scottish cellist and composer Peter Gregson chose to reimagine Taladh Chriosta (‘Christ’s Lullaby’) – a carol traditionally sung by the islanders of the remote Outer Hebrides on Christmas Eve. The haunting tune seeped into Gregson’s consciousness when he was a child. His setting of this “innocent, introspective melody” is written for three female voices, solo violin, cello and analogue synthesiser.

Moving northwards, the album also includes two Icelandic-inspired works. Víkingur Ólafsson brings gentle rocking harmonies to his solo piano version of the lullaby Farðu að sofa fyrir mig (‘Sleep for Mama’, arranged by Snorri Sigfús Birgisson), which he describes as “music for a candlelit winter’s night, hovering between light and shadow, and eventually fading into a dream.” American pianist and composer Dustin O’Halloran and multi-instrumentalist and composer Bryan Senti, meanwhile, have drawn inspiration from the ancient hymn Hvað flýgur mér í hjarta blítt for ‘What Gently Flutters’, a track of peaceful simplicity.

Hania Rani and Dobrawa Czocher have taken the traditional Polish carol Jesus Malusieńki and clothed its melody in multiple layers of electronic and instrumental sounds. “We were looking for something very endemic to express our deepest emotions and connection with our roots,” they reflect. Dutch composer ABBOTT too has revisited a childhood favourite, arranging the 14th century carol Nu Zijt Wellekome – a song he sees as expressing the wider meaning of Christmas, the need “to welcome everybody” – for voices, solo cello and electronics.

Balmorhea, aka Texans Rob Lowe and Michael A. Muller, have created an instrumental rework of the ‘Coventry Carol’ – a song which dates back to the 16th century, when it was sung in a so-called ‘mystery play’ performed in the city of Coventry. Lowe has known it since childhood: “It always struck me as the perfect mix of warmth and darkness”, he recalls. British composer duo Vanbur – Jessica Jones and Tim Morrish – opted for a 20th century classic, ‘Carol of the Bells’, giving it an ethereal feel with a single vocal line rather than massed choral voices. Norwegian artist Ane Brun has also chosen an English text for her version of the 15th century German song Es ist ein Ros’entsprungen. She imagined ‘Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming’ being sung by a church choir but, as she explains, “in the spirit of these solitary times, I recorded all the voices myself in a little studio space in Oslo”.

Mari Samuelsen has reimagined Mitt hjerte alltid vanker (‘My heart always wanders’) for solo violin and ensemble. This Scandinavian Christmas song reminds her of Norway’s dramatic landscape, of lights visible in the distance among silent, snow-covered mountains: “It’s a piece that makes me feel safe and calm, and that is home for me”. Continuing the thread of warm, familiar memories, the Berlin-based Classical Sundays string quartet perform a tranquil arrangement of the Chanukah hymn Maoz Tzur, traditionally sung after the lighting of the menorah candles during the Jewish festival of lights.

Winter Tales ends peacefully with Sinfonia, Joep Beving’s reworking of the pastoral movement from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. “I wanted to give Bach’s gentle piece an otherworldly feel by adding layers of synth and noise,” he says. “I hope I managed to add something to the beautiful composition with this version. It was such a tremendous joy to work on.”

Roger Eno & Brian Eno
Balmorhea
Vanbur
Hania Rani & Dobrawa Czocher
Ane Brun
Classical Sundays
Joep Beving
Abbott
Peter Gregson
Mari Samuelsen
Víkingur Ólafsson
Dustin O’Halloran & Bryan Senti



Roger Eno
grew up in the idyllic setting of Woodbridge, Suffolk, with an East Anglian postman father and a Flemish mother, who gave he and his younger sister “one room of the house, which was devoted to whatever we children wanted to do. We could write on the walls, there was a sandpit, there was a busted-up piano we could knock seven bells out of. The town had a lovely river, so there was swimming, great places to cycle, and it was perfectly acceptable for a child to leave in the morning and not turn up till tea time.” It’s therefore little surprise he continues to live in the same locale, spending spare time wandering the countryside on foot or by bike. “What keeps me in a not entirely enlightened country is my continuing love of the area in which I live”.

Like its bucolic, tranquil qualities, a timeless character is key to the magic of Roger’s music. That’s as true of 1983’s Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks – which, composed with his brother, Brian Eno, and producer Daniel Lanois, launched his recording career – as it is of The Turning Year, his debut solo album for Deutsche Grammophon, due on April 22nd, 2022. Recorded during summer, 2021, largely at Berlin’s legendary Teldex Studio and in part at the studio of producer Christian Badzura (also the label’s Director of New Repertoire), it’s an album of grace, purity, melancholy and solace which showcases his free-flowing inspiration and deeply affecting compositions. It’s also given him a chance to remind us of his talents as an arranger, with its compelling piano melodies elevated on some tracks by Scoring Berlin’s 20-piece string ensemble, and clarinettist Tibor Reman, who adds enchantment to the elegiac ‘On The Horizon’.

From the hypnotic calm of the opening ‘A Place We Once Walked’ to the closing ‘Low Cloud Dark Skies’, whose rippling arpeggios are lent gravity by the string section’s sustained chords, The Turning Year uses so-called classical orchestration, so it’s rooted in a tradition. But it’s a tradition that’s taken further rather than abandoned - for example a great deal of thought was put into the running order of the recording, allowing each piece to become a short story in a volume. These ‘stories’ were compiled from pieces written both very recently and longer ago, and manifest themselves in the likes of ‘Slow Motion’, a piece for strings whose unhurried pace provides a gentle passage towards the devotional ‘Hymn’, and ‘Intimate Distance’, whose solitary piano projects a quiet sense of yearning. The frugal simplicity, too, of the emotionally eloquent ‘Clearly’ and intimate ‘Bells’ are counterbalanced by the slow-burning elegance of ‘Hope’, whose ghostly silences are met with moments of unblushing, touching sentimentality, while the understated optimism of ‘On The Horizon’ evokes the still minutes after a storm. The brittle beauty of ‘Something Made Out Of Nothing’, meanwhile, refers with its title to “how 'a thing' can be made of all but nothing, like the movement of reeds caused by the weakest of breezes,” but its title could also encapsulate Roger’s improvisational techniques, illuminating The Turning Year’s singular mix of formality and informality. “I'm not a fan of 'the precious',” he agrees, “and don't like the idea of exclusive clubs.”

This is evident in how this composer has always worked. Roger began his studies at music school aged 16, before moving a year later to Colchester. His public career began after he was inspired by the pioneering proto-minimalist composer Erik Satie to stretch his methodology to its logical conclusion. “I came up with this 90-minute tape where virtually nothing happened whatsoever,” he recalls, and on its strengths his brother invited Roger to join him and Lanois in Canada to record Apollo..., the highly acclaimed score to For All Mankind, Al Reinert’s documentary about the Apollo moon landing. The following year EG Records released Roger’s first solo album, Voices, a piano record which nonetheless owed a similar debt to both Satie’s influence and Brian’s production, while 1988’s Between Tides saw him step away from such electronic embellishments, exploiting both his love for baroque music and his arranging skills to write something more akin to chamber music.

For 1992’s The Familiar, Roger teamed up with Kate St John – then best known with The Dream Academy – to mix pop, classical, ambient, folk, minimalism and more for a vocal record which defied genres, and on 1994’s Lost In Translation and 1996’s Swimming he expanded his horizons further, singing for the first time and adding new instruments to his armoury. (The latter, for example, opens with ‘The Paddington Frisk’, performed on accordion and named after an 18th century term for the disquieting dance of the hanged.) Over the next two decades, more solo albums followed, most recently 2018’s Dust of Stars, which, produced by Youth, returned him to the style of Voices.

Amid all this, he scored Trevor Nunn’s acclaimed 1998 production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal at London's National Theatre, and he recently finished work on his second series of Nick Hornby’s celebrated State of the Union, directed by Stephen Frears. He and his brother also continued collaborating on film music, contributing to David Lynch’s Dune (1984), Adrian Lyne’s 9 ½ Weeks (1986), Dario Argento’s Opera (1987) and Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting (1996) while their score for Boyle’s BBC mini-series Mr. Wroe’s Virgins (1993) wasnominated for a BAFTA. In addition, Roger’s joined the likes of Lol Hammond, Peter Hammill, No-Man (co-founded by Steven Wilson) and Italian ensemble Harmonia, as well as his first ‘band’, Channel Light Vessel, formed with Laaraji, Bill Nelson, Kate St John and Japanese cellist Mayumi Tachibana. He’s also teamed up as a session musician and band member with artists as diverse as The Orb, Lou Reed, Jarvis Cocker and Beck, and that’s not to mention his three-year stint as Musical Director for Tim Robbins and his band, The Rogues Gallery. Furthermore, he’s hosted events as an accompanist, performing improvised music to well-known early 20th century silent films and archive home footage, obtained and licensed from the British Film Institute, and he’s a member, too, of the Spiritual Humanist Church, which recognises humanity’s need for rites and rituals, even among those of a non-orthodox leaning, and for whom he’s officiated over multiple “non-religious but sensitive services”.

The Turning Year follows 2020’s Mixing Colours, his first full-length album recorded exclusively with his brother and compiled from pieces Roger had shared for over 15 years with Brian, who worked on them further with his own renowned digital enhancements. It was released in the same month that the Covid pandemic forced global lockdowns, when it swiftly became a staple of people’s newly muffled lives.

Listening to Roger’s impressive discography, it’s clear he’s always been prescient, and one year after Mixing Colours, he and Brian joined one another for the first time on stage bolstered by Roger’s daughter Cecily and Brian’s regular collaborators, Leo Abrahams and Peter Chilvers. In the extraordinary surroundings of Athens’ Acropolis, they performed material new and old from across their mutual catalogues, and the packed, enthralled crowd was yet another sign that the world is at last catching up with their innovative, inventive aesthetic. Now, with The Turning Year, there’s no escaping the fact that, though he’s never sought it, Roger Eno is in the spotlight.

Booklet for Winter Tales

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