Eve Egoyan. Maria De Alvear: De Puro Amor & En Amor Duro.

World Edition, CD33.

https://www.musicworks.ca/reviews/eve-egoyan-maria-de-alvear-de-puro-amor-en-amor-duro

by René van Peer

Fluid music. That is the first notion that comes to mind while listening to Maria De Alvear’s De Puro Amor & En Amor Duro, played by the Toronto-based pianist Eve Egoyan. Listening to this double album feels like swimming in the middle of a benign sea. Waves are constantly moving around you everywhere. Some are higher and more energetic than others. And even though you can’t really see what lies beyond the crests directly around you, you sense that all movements are connected. The music on these two discs unfolds in quite the same way. You do feel the connection with what came before; there is a sense of where it’s going in the short term; but what lies further ahead is much harder to predict. Egoyan displays an easy, unhurried flow of musical thought that seems to contradict the score from which she plays. In the liner notes, Tim Rutherford-Johnson writes that the scores look like preliminary sketches: “Pages and pages are marked with hastily scratched notes, sometimes repeating themselves dozens of times.” The first piece is apparently the result of automatic writing, which has the composer act as a medium channeling thought processes that well up from deep inside her. Although these are two separate pieces, telling them apart is not easy—until halfway through En Amor Duro, during which Egoyan taps into a vein of pure energy, making the piano glow with hot colour, before settling in sepia hues on just a few notes. This is absolutely spellbinding music and playing. 

René van Peer is a music journalist from the Netherlands. He writes about improvised and contemporary composed music, world music, and sound art. He also writes program notes for several Dutch venues, such as the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam. Leonardo and Songlines have published his articles and reviews. Het Apollohuis published his book Interviews with sound artists. He is artistic adviser for composers, ensembles and festivals, and is a member of the music committee of a major cultural foundation in the Netherlands, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.