Astounded by seeing first hand the works of the master artist JMW Turner at the Tate gallery, London, Burkhard Stangl experienced something of an epiphany. Particularly taken by Turner’s late and unfinished works, the composer and musician took these pieces as the basis for the musical explorations that would, over the course of three years, become ‘Unfinished’. The album sets out to capture the essence of the ‘complex simplicity’ of the paintings. There is, without doubt, a ‘complex simplicity’ to these recordings.
Rich tones resonate in the prolonged spaces between each individual note. Yet in the background, there are distant sounds, voices and peripheral ephemera that form a backdrop like rain filling puddles. It’s all about the texture, the tone, the way in which notes hover in the air, the subtleties of sound functioning in the same way as brush strokes on a painting’s canvas.
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The title – ‘Unfinished’ –suggests these pieces are but sketches, studies for a larger, major work. Yet as is often the case, the incomplete outlines, the works in progress are enlightening and reveal a great deal about the creative process, and as such form an integral part of any artistic corpus. That these pieces were recorded live, with ‘#2 Unfinished - Sailing’ recorded in a single take, and without overdubs or edits, means they have the spontaneity of draught works, which lends them a sense of immediacy and of freedom. The result is beautifully simple, and simply beautiful.
Burkhard Stangl Online
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