Kevin Kastning: Piano I
Greydisc Records

Kevin Kastning & Sándor Szabó: Ethereal III
Greydisc Records

Though Kevin Kastning's issued a large number of solo and duo recordings, his latest albums' unexpected creative moves catch the listener by surprise. He's long been known for recordings featuring him playing incredible custom-designed guitars, such as the 36-string Double Contraguitar, 30-string Contra-Alto guitar, and 15-string Extended Classical guitar, but on the prosaically titled Piano I he sets them aside for a recording wholly devoted to the keyboard. While it's not the first time piano's appeared on a Kastning release—it's on his 2017 solo set A Connection of Secrets, for example, alongside his customary guitars, and it also surfaces on Ethereal I, his 2017 recording with Sándor Szabó and otherwise featuring the duo's guitars—it is the first time it's been featured as the sole instrument. Five works are presented on the sixty-four-minute release, three of them multi-part.

Perhaps the first thing the longtime Kastning listener will notice is how indelibly his artistic identity has stamped itself on the material, the realization quickly setting in that his voice invariably emerges regardless of the instrument involved. In fact, so distinctive is the style that's crystallized over the course of his recording career, one imagines an album featuring him playing ocarina would produce the same effect. Kastning's note that he “constructed the pieces to fit into” the overall concept for the project helps explain the reason for the titles used for much of the album, with the first of three Construction works, for instance, presented as “Construction 1a,” “Construction 1b,” and “Construction 1c.” Bach, Schoenberg, and Bartok are cited as a representative sampling of influences on these keyboard works, and Keith Jarrett too, though the latter's impact has been, according to Kastning, more on the guitar than piano side. Yet while that might be the case, the album's uncluttered, explorative improvisations reflect his sensibility through and through.

Similar to his playing on the guitar, these improvised, first-take piano recordings eschew regulated metre, and, being neither wholly jazz or classical, defy categorization. In simplest terms, they're pensive, real-time meditations that document a sensibility naturally disposed to searching and being receptive to wherever the muse leads. Though certain pieces stand out for one reason or another (the wistful ruminations of “Construction 2a” make a strong impression, for example), Piano I is best experienced as a cumulative statement, the nine settings more noteworthy for the collective impact they make.

Ethereal III, Kastning's latest collaboration with Szabó, also distances itself from their earlier releases, the former again exchanging guitar for piano and his partner, also guitar-less, credited with orchestration. The project represents Szabó's first foray into composing for a chamber orchestra, which in this instance involves one violin, eight cellos, and one double bass. The seed for the sixty-five-minute recording was planted earlier than the album in question, however. In late 2017 Szabó asked Kastning to record a pair of piano pieces that were subsequently wedded to digital cello samples the former had derived from the live playing of a cellist in Budapest; the resultant sonatas for piano and cello left such a mark on Kastning that when he and Szabó met to discuss what would become Ethereal III, they decided to continue with the approach used for the cello sonata pieces.

Kastning recorded his piano parts first, intentionally leaving room for the orchestral elements, after which Szabó used live recorded samples from real string instruments (as opposed to using standard orchestral software) to blend orchestration and keyboard. Representative settings such as “Lux Noctem Caligo I,” “Sic Claviculis aer Coelum,” and “Arcanus per Arcanum III” show what a remarkably convincing job Szabó did of making Kastning and the strings sound as if they recorded together live, though much the same could be said of any of the nine pieces. Szabó handled the incorporation of the orchestration judiciously, too; when adding his contributions, he was careful to leave moments for the piano to appear alone and not clutter the arrangements. The instrumentation naturally lends the material a classical character, even if the performances avoid adhering to a particular classical form and instead unfold with a sense of freedom. In contrast to the austerity of Piano I, Ethereal III presents a richly layered, ponderous, and often brooding soundworld where the piano and strings make for contrasting yet comfortably cohabiting partners. Needless to say, the presentation is vastly different from the other recordings the two have released together.

May 2019