Review of For Mattia - The Complete Recordings

THE ENCHANTING MINIMALISM OF EMOTION 

about the album and the composer 

Since the short piece dedicated to the memory of Julia Mattia Muilwijk (September 13, 1989 - October 1, 2015), composed at the request of Katja Bosch and Janpeter Muilwijk and first performed on September 10, 2017 in the Utrecht Cathedral, the Dutch composer Douwe Eisenga has continued to revolve around her. In the spring of 2019, he released a first album of nine pieces titled For Mattia. Now, since September, the complete recordings are available, on two CDs with twenty tracks, including two new versions and a remix. For details about Julia and her family, and the circumstances surrounding the composition, I refer you to the album’s accompanying booklet.

the impression on the ears 

The music of Douwe Eisenga in this ode to Mattia and its extensions starts with a continuous series of eighth notes, which refer to both baroque music, rock, and minimalism, says the composer. But the motifs are intertwined from one hand to the other, accompanied by mirrored structures, endlessly varied, and enriched with loops. Emotion arises from the simplicity, the purity of the piano melody. It also arises from its perpetual return. It’s a refrain that carries you along, it wraps itself around you and never lets you go, like an endless scarf of harmonics. Its luminous grace embraces you. The heart-wrenching and bouncing softness of Summit (track 2 / CD 1), who could resist it? Mattia comes alive, she is there, she looks at you while dancing: τα μάτια (ta matia), in Greek, those are the eyes, the ones on the album cover. 

Opposite her, there is another dancer, the one in The Opposite, polished and courteous, who often bows to her. From track to track, a timeless story from another era emerges, which I invent as I go. It’s this Gentleman (track 4) who twirls to seduce her: what a beautiful lively, sparkling piece, suddenly serious like a declaration between two pirouettes, two glides over the shiny floor of the grand hall. Then there is Julia (track 5), Mattia’s second name, maybe like a twin sister, shy and reserved, she makes beautiful figures with her flowing dress, she lifts her head, and in her eyes shines an indefinable charm. Time no longer passes, it echoes eternity, this is Pendulum Waves (track 6), Mattia’s motif oscillates endlessly, more dramatic, more hypnotic: there’s no way out... Here comes the cooper, The Cooper, but you are already intoxicated, let the wine seal the marriage, for it’s a ceremony, isn’t it? We are in a Peter Greenaway film, in a garden with paths that do not diverge, but unceasingly bring you back to the center of the mirror. Then another force takes you away, Carried Away (track 8) sweeps everything aside, the piano becomes more orchestral, swirling to the point of vertigo in splendid and sumptuous ellipses... to bring you to the edge of death. On the Edge has accents of Arvo Pärt in its sparseness, its poignant gravity, distilling drops of light from another world.

The second disc brings new pieces just as successful. Corn, Beguine and the following tracks are moving variations of the foundational piece For Mattia. The ode to Mattia expands to celebrate all the departed, taking its roots in an important collection of 996 short folk melodies from the 18th century, The Old and New Dutch Farmer Songs and Contra Dances, from which Douwe Eisenga has drawn inspiration for about ten years. He took some titles from this collection, like the two mentioned above, as well as Gentleman and The Cooper. Track 10, a remix of Julia by Pim van de Werken, includes electronic sounds that bathe the piece in an ethereal aura.

Overall, after Piano Files I & II (2011 / 2016) and Simon Songs (2015), For Mattia forms a new major piano cycle in the career of this composer, who has remained true to a minimalism enriched with baroque folk influences.  

A moving double album, the endless dance of Life on the edge of Death.