Memories help me to define who I am. They establish connection between me and everything that is not present or future – sometimes sharp and palpable, more often soft and frail. Unfortunately, some memories fade away irrevocably. Hence, I am quite afraid of losing them.
Since we first featured him back in 2016, Tim Linghaus has carved out a unique niche in the contemporary classical world. Known both for his charming solo piano miniatures and for complex synthesiser-vocal soundscapes that Bon Iver would be proud of, he’s been using music as a way to explore an equally complex family history since 2018’s Memory Sketches, released on Schole and 1631 Recordings. Memory Sketches and Memory Sketches II focused on his grief at losing his father suddenly to a heart attack, while We Were Young When You Left Home and Venus Years pick apart his experience of parental divorce. These are complex and rich albums, well worth diving into (especially if you’re a vinyl fan, as the design of the latter two is particularly wonderful and adds a great deal to the music). Asche und Magnolien centres around the piano and feels like a successor to the Memory Sketches series. Indeed Linghaus explains that the title track
is a mellow piano song about my father, who passed away in 2002. His early death was a hurricane and since then a part of time has stood still – and so has a part of myself. It stayed somewhere between hospital hallways and good times at the lake or in the rear seat of his car.
But the album is also a reflection of the neglected dreams of our younger selves (“Wakamono No Yume”), an tribute to a grandfather (“Anfang und Ende”), a reflection on mortality “Zukunft, Nacht und Ewigkeit”, and a plea for forgiveness (“Skizze für W”). The instrumentation is led by piano with Linghaus’s characteristically memorable melodies, but because he is also a master of subtle detail there are some absolutely gorgeous moments where the instrumentation broadens, most notably in “Skizze fuer W” and in the final track, “Flaues Herz” which, despite its title (listless or spiritless heart), feels profoundly optimistic. Indeed, as the press release states:
I am not an unhappy person, there is so much love and happiness inside of me, but there is always grief as well. For a long time, I had been comprehending it as a burden, as a flaw I had to get rid of. But this is not true anymore. I am learning how to neglect my urge to obliterate it and, instead, see it as equally rightful to exist alongside all the other feelings. And the music gives everything a form. It connects the I which wants to be in the past with the I from today and establishes points of contact between everything that was and that is. The boy who I once was is also sitting at the piano and together we play pieces about the both of us and our father, about my younger self’s dreams, our fears and our questions about life and death and mortality.
This integration of past and present selves finds expression in Linghaus’ musical language which, despite its variety across his output, is remarkably coherent. This is music with soul. It’s gorgeous. (Garreth Brooke)
a closer listen 