Sokratis Sinopoulos specializes in the lyra, a bowed instrument that dates back to the Byzantine era. While it may be technically a kind of lute, in sound and playing technique the lyra resembles a treble viol. The sound is variously sentimental, joyful, sweet, mournful, and haunting. On their new album Topos, Sinopoulos and pianist Yann Keerim present six arrangements based on the “Romanian Folk Dances” of Béla Bartók, along with four soft, at times new-agey original compositions.
Despite the different sources, the mood is consistent. If you’re familiar with Bartók, you probably never imagined his work as meditation music. But most of these tracks could easily fit into a contemplative playlist. Throughout the album the duo transmogrifies Bartók’s angular, folk-derived dances into cloud-smooth meditations. Exceptions would be the duo’s sneaky take on the “Romanian Polka” (you’ll wonder: when did the staccato accompaniment switch from lyra to piano?) and parts of the near-nine-minute tapestry that is “Fast Dance,” where both musicians let their imaginations fly.
The album opens with two dreamy originals. “Valley” in particular compels with throaty piano triplets and Sinopoulos plumbing the lyra for harmonics that verge on whistling. The Middle Eastern-style melody of the first Bartók adaptation, “In One Spot,” may be familiar to many listeners. This luminous arrangement warps and expands the roughly one-minute “text” into more than five minutes of shimmering atmospherics. “Sash Dance” gets a similar treatment. When the two instruments coalesce on the melody at the end they create an almost ineffably rich texture.
Sinopouos and Keerim’s realization of “Dance from Buscum” is a work of marvelous harmonic and emotional depth, from the sweaty and gripping lyra solo introduction through a slowly building statement of the silvery theme and on to a dramatic, jazz-inflected development rocked by Keerim’s intriguing chord substitutions.
“Mountain Path” serves as a brief, jazzy piano interlude between “Fast Dance” and “Forest Glade,” the latter an original where reverb helps Sinopoulos give the lyra a timbre halfway between a violin and an oboe. Both “Mountain Path” and “Forest Glade” have an improvisatory looseness.
Densely built piano chords create a mystical bed for distant lyra phrasings in the ambling introduction of “Stick Dance.” The piece then launches into a pillowy version of the corresponding Bartók dance, decked with those characteristic unexpected major-chord resolutions, closing the album on a restful note.
Topos from Sokratis Sinopoulos and Yann Keerim is out now on ECM.
