The Leipzig-based trio of Olga Reznichenko (piano), Lorenz Heigenhuber (bass) and Maximilian Stadtfeld (drums) turned my head with their wonderfully nuanced 2022 debut Somnambule (Traumton). Conceived as a series of imaginary dream sequences, the classically leaning and melodically rich music was full of unexpected harmonic twists and turns. Yet the Russian-born pianist, a pupil of Richie Beirach and Michael Wollny, is also a self-professed lover of loud music, and the album’s tightly honed sound-world felt so very different to her work with extrovert noise-rock collective Space Schädel and Nuremberg-based drummer Maximilian Breu’s expansive quartet.
Rhythm Dissection is something of a bridge between the two worlds, offering a more rubato style of improvisation where compositional boundaries are looser and rhythmic structures more fluid. All of the material was thoroughly road-tested before Reznichenko sat down at the historic 1920 Steinway D at Tonstudio Bauer in Ludwigsburg, and her album notes describe the trio’s approach to the material as “not completely free, but rather an expansion of the motifs”. Variously recalling Wollny’s trio with Tim Lefebvre and Eric Schaefer, Kit Downes’ Enemy and Julius Windisch’s trio with Igor Spallati and Fermín Merloa, the trio seem happier to roll the dice.
The whimsically titled opener “A Ballad For A Cowboy Who Is Yet To Find Out About Fear” exemplifies the new approach, the stiff formality of its seemingly immovable theme slowly eaten away from the inside by a constant churn of off-centre rhythmic crosscurrents. The tight unisons and appealing Corea-like theme of “Elegie” are dispatched in equally short order, while the somewhat nervous pulse of “Hopeful Anxiety” is subjected to even greater stress-testing by Stadtfeld’s disruptive accents. “Solaris”, inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s tense psychological sci-fi drama, underscores the trio’s abilities to create and sustain atmosphere and mood, and Reznichenko’s admiration for Ligeti and Xenakis really shines through.
Elsewhere the staccato post-rock attack of “Salty Drunk Fish” and “Trampelpfad” (“Beaten Path”) stand in marked contrast to the wistful slow-tempo brilliance of “Old Feeling”, the darting changes of direction on “Polyphobic Impromptu” are a masterclass in quick-fire thinking, and as the trio shift through the gears on the bustling title-track I’m reminded of Phronesis at height of their powers. It will be interesting to hear where Reznichenko takes this trio next, and something tells me that she won’t be short of options.
