I would have got this when it came out, some time in 1985. I can't remember whether it was before or after 22nd July, when I saw Nyman perform at the Bloomsbury Theatre with Dagmar Krause.
That night she sang a phenomenal piece called, I'm pretty sure, Taking a Line For a Second Walk (after Paul Klee's description of his painting practice as "taking a line for a walk"). I've never seen another trace of that piece, which is a shame because it was one of my ever-expanding list of "top 10 live musical moments of my life" (others include, since your asking, Tangerine Dream at the Brighton Dome in '81, Van Morrison and the Chieftains at the Riverside Studios in '88, The Magnetic Fields at WOMAD in 2000, and another Michael Nyman Band gig I mentioned before). I think Dagmar was improvising a range of sounds (à la Fraser) rather than singing words — that's about all I could tell you.
And none of it has anything much to do with this record, on which Dagmar sings a duet for the title track and another song about noses with text taken from Tristram Shandy. These are better than Nyman's opera, but I still much prefer his instrumental pieces. In particular the highlight of this album is the Water Dances suite, which is, inevitably, a soundtrack for a Peter Greenaway film — in this case a short Busby Berkeleyesque piece about synchronised swimming.
MusicBrainz entry for this album |
Comments