Morelenbaum²/Sakamoto
Casa

The sudden melancholic discourse of Paula Morelenbaum's voice in "As praias desertas" is a gush of melancholy in the stomach, perhaps unbearable if listened to at the wrong moment… like when you've lost her…

Banana Yoshimoto, the great Japanese writer, says that in the musical flow, reassuring and melancholy, of Sakamoto there's
"something capable of laying the soul in its original place, in its own world, and there, there is always an immense contemplative universe tinged with sadness; but in the depths, serenity arises, like when looking at stars in a harsh and wild land".

I've always had a soft spot for Sakamoto, whether he's epic, glamorous, intellectual, highbrow or instead calm and persuasive, his music vibrates with a genius that transcends any genre classification. Words that sound even more meaningful when related to the lunar minimalism, almost reckless I would say, of "Casa", purely acoustic and made with only piano, cello, and the voices of Jacques and Paula Morelenbaum, centered on one of the cult music pieces of the twentieth century, the bossa-nova, and its most significant composer: Antonio Carlos Jobim.
It is said that the project was born from a visit by Sakamoto to the Morelenbaum house, collaborators of Jobim in his final years, where there is an old piano on which the Maestro used to play; the emotion triggered by the contact with the keys still marked by his fingerprints and a spontaneous musical gathering of the three, later found expression in this precious work that reveals a deep synergy between Sakamoto's sensitivity and the sweetest "saudade".

The album is beautiful, very beautiful: full of soft elegance, stunning interpretative gentleness, it consists of 15 classics from the era - from "Amor em paz" to "Chega de saudade", from "Vivo sonhando" to "O grande amor" - but also less overused pieces - "Derradeira Primavera" or "Imagina" - that don't fall into the predictable trap of nostalgia or, worse yet, the "the way we were" (light, cultured, refined) in those distant and blissful years.
In reality, the goal is to treat Jobim's songs like Schumann's "lied", like Debussy's melodies, that is, with a nearly academic rigor that makes the singable and apparently simple, connected to the ecstasy of classicism.

In other words, beneath the apparent obviousness of the project lies the continuous quest for change that Mr. Sakamoto nurtures and pampers like the most mysterious of his Muses. The alchemy of the trio is expressed in the contrast between Paula's whispered and sensual voice and the sober composure of Jacques Morelenbaum's cello, the sinuous penetration of Ryuichi's piano into the bossa which, effortlessly, makes it his own with his typical sound weave in which neo-romantic and impressionist reminiscences, jazzy nuances meet with the sunlight of Jobim's gentle songs.
An analysis of the individual songs might be redundant, since the spirit and aesthetic sense of this work, in fact, essentially consist in the cultured revisitation of such popular melodies, in an attempt to isolate their most intimate and authentic soul, free therefore from purely aesthetic superstructures, thus leaving as much space as possible to the subjective suggestion of the listener, who is almost invited to explore the mysterious depth of the Inspiration of each of these pearls.

An album easy to love.