01 From the Art of Mirrors (52:12)
Performance live d'une musique d'accompagnement de films inédits de Derek Jarman.
Richter's The Art of Mirrors (issued by the UK downloads-only label Seven Things) is musical accompaniment for never-before-seen films from the Derek Jarman archive (around sixty S8mm film works produced between 1970 and 1983). Interestingly, while Songs From Before is comprised of short compositions threaded into a whole, The Art of Mirrors is a single-movement, 52-minute piece; however, it's a rather misleading detail—more a matter of CD indexing—since the two works are equally episodic in nature. It's not an unrelated composition either, as The Art of Mirrors opens with the sparse organ chords of “Song” and gentle vibes of “Harmonium,” and “Sunlight” surfaces too. The longer work is a live recording though there's little that sonically identifies it as such beyond modest stage noise and the closing applause. One thing that recommends the live presentation is that it builds to a ravishing climax whereas the studio set ends less dramatically with a piano coda (“From the Rue Vilin”). Obviously The Art of Mirrors is less concise than Songs From Before yet still provides a natural companion to it. In a perfect world, the release would be available in a DVD format too so that we might view Jarman's visuals alongside Richter's music.
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