"The project 'Hotel Zauberberg' arose out of pianist Aki Takase's and violinist Ayumi Paul's shared admiration for the writer Thomas Mann. It mostly consists of notated compositions, with some improvised parts as well. Aki Takase penned eleven of the eighteen pieces; another five are collaborations with Ms. Paul. Additionally, there are adaptations of a Mozart Minuet and a Bach Partita. An avant-gardist drawing on tradition, Ms. Takase has never been shy of musical contacts that draw out her tendencies toward stylistic variety. As a pianist, she's got claws, finesse, and, most of all, a sense of humor. Aki Takase and Ayumi Paul's first collaboration combines a light-footed intelligence with a sense of the abysses of the 'Magic Mountain', which turns into a world-theatre of love, illness and death."-Intakt

"In the past when I have written about the pianist Aki Takase, it has been about her imaginative approaches to the efforts of major jazz greats of the past, such as Duke Ellington and Eric Dolphy, through her recordings for Intakt Records. Her latest effort, which was released today, has taken her far beyond the domain of past jazz, not to mention present and future. The title of her new recording is Hotel Zauberberg, and those who know their German literature will probably immediately recognize the connection to Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain.

If this music had to be classified, the best label for it would probably be "suite for violin and piano." Takase's partner in this project was the violinist Ayumi Paul. While there are some improvised passages, most of the music has been notated. The suite has eighteen movements, eleven of which were written by Takase and five written collaboratively with Paul. The remaining two movements are the K. 1 minuet in G major, usually attributed to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and the Preludio movement that begins Johann Sebastian Bach's solo violin partita in E major (BWV 1006).

From a literary point of view, Mann's novel poses a particularly interesting challenge to musical interpretation. In his monumental treatise Time and Narrative, the philosopher Paul RicÅ"ur drew a distinction between a story that takes place in time and one that is about time. He examined The Magic Mountain as a representative example of that latter type. (Another of his examples was Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway.)

Music, of course, can only take place in time; so Takase had her work cut out for her in trying to take on a narrative whose subject matter includes the nature of time itself. It thus seems appropriate that three of the movements of her suite are entitled "Was ist die Zeit?" (what is time). Each of these involves spinning out a relatively sustained melodic line, and in the third movement that line emerges as a hocket exchange between piano and violin. This seems to be indicative of the overall approach, viewing disciplines of the past to shape music-making in the present, as a means of paralleling Mann's use of time a subject matter.

In that respect the performance of K. 1 is particularly representative. It is one of those instances in which improvisation is part of the mix. Takase plays all sections of the minuet with repeats, using the repetitions as an opportunity to add embellishments. However, those embellishments are a heady blend of the sorts that Mozart himself might have added and those reflecting Takase's own more contemporary approach to playing the piano. A similar spirit can be found in the cadenzas that Aziza Sadikova composed for the cello concertos of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, about which I wrote at the end of last year.

Taken as a whole, this is definitely a fascinating piece of music. Takase has managed to be as compellingly imaginative in her practice has she has been in her theoretical motives behind this project. This is not just an impressive duo performance for piano and violin. It may yet deserve to be added to the chamber music repertoire for performance by other musicians."-Stephen Smoliar, Examiner, USA