Hidden Corners

NEW RELEASES
CLASSICAL

By ELISSA POOLE
Friday, May 13, 2005 Page R31
Rudolf Komorous: Wu
Eve Egoyan
Candareen Records

I can't pretend I wasn't a little baffled by Rudolf Komorous's Wu, the haunting 60-minute solo piano piece he wrote for Eve Egoyan. Wu proceeds one note at a time for the most part, with too much intent to be strictly meditative but with little predictable pattern. Motion (or volume) may briefly escalate; the few chords seem, within this ascetic, almost wholly linear context, extraordinary, unique. Anticipations fail to materialize; implications withhold their significance. Yet the piece resists its own transparency with such authority that we willingly go back to it again for answers we don't expect to find.