Live in Zürich

Pianist Irène Schweizer and drummer and multi-instrumentalist Pierre Favre have travelled many roads over long careers in the outlands where high-level virtuosity and tireless improvisational urges meet. They first played together 45 years ago and renew an old partnership here on their third duo release for Intakt, the first having arrived in 1990. Even at the farthest improv extremes, the work of both musicians is marked by a pristine clarity, and Schweizer plays a great deal of engaging spontaneous melody, while Favre often affects a kind of louche, lolloping swing. The tracks are short, pithy and varied - from twitchy and eventually headlong pieces such as Black Mirror or the monkish Broken Notes, to the flying Gemini Constellation (where Schweizer sounds like Art Tatum morphing into Cecil Taylor). Slowly undulating sound collages turn dreamily melodic, and then thumpingly swinging, as in Bird of Paradise, while others become rhapsodic, intensifying meditations (Huben wie Druben) or rocking boogies (Night Flight). The two of them sound at the top of their game, and it's music-making of a joyous openness you certainly don't need to be a die-hard to hear.