A Different Forest

Hauschka soothes frayed ends and shocked nerves

https://open.qobuz.com/album/v7076h16273yb

https://tidal.com/browse/album/102772603?u

https://www.sonyclassical.com/releases/releases-details/a-different-forest-2

This early morning is the first time I’m really hearing Hauschka’s 2019 album, A Different Forest. Maybe it has to do with my having been listening to, and playing, more classical music these last six months. Maybe it’s the earphones. Maybe it’s the silence. Maybe it’s the two feet of snow outside. And maybe it’s that I’m worn out and cannot resist the music as I often resist music. A Different Forest has harmonious solo acoustic piano, most of it at a slow tempo. It is meditative and almost a little mournful at times, such as during “Curious.”

This time, instead of changing the track because the music didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, I’ve given the music time to go where it goes. I think the main reason I hadn’t listened well, before, was impatience. For years I’ve been listening almost exclusively to jazz from between 1945 and 2024, and usually it goes somewhere quickly instead of taking its time. Maybe it’s partly that I don’t feel like going anywhere or doing anything, that I can go “nowhere” with A Different Forest. I’ve felt many emotions over the last few days, as an American. I’ve felt at least a few emotions typically labeled as “stages of grief.” I’m accepting the music without expectation. I didn’t know, till this moment, as the sound occurs, that the album had electronic sounds much as Yann Tiersen’s Kerber does. I had not listened closely to it.

My mind is pretty empty right now, as I’m listening. The music isn’t crowded out by thoughts of many things. I dove into some news and opinion, and I’ve come up for a break fromt he shock, and to warm myself on the hot, sandy shore. This is the music that would play if my imagined scene were in a film: the track “Daybreak over Covent Garden.” Over the past six months or so, I’ve been hearing acoustic piano differently than I used to. The sound of our electronic piano has been heard more frequently in our house, the last year, and I’ve tapped into a lot of the new albums and artists of classical music being streamed and sold on Qobuz. The variety of timbres the acoustic piano can produce surprises me, after a long time of paying little attention to the instrument’s capability of producing nuance.

Attending performances by chamber music ensembles of just a few musicians at a time, and especially those involving piano, has done something to lead me to hear more of this nuance in classical music. Playing classical guitar in an early music ensemble, most recently, has stimulated my interest in classical music. Finding out what the viola da gamba instrument family sounds like, even beginning to learn to play viola da gamba, has led me to feel invested in learning more about the sounds they can make, and to learn better how to hear the various ways of playing western classical instruments. Listening to the Greek lyra has helped me hear classical music differently. I think it is played in uncommon tunings, in tunings alien to my 12-tone scale-raised ear. Hearing Hauschka play, on A Different Forest, occurs in the context of all of this development in my listening and playing.

The challenge of it is for me to stay with it, when it seems deliberately not to challenge my ear. The sounds are consonant, not dissonant in the least. Every tone is easy on the ear. The stridency of some music, such as that by Steph Richards or Kate Gentile, or Matt Mitchell, is far away. I typically avoid music like A Different Forest, for this reason; I like my reading to challenge, and I like my music to challenge. Hauschka provides a comfortable retreat from the challenges of daily life, from the challenges of uncommon misfortunes peddled by the news, and by concern for the future. After having listened to the album, I am more relaxed, and usually I don’t want music to lead to relaxation. But this morning I think I wanted it. I think I needed it. I think I knew I was starting to get carried away by the stream of bad news. Hauschka brought news from somewhere without the immediate need to do something. Hauschka brought music for sitting with, for letting the mind wander to—perhaps wander to a different forest.