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Relatively little-known outside of Europe, Stefano Battaglia is a brilliant pianist, who has collaborated extensively with Kenny Wheeler and Lee Konitz. He can play with a sweeping, even operatic lyricism or push the boundaries of improvisation. This is his second two-CD set for ECM and it will undoubtedly expand his audience at the same time that it places special demands on the listener. It's an extended portrait of the filmmaker, poet and political activist Pier Paolo Pasolini, with individual pieces scored to portray his featured actresses, like Laura Betti and Maria Callas, or give musical form to many of his works, whether film, poem or even essay. Disc One emphasizes Battaglia's pensive lyricism, whether minimalist or dissonant, and it's here given extraordinary depth and welling power by a sextet that includes trumpeter Michael Gassmann. Disc Two is far darker, with Battaglia and a string-rich French quintet playing chopping, slashing music that can summon up Pasolini's revolutionary and religious passions (and his grim unsolved murder) in a musical language that takes improvisation into the abstract, serial language of Alban Berg's Lulu or Schoenberg's piano music. --Stuart Broomer
