Florian Weber is one of Germany’s most respected composers and arrangers for large ensemble, his work performed by the Radio Big Bands (he is a member of the NDR Big Band in Hamburg), the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and countless other ensembles. He is also a distinguished jazz pianist in his own right who even found time to win the International Mozart Competition prize last year.

On this, his second album as a leader for ECM, he presents a four-part cycle using a brass ensemble. Not since the music of Stan Kenton’s Orchestra has music written in the bass clef been such a feature (at one time Kenton carried three tenor trombones, two bass trombones, a tuba and two bass saxes).

Here the brass aspect is by no means as bombastic; while the euphoniums and tuba are more tied to notation, the trombones blur the demarcation between written and improvised. Ensembles are well constructed, be they brass voiced in thirds on ‘Opening It’ or the polyphony of ‘Prelude.’ Weber speaks of his research for the project conducted with early madrigals, and this is contrasted by thoughtful use of contemporary chromaticism. And then he speaks of ‘polyphonic intuition,’ but it is not the means used to achieve an end, but the end that is achieved that matters, and while it may look impressive in the liner notes, it’s the music that matters, and that certainly does not lack in interest or drama.