Second full-length solo release “Remember Tomorrow” by German composer Clemens Christian Poetzche is a rare gem that cements this artist’s status as a true triple threat, possessing great talent in each of his focuses: composing, playing piano, and producing. The piano tracks capture a tender, thoughtful performance of compositions that are comfortingly familiar, yet filled with subtlety and an understated sense of drama. His production further elevates these compositions with hints of synth, strings, and ear-bending oddities that push the musical forms, highlighting their most thrilling contours and deepening their darkest depths. 

 

From the very beginning we are immediately swept up in pointillistic musings in opening track ‘Spheres,’ with fragmented clusters like islands floating amongst sustained tones. As all the dots join together and the music begins to cascade, it is stirring, with haunting shifts of harmonies flickering by. Next, gentle doubling of the  piano and a slightly heavy reverb give ‘Tokio Nights’ a weightiness and plenty of dimension, as synth slowly becomes more present and reaches a point of climax as it eclipses the full frequency spectrum.

 

‘Rufe’ is a visceral, thundery rumble in the background and a wash of synth colour; stark streaks foreground the composition in open harmonies as the timbre seamlessly shifts from brass to strings. ‘Ascending’ oozes an opulent charm and stately gorgeousness; a rapidly rippling reverie of colourful broken chords evoking a sense of flight. The following track ’11 Step’ has an idiosyncratic, jittery groove with a simple left hand riff and a meandering melody in the treble. It has a crystalline purity in its youthful exuberance, and a certain spunk to its cartwheels and leaps.

 

Beginning with a sombre, slow set up, ‘Echoes’ is all about the moment the music takes flight. It leaps into action with an urgent rhythmic riff on the piano set against a thick smog of deep electric bass, synth, double bass and cello: thick, dark and textured, like scratchy, detailed graphite layered over and over. ‘Neon Leipzig’ showcases some of Poetzsche’s more interesting synth musings, with pulsing, whirring sonorities setting the scene as a background for a bright, sparse doubled melody and a disquieting deep rumble beneath.

 

The piano has a moment of purity in the following track ‘Reflexion,’ a short solo piece that seems oscillate between patience and restlessness with a simple stepwise melody. Next, ’Zur Nacht’ begins with a gentle repeated piano figure that ripples out, each note bleeding into the next. With a gentle violin floating along, a second voice emerges from the piano, growing in complexity with harmonies filling out the upper range with a beautiful sense of development.

 

‘Pyrus’ is striking, with tense, thick, bittersweet piano chords that stand like skyscrapers against gently warbling synths. This track is sublime in its simplicity and its refined, plaintive motif. The following track ‘Schimmer’ immediately seduces with its enchanting twists and turns of melody and harmony. This track especially showcases Poetzsche’s wonderful sense of harmony with some interesting, stark choices: some beautifully jarring, and others heartbreakingly tender in the sweetness they evoke in gorgeous key changes and shifts of colour.

 

Penultimate track ‘Zwei Stimmen’ sprawls out with a sombre moodiness: deep strings ring out, reverberant, stark and dark, as a gentle strain of dissonance tugs at the heartstrings. Here again, the composer’s restraint with musical material is used to astonishing effect, with a very focused idea that is truly refined. The album concludes with a hint of intrigue and elusiveness in closer “Lento,” a slightly tense piano solo with an atmospheric reverberation that echoes on in the mind long after listening.

 

It is a rare artist in today’s world who can create something that has a sense of the traditional, without being trapped in the predictability of convention. Poetzsch possesses a wonderful gift for harmony; it is the choice of colours that lends his work a quality of the familiar tinged with something beguiling and unique. Adding in the delicate ornamentation a honed arrangement around his piano playing, he has honed a musical voice using traditional harmony, unbound by tradition. It is no surprise this artist embraces ‘Freedom’ as his guiding creative principle, as this feeling permeates throughout his music in a sense of looseness, spontaneity, and immediacy.