
Hania Rani’s On Giacometti contains material from her score to a new film about the artist Alberto Giacometti and Giacometti’s broader family. It’s a gorgeous collection of quiet, contemplative music — the sort of music that fills the space in a film and yet is, through the strange received logic of film-making, intended to signify the presence of silence, the absence of sound. Start with “Knots,” in which a stoic piano part — the score is essentially all piano all the time — gets lightly embroidered with bits of synthesized filigree. Then try “Storm,” which is only stormy at a distance; to listen to its echoing patterning is to witness, purposefully, something through thick glass and grim darkness that is transpiring quite far away. One highlight is the occasional appearance of Dobrawa Czocher’s cello, notably on the opening track. Some of this material will draw comparisons to Nils Frahm (the muffled pads of “Mountains,” for example) and Philip Glass, but this is Rani’s music through and through: the gracious pacing, the lithe development, the ambiguous mood. The movie, The Giacomettis, was directed by Susanna Fanzun.