Wolfgang Puschnig is one who has returned from faraway musical realms, and whose compositions take us into the borderlands: The instrumentation including flutes, violin, saxophone, double bass and voices bridges the gap between folk music and jazz, creating a strong tension between traditionalism and musical freethinking. The fact that he entwines the music with lyrics from the region Carinthia / Slovenia – located in two different states, yet with a shared cultural background – may be interpreted as a deliberate statement. Bernarda Fink, the celebrated Argentine mezzo-soprano with Slovenian roots, sings what might be termed transregional folk songs, partly in Slovenian, partly in German. Some of the music might double as the soundtrack to movie scenes set in a big city, while at other times it conjures up images of rich green pastures that might feature in a rural tearjerker ... For the Love of It communicates the sense of an emotional connection that many people, irrespective of education or local patriotism, are capable of understanding but that can be truly expressed only through music.
