SKU: HL.49007921
ISBN 9790001111911. 9.0x12.0x0.238 inches.
In these lieder, Robert Schumann seems to mirror his life full of crises. The composition coincides with the first signs of his illness. The picture of the drowning Ophelia evoked in the first chant conjures up the image of his suicide attempt three years later. Aribert Reimann's transcription seems to be opposed to Schumann's endeavours to make stronger use of 'the development of the accompanying instrument, the piano'. On the other hand, the complete integration of the vocal part in the musical setting of the string quartet confirms Schumann's assessment that the singing voice alone cannot 'express everything; apart from the expression of the whole, even subtle nuances of the poem shall become apparent'. These transcriptions show Reimann's sense of timbre and his many years of experience as a lied accompanist.
SKU: PR.16400272S
UPC: 680160588442. 8.5 x 11 inches.
My third quartet is laid out in a three-movement structure, with each movement based on an early, middle, and late work of the great American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt. Although the movements are separate, with full-stop endings, the music is connected by a common scale-form, derived from the name MARY CASSATT, and by a recurring theme that introduces all three movements. I see this theme as Mary's Theme, a personality that stays intact while undergoing gradual change. I The Bacchante (1876) [Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] The painting shows a young girl of Italian or Spanish origin, playing a small pair of cymbals. Since Cassatt was trying very hard to fit in at the French Academy at the time, she painted a lot of these subjects, which were considered typical and universal. The style of the painting doesn't yet show Cassatt's originality, except perhaps for certain details in the face. Accordingly the music for this movement is Spanish/Italian, in a similar period-style but using the musical signature described above. The music begins with Mary's Theme, ruminative and slow, then abruptly changes to an alla Spagnola-type fast 3/4 - 6/8 meter. It evokes the Spanish-influenced music of Ravel and Falla. Midway through, there's an accompanied recitative for the viola, which figures large in this particular movement, then back to a truncated recapitulation of the fast music. The overall feeling is of a well-made, rather conventional movement in a contemporary Spanish/Italian style. Cassatt's painting, too, is rather conventional. II At the Opera (1880) [Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts] This painting is one of Cassatt's most well known works, and it hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The painting shows a woman alone in a box at the opera house, completely dressed (including gloves) and looking through opera glasses at someone or something that is NOT on the stage. Across the auditorium from her, but exactly at eye level, is a gentleman with opera glasses intently watching her - though it is not him that she's looking at. It's an intriguing picture. This movement is far less conventional than the first movement, as the painting is far less conventional. The music begins with a rapid, Shostakovich-type mini-overture lasting less than a minute, based on Mary's Theme. My conjecture is that the woman in the painting has arrived late to the opera, busily stumbling into her box. What happens next is a kind of collage, a kind of surrealistic overlaying of two different elements: the foreground music, at first is a direct quotation of Soldier's Chorus from Gounod's FAUST (an opera Cassatt would certainly have heard in the brand-new Paris Opera House at that time), played by Violin II, Viola, and Cello. This music is played sul ponticello in the melody and col legno in the marching accompaniment. On top of this, the first violin hovers at first on a high harmonic, then descends into a slow melody, completely separate from the Gounod. It's as if the woman in the painting is hearing the opera onstage but is not really interested in it. Then the cello joins the first violin in a kind of love-duet (just the two of them, at first). This music isn't at all Gounod-derived; it's entirely from the same scale patterns as the first movement and derives from Mary's Theme and its scale. The music stays in a kind of dichotomy feeling, usually three-against-one, until the end of the movement, when another Gounod melody, Valentin's aria Avant de quitter ce lieux reappears in a kind of coda for all four players. It ends atmospherically and emotionally disconnected, however. The overall feeling is a kind of schizophrenic, opera-inspired dream. III Young Woman in Green, Outdoors in the Sun (1909) [Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts] The painting, one of Cassatt's last, is very simple: just a figure, looking sideways out of the picture. The colors are pastel and yet bold - and the woman is likewise very self-assured and not in the least demure. It is eight minutes long, and is all about melody - three melodies, to be exact (Young Woman, Green, and Sunlight). No angst, no choppy rhythms, just ever-unfolding melody and lush harmonies. I quote one other French composer here, too: Debussy's song Green, from Ariettes Oubliees. 1909 would have been Debussy's heyday in Paris, and it makes perfect sense musically as well as visually to do this. Mary Cassatt lived her last several years in near-total blindness, and as she lost visual acuity, her work became less sharply defined - something akin to late water lilies of Monet, who suffered similar vision loss. My idea of making this movement entirely melodic was compounded by having each of the three melodies appear twice, once in a pure form, and the second time in a more diffuse setting. This makes an interesting two ways form: A-B-C-A1-B1-C1. String Quartet No.3 (Cassatt) is dedicated, with great affection and respect, to the Cassatt String Quartet, whose members have dedicated themselves in large measure to the furthering of the contemporary repertoire for quartet.
SKU: PR.164002720
UPC: 680160573042. 8.5 x 11 inches.
SKU: BR.KM-2418
World premiere of the complete version: Witten, April 27, 1991
ISBN 9790004501887. 10.5 x 14 inches.
There are two versions of this piece (two ways to perform it):- as a quartet- for two quartets playing simultaneously. In the latter case, the two quartets divide the staves of the page of a score in such a way that one quartet always plays the upper stave, the other quartet the lower. One of the two quartets can be taped beforehand in case it is impossible to make use of two quartets.(Adriana Holszky)CDs:Hangebrucken- Quartett I - Quartett II- DoppelquartettNomos-Quart ett; Pellegrini-QuartettCD cpo 999 112-2Bibliography:Blument aler, Volker: Adriana Holszky; Hangebrucken, in: Streifzuge. Werkkommentare zur Neuen Musik, Saarbrucken 2000, pp. 74-78.Brodsky, Seth: From 1989, or European Music and the Modernist Unconscious, Oakland: University of California Press 2017, pp. 164-166, 262f.Hiekel, Jorn Peter: Antiklassisches, Rauschhaftes, Groteskes. Uberlegungen zu den Werken Hangebrucken und Message, in: Adriana Holszky, hrsg. von Eva-Maria Houben, Saarbrucken 2000, pp. 69-80.ders.: Fremdheit und Vertrautheit. Strategien der Wiederverwendung im Komponieren von Adriana Holszky, in: Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik 178 (2017), Heft 5, pp. 26-29.Holszky, Adriana: Wandernde Klangraume und die Korperlichkeit des Klanges, in: Neue Rundschau 132 (2021), Heft 1, S. 146-158Nonnenmann, Rainer: Die Quadratur des musikalischen Kreises. Aspekte des Streichquartettschaffens im einundzwanzigsten Jahrhundert, in: MusikTexte Heft 162 (August 2019), S. 91-98Schafer-Lembeck, Hans-Ulrich: Du baust dir eine Stadt . Uberlegungen zu Asthetik und Didaktik von Adriana Holszkys Hangebrucken, in: Neue Musik vermitteln. Analysen Interpretationen - Unterricht, hrsg. von Hans Bassler, Ortwin Nimczik und Peter W. Schatt, Mainz: Schott, 2004, pp. 265-285.Zeitler, Ulrich: Hangebrucken - Brucken zur Vergangenheit?, in: Musik und Unterricht 16 (1992), pp. 37-42.Zenck, Martin: Internationalitat und nationale Romantik im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Zur Schubert-Rezeption in zwei Jahrhunderten, in: Archiv fur Musikwissenschaft 67 (2010), Heft 4, pp. 261-283.World premiere of the complete version: Witten, April 27, 1991.
SKU: HL.49033270
ISBN 9790001136860. 9.25x12.0x0.3 inches.
The Jagdquartett (Hunt Quartet), which Jorg Widmann wrote as his third string quartet in 2003, following the Choralquartett, also begins with a visible gesture. After a short signal cry from the performers, the piece starts by quoting Robert Schumann's Papillons op. 2, and for its full duration retains this gesture, these starting sounds. The degrees of recognizability do change continuously, to be sure, in the furious, racing organism of the score. The contours change into forms on another level, yet now and then the begining material returns clearly to the fore, initiated anew by a cry from the performers, and is then digested or mutated as a rhythmic study into a field of harmonic experimentation. On rare occasions, there are moments of pause - as though the musicians were testing the atmosphere, as though they were sensing the weather, so as ultimately to continue playing the quartet across the fields an forests of notes. A hunt after joyful performance, a chase, the whip cracking, after the thing to be shot, the sound, its performer, perhaps the composer himself? - A last shout, morendo, dal niente... - The victim is not the audience, at any rate.When comparing the output of string quartets from the 18th century to thetime of Schumann, it appears to have dropped considerably. Schumann composed only three complete quartets, all of them in the so-called 'chamber music year' 1842. Jorg Widmann, who counts Robert Schumann among his greatest inspirations, finished a series of five string quartets in 2005, at the same age as Schumann. The quartets in the cycle form in themselves the characters of the movements of the classical quartet. Jagdquartett represents the fast middle movement, the scherzo. Widmann's work appears rough and wild in the style of Schumann's alter ego Florestan. His hunt begins in the tempo of 'allegro vivace assai' with the final theme of Schumann's Papillons which often appears or is cited in many of Schumann's compositions. Widmann eventually dismantles the thematic material of his fierce quartet, thus skeletonising his prey.