SKU: BR.PB-5714
ISBN 9790004216514. 10.5 x 14 inches.
More than my earlier works, this one is interspersed with metrically bound rhythms and musicianly characters that constantly recrystallize and drift towards or away from familiar situations.The familiar: These are dance-like figures and music-making formulas, but also songs and, in two cases fragments of Bach's music - playfully collected memories of impressions in which - consciously and unconsciously - I am embodied with that collective comfort in whose protection bourgeois thinking and feeling, magically protected, grow up and emerge apart.(It is well known that such security has its fetishes from the childlike to the adult stage: Home, religious bond, holidays, tradition, longing for childhood - the superficiality may have little idea of the depth that opens up underneath. There is also no question that we are still marked by such security even when the contradictions and alienation of existence force us to step out of their protection, to recognize and act upon reality, and to oppose the domination of such inner bonds where their original truth has become the fatal untruth of comfortable illusion, stubbornly and fearfully conjured idyll and reactionary narrow-mindedness.My music feeds on figures in which such memories are encapsulated. It deals with them not much differently than in other pieces with the elements of the traditional musical concept of material, having already always reflected compositionally as a product of sociality and anticipation of musical expression, i.e. it moved into a structurally expanded context and expressively redefined from there.Such an approach aims at overcoming lack of freedom: grasping as part of conceiving, i.e. not philosophical reflection, but rather an artistically gripping reflex by intervening in the physical immediacy of such predetermined elements. These penetrate and infect the structural events, inducing a musicianship that cannot be relied upon; the music jumps onto rhythms like onto moving vehicles, allows for being carried by them until they deform or disintegrate. This creates an incline of rhythmically shaped situations: sequence and interweaving of dances and structures.The role of the solo string quartet is versatile, obbligato and concertante, leading and accompanying in a changing sense. Set as a chamber music apparatus in an orchestral landscape, it repeatedly forces its own sound dimensions onto the orchestra, it must accept being drowned out at times, it nests in the holes of tutti fields, it acts as a louse in the fur, forcing one to listen in and out.The Tanzsuite with Deutschlandlied is structured as follows:I. Section. 1. Introduction - 2. Waltz - 3. March - 4. Bridge -II. Section. 5. Siciliano - 6. Capriccio - 7. Valse lente -III. Section. 8. Bridge - 9. Gigue - 10. Tarantelle - 11. Bridge -IV. Section. 12 Aria I - 13 Polka - 14 Aria IIV. Section. 15. Introduction - 16 Gallop - 17 Coda (Aria III)All 17 parts merge into one another.(Helmut Lachenmann, 1980)CDs/LP/DVD:Arditti-Quartett, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, cond. Olaf HenzoldCD Montaigne Auvidis MO 782019Berner Streichquartett, Sinfonieorchester des SWF, cond. Sylvain Cambreling (Excerpt)CD BMG/RCA 74321 73510 2 (Musik in Deutschland 1950-2000)Berner Streichquartett, Sinfonieorchester des SWF, cond. Sylvain CambrelingLP DMR 1028-30Arditti Quartet, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, cond. Hans Zender Excerpt on CD ,,Auswahl von zehn Urauffuhrungen aus 70 Jahren, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg Arditti Quartet, Staatsorchester Stuttgart, cond. Sylvain Cambreling DVD ,,Lachenmann-Perspektiven 6 (Breitkopf & Hartel, BHM 7816) Bibliography:Cavalotti, Pietro: Differenzen. Poststrukturalistische Aspekte in der Musik der 1980er Jahre am Beispiel von Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough und Gerard Grisey (= Sonus. Schriften zur Musik, hrsg. von Andreas Ballsteadt, Band 8), Schliengen: Argus 2006, pp. 79-128.Das sind doch alles Deutschlandlieder! Helmut Lachenmann im Gesprach mit Michael Rebhahn, in: Der Taktgeber. Das Magazin der Jungen Deutschen Philharmonie, Heft 40 (Sommer 2019), S. 6f.Stawowy, Milena: Fluchtversuche in die Hohle des Lowen. Helmut Lachenmanns Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied, in: MusikTexte 67/68 (1997), pp. 77-90.Toop, Richard: Concept and Context: A Historiographic Consideration of Lachenmanns Orchestral Works, in: Helmut Lachenmann Inward Beauty, hrsg. von Dan Albertson, Contemporary Music Review 23 (2004), Heft 3/4, pp. 125-144.World premiere: Donaueschingen (Donaueschinger Musiktage), October 18, 1980.
SKU: FG.55011-071-7
ISBN 9790550110717.
Completed in Karstula, Finland during late July 2010, this carefully structured, but also free-ranging work is drawn from ideas for a much earlier work in four movements, Fantasy dating from the 1980s. Kai Nieminen has been for a long time an admirer of the work of artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), and the solo presented in its final form here is influenced by the painting Dances caused by Fear or as it is often refered to Dancing from Fear painted towards the end of Klee's life in Bern, 1938. Having left Germany for Switzerland in December 1933, Klee's later works were often full of signs and lines, very often represented in black, depicting human figures or various objects against a variety of coloured backgrounds, in the case of this painting of a brownish hue. This development in his painting style and technique is felt by some to be an effect perhaps of his long-term illness, systemic sclerosis, but in the case of Dances caused by Fear there is suggested an atmosphere of panic and terror, an attempt to escape from horrors to come (World War II), represented in the violent movement of the arms and legs of the figures, and the dark, indeed brooding nature of the colours. In Kai Nieminen's guitar work Images of Fear, there is only a very brief passage of calm at the very beginning, after which come three main connected sections in which a wide range of musically unsettling ideas emerge one by one, making use of the tritone, minor seconds, glissandos, tamboura, campanella, etc. The third and final section incorporates the grouping of 5 sixteenth-notes, to give an uneasy feeling to the music, with a short haunting and pleading five-note phrase (Cantando) heard immediately following this passage, before the work ends with further glissandos, and distant and diminishing harmonics. As with Kai Nieminen's other guitar works, the use of 'orchestral colour' is vital to the performance, and passages suggestive of for example brass, strings, woodwind, etc., should be taken into account and played with suitably considered contrast of tone. John Mills.
SKU: HL.14005090
SKU: HL.14007593
For two-part choir and Piano.
SKU: BR.DV-6081
ISBN 9790200460032. 9.5 x 12 inches.
Duration: full eveningTranslation: German (W. Ebermann/M. Koerth), Engl. (D. Llyod-Jones), French (M. Delines) Place and time: Partly on the estate, partly in Petersburg, in 20ies of the 19th CenturyCharacters: Larina, Owner of the Estate (mezzo-soprano) - Tatiana (soprano) and Olga (alto), her Daughters - Filipjewna, Wet Nurse (mezzo-soprano/alto) - Eugen Onegin (baritone) - Lenskij (tenor) - Prince Gremin (bass) - A Commander (bass) - Saretzkij (bass) - Triquet, a French Man (tenor) - Guillot, a Valet (silent part) - Country Folk, Ball Guests, Squire, Officers (chorus) - Waltz, mazurka, polonaise and Russian dance (Ballet )There is an interesting parallel between the subject of the opera and Tchaikovsky's life during the year he wrote the work (1877): in each case, a letter provokes fateful developments in the lives of the protagonists. In the opera, Tatyana's love letter to Eugene sets off the tragedy, whereas in real life, the love letter of a pupil led the composer into a marriage, which lasted all of ... three months. Tchaikovsky took this doomed decision without love, solely because the circumstances want it and because I cannot act differently. Certain allusions made, for example, in a letter of January 1878 to Taneyev suggest that the composer's personal situation also flowed into the work: I did not want anything to do with the so-called 'grand opera.' I am looking for an intimate but powerful drama which is built on the conflict of circumstances which I myself have seen and experienced, a conflict which truly moves me. Partly for this reason the composer decided to call the work not an opera but lyrical scenes.Eugene Onegin, conceived by Tchaikovsky for limited resources and a small stage, is the most frequently performed Russian opera today along with Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, which represents a completely contrary aesthetic stance. Tschaikowskys letzte Oper - auf ein Libretto seines Bruders Modest nach der Dramenvorlage des danischen Schriftstellers Henrik Hertz - lebt von den poetischen Momenten und den symbolbeladenen Charakterportrats der Hauptfiguren: Die junge blinde Jolanthe wird von ihrem Vater aus Sorge um ihren Makel und zum Schutz ihrer Jungfraulichkeit und vor den Widrigkeiten der Welt in einen paradiesischen Garten gesperrt. Er befielt zu ihrem Schutz sie um ihre Blindheit unwissend zu lassen. Ein Arzt warnt sehen werde sie nur konnen wenn sie es selbst wolle gleich welche Angste aus der vollstandigen Erkenntnis der Welt erwachsen. Als der junge Vaudemont in ihre Abgeschiedenheit einbricht und sich beide ineinander verlieben befreit er sie von ihrer Unwissenheit erklart was Farbe und Licht bedeuten. Erst die Liebe zu ihm macht sie sehend. Die dunkle Welt der Jolanthe zeichnet Tschaikowsky zu Beginn musikalisch durch eine Introduktion ausschliesslich fur Blaser. Erst mit dem Eintritt in die unbekannte Welt der Liebe und des Sehens verwendet Tschaikowsky einen warmen Streicherklang. Gerade dadurch stiess die Oper wohl bei Zeitgenossen auf Verstorung. Tschaikowskys ,,Jolanthe nimmt in seinem Opernschaffen eine Sonderstellung ein: neben dem glucklichen Ende einer Apotheose des Lichts und der Liebe mit einem religios gepragten Schlusschoral ist es eines der wenigen Buhnenwerke Tschaikowskys ohne Bezug zur russischen Geschichte. Der ausgepragte Lyrismus des Werks verweist stattdessen auf Tschaikowskys Nahe zur franzosischen Kultur die im 19. Jahrhundert einen starken Einfluss auf Russland hatte. Die Oper wurde 1892 am Mariinsky-Theater in Sankt Petersburg als Auftragswerk zusammen mit seinem Ballett ,,Der Nussknacker uraufgefuhrt.Neben der Produktion des Munchner Rundfunkorchesters wurde ,,Jolanthe szenisch erfolgreich bei den Festspielen Baden-Baden mit Anna Netrebko und Piotr Beczala als Liebespaar rehabilitiert. Ausserhalb Deutschlands lief die Opernraritat in Toulouse Tokyo San Sebastian und Monte Carlo. Zuletzt erneut die ,,Suddeutsche Zeitung: ,,Jolanthe ist eine Opernausgrabung die ,,wirklich zu Unrecht vergessen ist. Tchaikovsky's last opera - on a libretto by the composer's brother Modest based on the drama by the Danish author Henrik Hertz - derives its life-blood from its poetic moments and the symbol-laden portraits of the leading characters: the blind young Yolanta is kept prisoner in a paradisiacal garden by her father who fears for her purity and her virginity and seeks to protect her from the adversities of the world. To do so he orders everyone to keep her ignorant of the fact that she is blind. A doctor warns that she will only be able to see when she is ready to do so herself no matter what fears might result from a complete experience of the world. When the young Vaudemont breaks into her secluded world and the two fall in love he frees her from her ignorance and explains the significance of color and light. It is through her love for him that she is finally able to see. At the beginning of the work Tchaikovsky depicts Yolanta's dark world with an introduction scored exclusively for winds. It is not until her discovery of the unknown world of love and sight that Tchaikovsky uses a warm string sound. This is what many of the composer's contemporaries found disturbing about the opera.Tchaikovsky's Yolanta occupies a special place in the composer's operatic oeuvre: for one it has a happy ending an apotheosis of light and love with a religiously stamped closing chorale; for another it is one of Tchaikovsky's few stage works without any reference to Russian history. Instead the work's pronounced lyricism points to the composer's closeness to French culture. which exerted a strong influence on Russia in the 19th century.The opera was given its world premiere at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1892. It had been commissioned along with the ballet The Nutcracker. Next to the production by the Munchner Rundfunkorchester Yolanta was also successfully rehabilitated in a recent staged production at the Baden-Baden Festival with Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala as the lovers. Outside of Germany the operatic rarity was performed in Toulouse Tokyo San Sebastian and Monte Carlo.In closing another quote from the Suddeutsche Zeitung: 'Yolanta' is an operatic rediscovery of a work that was truly 'wrongly forgotten'.
