Volker David Kirchner has repeatedly been denied the recognition he deserves because he is out-of-step with the aesthetic ideas that the avant-garde believed were the only valid ones. For Kirchner, e.g. The reference to the tradition and particularly to the sound of the human voice cannot be denied. His obsidian songs are characterized by almost theatrical drama, while the songs of poems by Else Lasker-Schuler and the cycle Media vita in morte sumus rather emphasize the meditative. The two last mentioned works were written for the mezzo voice heard on this recording, Julia Ostertag.

IN HONOR OF HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY

My imagination, once released into the room, pulled me into a huge conflict with myself, because these texts can not compose like a phone book, Defy and encounter a repeatedly into the depths, the definitions shaken and the positions begin to sway. So the Mainzer composer Volker David Kirchner expressed about the composition of the "Missa Moguntina" that is the Mainz Cathedral quasi "tailored to the body": Many hours has Kirchner spent in this cathedral to the very special atmosphere, the acoustics, the sounds that changing people to take up the space as a whole and to bring his music to sound. The work of the text of the Latin Ordinary measurement lies with Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei basis, where the composer between Gloria and Credo, a musical setting of Psalm 130 "De Profundis clamavi ad te, Domine" intercalates. So is the centerpiece of the exhibition, the credo, started at the lowest possible point, and then - to reach the "Et resurrexit" climax - omitting all historical appositions. "... Kirchner has found the way to new light. His Missa means climax and turning point in his work. The Missa is an experience. The interpretation did experience nature, primarily due to the convincing directing Mathias Breitschaft..." (W.. -E von Lewinski: Allgemeine Zeitung, Mainz, November 23, 1993)

Hessisches Staatsorchester Wiesbaden / Siegfried K�hler: conductor / Bl�ser Ensemble Mainz / Klaus Rainer Sch�ll: conductor / Kreisler Trio / Bodo Hersen: viola.

Although the Symphony and the Requiem appear to be fundamentally different in concept and in the resulting treatment of the musical material, they do have an important point in common. This is the focus of the composer's aesthetic creed which recalls Byzantian thinking: a musical statement always contains it's opposite. It is a whole which includes and unites singularity and multiplicity. It is "this-as-well-as-that", yet at the same time "ne-utral" (in the original sense of "neither-this nor-that"). In the end it neutralizes it's musical precondition, it's relation to tradition, distancing itself from tradition, and becoming in it's way an original phenomenon. Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Peter G�lke: conductor / Maria Bayo: soprano / Iris Vermillion: mezzo soprano / Victor von Halem: bass / Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg / Staatlich Akademischer Chor Riga / Imants Cepitis: chorus master / Gerd Albrecht: conductor.

Classical Music

New music in the United States since World War II has been a spirited arena of diverse ideologies. Serialism, minimalism, indeterminacy, “New Romanticism”, and other musical pathways have attracted their passionate constituencies of composers and audience. Of composers who have chosen to go their own way, working apart from the ever-changing mainstream, a major figure is Leon Kirchner. Single-mindedly following his own vision, he has developed a powerful inimitable language...

The works on this recording span four decades. Although the composer’s music has gone through a subtle evolution, the basic features of Kirchner’s musical language are apparent from the start. His music tends to the rhapsodic, with impulsive movement from lyric to dramatic, and asymmetrical rhythm and phrasing. Works are conceived as organic wholes. (All the multimovement works on this recording are “played without pause”.) In the earlier music particularly, sectional contrasts are sharp, marked by clear tempo changes; in his later music, the textural continuity becomes more homogeneous, the changes gradual and seamless. The tonal language is chromatic but not serially organized. The composer’s markings in the scores are detailed and sometimes unusual: “Haltingly”, “Wild”, “Coming from nowhere, almost out of control.”

Cheryl Seltzer
© 2005 Continuum
from the album liner notes