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.

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

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