In 1961, Mauricio Kagel wrote a piano piece with two titles. As a solo work, it is called “Metapiece." It can also, however, be played together – either simultaneously or in alternation – with other pieces by Kagel or other living composers, and is then called Mimetics. In this way, Kagel opens at the conceptual level various possibilities for the interpreter to realize his composition. The pianist Sabine Liebner has accepted Kagel’s invitation to collaborate and undertaken her own musical journey through the composer’s piano music. Sabine Liebner‘s response to his invitation to play with the idea of open form is unique in that she combines “Metapiece” exclusively with other piano pieces, all of them composed by Kagel himself. “Metapiece”, in its “Mimetics” form, surrounds these other works or is laid over them. Framed by “Mimetics”, the “Cuatro piezas para piano” and “MM 51” are played in their original forms, and the piano etude “An Tasten” is subverted by a version of “Mimetics”. At the end of Liebner’s response to Kagel’s original invitation, “Metapiece” itself appears in a 20-minute solo version.

J�rg Widmann was born in Munich on 19 June 1973. He studied the clarinet at the Hochschule f�r Musik in Munich with Gerd Starke and later with Charles Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York (1994-1995). He additionally began to take composition lessons with Kay Westermann at the age of eleven and subsequently continued his studies with Wilfried Hiller and Hans Werner Henze (1994-1996) and later Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe (1997-1999). Widmann's great passion as a clarinettist is chamber music and he regularly performs with partners such as Daniel Barenboim, Tabea Zimmermann, Heinz Holliger, Andr�s Schiff, Kim Kashkashian, and H�l�ne Grimaud. He has also achieved great success as a soloist in orchestral concerts in Germany and abroad. Several works have been dedicated to Widmann by fellow composers: in 1999, he performed the premiere of "Music for Clarinet and Orchestra" by Wolfgang Rihm in the musica viva concert series; in 2006, he performed "Cantus" by Aribert Reimann with the WDR symphony orchestra, and in 2009, at the Lucerne Festival, the world premiere of Rechant by Heinz Holliger. From 2001 to 2015, J�rg Widmann was professor of clarinet at the Freiburg Staatliche Hochschule f�r Musik where he also took up the post of professor of composition in 2009.

In contrast to Igor Strawinsky’s piano works for two hands, which are chiefly ascribed to neoclassicism, the compositions for four hands and two pianos belong to all three periods of his creative work: “Trois pieces faciles” as well as the “cinq pieces faciles” to the Russian, the “Concerto per due pianoforti soli” to the French and the “Sonata for two pianos” to the American phase.

Includes work(s) by Toshio Hosokawa. Soloists: Mayumi Miyata, Stefan Hussong.

The saxophone is a synonym for rich timbre and a wide range of expressive possibilities, but despite its highly attractive features, the instrument was a late addition to the classical orchestra. Seen in this light, the work by the saxophone quartet clair-obscur which devotes itself intensively to classical works for saxophone takes on a particular significance. The ensemble's repertoire is seemingly inexhaustible. From adventurous arrangements of piano music to string quartet, there is nothing the musicians leave untried. They employ their instruments to bring to life a myriad of different tonal colours and musical genres. Paul Hindemith is the focus of this album: :during the 1920's, he became enchanted by the tone of the saxophone, integrating it on a number of occasions into the scores of his stage works. The ensemble clair-obscur has a special interest in his chamber music, for example the Sonata for four horns and the composition ''Frankenstein's Monstre Repertoire'' for string quartet. These works alongside the other compositions featured on this album have been specially arranged for this saxophone ensemble production by Christoph Enzel.

Das Nusch-Nuschi as a lose series of relatively self-contained sections of which some recur in the manner of a Rondo, while "Sancta Susanna" is given a variation form. All the special characteristics of the three operas are nevertheless composed with reference to each other. If they are separated, and each piece is taken as an absolute, misunderstandings necessarily arise concerning Hindemith's meaning. "Das Nusch-Nuschi" represents in the context of the triptych a high-spirited burlesque; in his music Hindemith not only depicted the witty, obscene, and parodistic moments present already in the text, but also intensified them. In this way he created a score as drastic as it is rich in allusions; in which at any moment suggestions, associations, or references may become concrete through literal quotation. It is music about modern music at the turn of the century, in which Hindemith even parodies particular stylistic aspects he himself utilized in "Murder, Hope of Woman". "Das Nusch-Nuschi" is Hindemith's most virtuoso orchestral score. The virtuosity and masterful artistic refinement of the score is all the more disturbing, even disruptive and irritating, because here Hindemith is setting a frivolous, light-weight text as a parody.

In view of recent events, especially in Japan, Herbert Eimert's piece 'Epitaph für Aikichi Kuboyama' has taken on a sad topicality. When in 1954 the first hydrogen bomb, the so-called Bikini bomb, was tested in the South Pacific, the Japanese fishing boat Fikuryumara was approximately 130 km from the epicentre. All fishermen on board required months of medical treatment; the fisherman Aikichi Kuboyama died of radiation poisoning after five months and became the first long-distance fatality of the nuclear age. The poetic epitaph for Kuboyama, or more precisely the sound material drawn from the inscription spoken in German, forms the basis of the present tape composition: “Of all the sound spectra known to us, that of the spoken word is not only the richest and most complex, but also the one most similar to electronically produced sounds.” (Eimert) By using electronic equipment such as loudspeakers, tape recorders, amplifiers, and filters the stream of spoken words is always present under the surface as though the inscription on the gravestone constantly flows past the listener’s ears in ever-shifting transformations of sound.

Eimert’s 'Sechs Studien' [Six Studies], composed immediately after 'Epitaph', was created from the same source material. In contrast to 'Epitaph' 'Sechs Studien' uses only abstract musical sounds: that is, sounds in whose spectrum the spoken word can no longer be recognised.

The recordings were originally published on LP in 1966 (WERGO, WER 60014).

The composer Hans Werner Henze describes his Ninth Symphony for mixed chorus and orchestra (words by Hans-Ulrich Treichel after the novel "The Seventh Cross" by Anna Seghers) as follows:"What happens in this symphony is an apotheosis of terror and pain. It is a summa samarium of my creative output, the attempt to come to terms with the assaults of an arbitrary and unpredictable world. (...) A German reality, this symphony is above all an expression of enormous respect for the people who dared to resist in the time of Nazi-Fascist terror and who gave their lives to defend freedom of thought."

When it comes to modern music of the German school, two winners out of three isn't bad at all. Henze's Scorribanda sinfonica derives its thematic material from a theater piece describing a fatal Roman dance competition, and so in this arrangement it becomes a kind of post-apocalyptic gloss on Ravel's La Valse, which it resembles in several respects. Both works emphasize distorted parodies of dance rhythms and rise to insane climaxes, though Henze adds a brief quiet coda after the hysteria suddenly breaks off. He's also more interested in tossing in bits of popular dances and jazz, and the result is a sort of Schnittkean phantasmagoria, voluptuously scored, that's very colorful and tremendous fun.


The First Piano Concerto similarly invokes the dance, being organized in three movements respectively entitled "Entrée", "Pas de deux", and "Coda". Though avowedly written under the influence of Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, Henze's piece is at once more tonally oriented and wilder, with the central slow movement rising to a couple of hugely passionate climaxes and the extremely imaginative ending making clever play with the traditional sonata-style concerto windup. It's quite wonderfully played by Christopher Tainton, who flings himself at the keyboard with the emotional abandon that Henze requires, though his piano sounds a touch thin and recessed as recorded here.


The odd man out is Antifone, one of those "total serial" squeak-bloop things that Henze (and so many other contemporary composers) produce now and then just to prove that they can. Even so, it's imaginatively scored for 11 solo strings, winds, and percussion and contains more than a few moments of strikingly sensual instrumental color as it squeaks and bloops along to its inevitably screechy, inconclusive, post-Modern close. Like all of the pieces here it's extremely well played and given sonics of great clarity and presence by the North German Radio engineers.


For a composer of his stature, surprisingly few of Henze's orchestral works seem to stay long in the catalog, a reflection perhaps of the gap between his public and professional reputations. Still, as an enormously gifted composer with an appealingly "synthetic" style, he deserves attention beyond the avant-garde, particularly since much of his music is certainly enjoyable on first hearing. Perhaps, as in Antifone, he sometimes tries a little too hard--Henze is nothing if not self-conscious of his place in history--but if this is a fault, it's certainly one in the right direction. Coming out on a label that's a division of Schott, Henze's publisher, means that this Wergo release should stay in print--but that doesn't mean that today's penny-pinching stores will stock it for long, so get it while it's fresh. There's some really fine music here.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

"

HENZE El Cimarrón • Angelo de Leonardis (bar); Gundl Aggermann (fl); Christina Schorn (gtr); Ivan Mancinelli (perc) • WERGO 6710 (2 CDs: 84:22 Text and Translation)


"I made my case for El Cimarrón in Fanfare 31:2; I think it is a potent work, perhaps Henze’s masterpiece, but I didn’t like that Stradivarius recording by Nicholas Isherwood. That issue is too recent to merit quoting at length; if you don’t know the work, please refer to that review. The piece falls into a musical no-man’s-land between song and speech. Henze’s singing actors are given far more freedom than Schoenberg’s—there is little of Sprechstimme here, unless a performer so chooses—which is both the glory and the curse of El Cimarrón . Early recordings (there have been four that I know of) concentrated on the music; baritone William Pearson sang in the 1971 DG recording led by Henze himself, which remains my favorite. One might say that those performers (at the composer’s direction, of course) followed the score, trusting in the words and music to make the full dramatic impact. More recent productions, the Stradivarius and now this one, take advantage of the aleatoric elements of the score and lean toward a chewing-the-scenery style of acting—screaming, ranting, and raging—which puts me off. For one thing, it makes the protagonist less sympathetic; we are less likely to take his life experiences seriously, which is the main point of the work. Henze’s complete title (translated) is El Cimarrón, The Autobiography of the Runaway Slave Esteban Montejo; Recital for Four Musicians . Henze met Esteban Montejo; at age 108 “he radiated dignity.” There is little dignity here, whereas Pearson’s deep bass speaking voice and overall formality delivered dignity in spades. This wild acting style also tends to obscure some wonderful music, turning it into background accompaniment instead of full participant. This issue credits an artistic director/dramaturge (Michael Kerstan) rather than a conductor. Does the composer approve of this recent trend? He attended a rehearsal for the staged production that led to this studio recording, and was “very impressed by the energy, the artistic élan, and the human commitment they manifested.” I interpret that as damning with faint praise, as he has always raved about any performers who tackle his œuvre.


De Leonardis starts off very much as Isherwood did, using many voices from bass to falsetto, crooning and moaning, shouting and whispering; he calms down a bit as Esteban’s life progresses and is a fine singer when required, which Isherwood was not. More of the music comes to life this time; I like the slow tempos very much. The big surprise is that de Leonardis sings an English version by Christopher Keene; the booklet gives no hint as to why. Wergo is the recording division of Schott Music & Media, Henze’s publishers; one would expect it to use Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s original German libretto for this “official” documentation. Texts appear in both languages, on facing pages. De Leonardis makes every word clear, though he sings with an unidentifiable accent; at least it is not that of an upper class, educated white man. The English grows on me at repeated hearings; it’s nice not to have one’s nose buried in the libretto. The other three musicians are excellent, and an impactful digital recording is especially effective in reproducing Henze’s wide variety of exotic percussion."


FANFARE: James H. North

Hans Werner Henze, whose childhood and youth was overshadowed by the Nazi era and war experiences, in his own lifetime was a legend. He was at the beginning of his musical career as an outsider in the West German post-war scene, even though (or because) he was at that time one of the most frequently performed composers. From the musical avant-garde, he was cut and was considered a "traitor", which means "a completely senseless" reproach in the eyes of the composer. Henze followed seemingly undeterred an inner quest for compositional individuality. The cantata "Being Beauteous" after the same prose poem Arthur Rimbaud wrote Henze in 1963 immediately after his first trip to the USA. In Manhattan and Harlem, the composer had experienced the clash of opposites between rich and poor. These experiences - the threat to the life, even that of his classical ideal of beauty in the tension between abundance and decay - he found in Rimbaud's poem from the cycle "Les Illuminations" pre-formulated. "My composition treated poetry as if every single thought in a small aria in itself. These arias are framed in short quartets of cellos, which joins the harp. Unlike the independent form each aria the Instrumental Quintet hang together - they are variations of one another "(Henze).

For "Chamber Music in 1958" based on the hymn "In lovely blueness" by Friedrich Hölderlin, Henze was inspired by several experiences. During a trip to Greece, the composer felt a pronounced affinity to Mediterranean culture and landscape and with Hölderlin's idealization of classical antiquity: "There I found everything as if the myths were born only yesterday. The stones began to sing.(Henze) The recording of "Chamber Music in 1958" is the first recording of the version with string orchestra.
Productions of Norddeutscher Rundfunk, NDR das neue werk. Licensed by Studio Hamburg Distribution & Marketing GmbH. - Wergo - [Translated from German text.]

HENZE Symphonies Nos. 2 and 10 • Marek Janowski, cond; RSO Berlin • WERGO 6725 (56:35)


This CD completes Marek Janowski’s recorded cycle of the 10 Henze symphonies—the first complete set. Not all the performances have been the preferred ones, due to tough competition from the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, and Ingo Metzmacher (see Fanfare 37.4). This disc immediately announces itself as a winner: the Second Symphony explodes into colorful life, as it failed to do with the composer leading the Berlin Philharmonic, the only other recording. The playing of the Berlin Radio Symphony is solid and clean, and Janowski’s final Adagio reaches depths not heard from Henze’s Philharmonic. Wergo’s recorded sound is less conservative than is its wont, with superbly realistic strings, allowing us to wallow in Henze’s rich sonorities, but the percussion are somewhat slighted. A bombastic coda keeps the work from being a total success, but this recording makes me revise a recently expressed opinion (Hartmann symphonies, in Fanfare 37:6) that Henze “penned five or six trivial [symphonies] before settling in.”


The 10th (1997/2000) was to be his last, one over the proverbial limit, following a choral Ninth. It is Henze’s most Classical symphony; four conventional movements have titles that are merely suggestive rather than programmatic: “A Storm,” “A Hymn,” “A Dance,” “A Dream.” The scoring is for quadruple woodwinds, six horns, four trumpets, four trombones, harp, piano, celesta, and a large battery of percussion. The second movement is for strings alone, the third almost entirely percussion, with a few heavy brass outbursts—it’s a joy. The outer movements have the serious mien of good old German symphonic tradition. This performance is strong and weighty; that by Orchestre National de Montpellier under Friedemann Layer ( Fanfare 29:2) is lighter and brighter, as is its Accord recording. Both serve the symphony well, and both CDs contain other recordings essential for the Henze buff.


Congratulations to Marek Janowski and to Wergo for this fine first complete set of Henze symphonies.


FANFARE: James H. North

HENZE Sonata for 6 Players . Margaret Waltzes. Ländler . La mano sinister. Epitaph. Toccata mistica . Trio in 3 Movements. Ode to the 12th Apostle. An Breton. Piano Piece for Reinhold . Serenade. Adagio adagio • Ens Recherche • WERGO WER 6727 2 (68:51)


Ensemble Recherche (note: not “recherché”) is a small new-music group based in Freiburg. This disc—titled Hommages —is its tribute to Henze. Two major chamber-music works—Sonata for Six Players, and (string) Trio in Three Movements—are stashed among the miscellany. We are accustomed to large-scale Henze on disc: opera, symphony, oratorio, and various dramatic works; the 10 minor pieces here are mostly tributes or birthday celebrations for friends. Ranging from less than two minutes to nearly five, they are solo works for piano ( Margaret Waltzes, La mano sinister, Toccata mistica, Ode to the 12th Apostle, Piano Piece for Reinhold ), violin (Ländler, Serenade), viola ( An Breton ), or cello ( Epitaph ). These are generally conventional, often tonal works of much beauty and considerable elegance. Adagio adagio is a four-minute movement for piano trio that could be Rachmaninoff with a splash of dissonance.


The gentle, subtle sonata (1983–84) is for flute, clarinet, violin (alternating viola), cello, percussion, and piano (alternating celesta). Its three movements are marked Con moto, Andante cantabile, and Passacaglia. The first movement opens with a Schoenbergian blend of all the instruments, but that impression is fleeting; Henze’s distinctive colorations—appealingly polished, although by no means tonal—soon take over. The Passacaglia’s delicate bass line consists of subtle timpani and bass clarinet—a stroke of genius.


The 1998 string trio, although well beyond the bounds of conventional tonality, makes a very classical impression. Each of its three (fast, slow, fast) movements depends on what the notes label “developmental variations,” material from early in each movement resurfacing toward its close. Rondo-like recurrences dominate an emotionally extravagant finale. The string writing is also conventional, with most phrases consisting of long-bowed strokes, producing the effect of 19th-century music challenged by extreme dissonance. The trio’s 24-minute duration enforces the impression of a Classic or Romantic-era work. Henze continues to surprise and to convince; this is potent, vital music.


All the performances do justice to the music at hand; the strings are masterly. The soloists are violinist Melise Mellinger, violist Barbara Mauer, cellist Åsa Åkerberg, and pianist Jean-Pierre Collot. He plays celesta as well as piano in the sonata, where he is joined by flutist Martin Fahlenbach, clarinetist Shizuyo Oka, and percussionist Christian Dierstein. Everything except Toccata mistica is claimed to be a first recording. This is an essential disc for Henze fans, and all chamber-music lovers should hear this trio.


FANFARE: James H. North

Although Gyorgy Ligeti composed only three works for the organ, these pieces mark significant stages in the course of his compositional development. More importantly, they revolutionized the world of organ music and provided the initial spark for an entire wave of new music for the organ. Volumina completely dispenses with the parameters normally used to structure time in a musical work, such as melody, rhythm, and harmony. The only active structural parameter in this music is tone color. Harmonies unfolds as an unbroken chain of ten-note chords; only one note is changed from one chord to the next. Coulee is a chain of extremely fast notes that describe a slow harmonic progression. Also included are organist Dominik Sustek's organ transcription of Ligeti's eleven-movement piano cycle Musica ricercata as well as Sprachsignale - one of Sustek's own original compositions that was inspired by Ligeti's Articulation.

The documentation on CD of the fascinating co-operation of the two composers Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann, which took place mostly in the 1920s, continues as a wonderful 3-CD set. In considering the complete musical works of Gurdjieff/de Hartmann, we find in "Hymns, Prayers, and Rituals" undoubtedly the most profound reflection of Gurdjieff the Master. Although quite varied in form and somewhat in style, these pieces all share the unmistakable mark of the depth of his inner feeling and sensitivity. It is surely this quality which gives Volume III it's unique tone.