Eberhard Blum KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN Spiral

SPIRAL

Daniele Pollini CHOPIN Etudes Op.10 SCRIABIN Late Works Opp. 70-74 STOCKHAUSEN Klavierstück IX

Daniele Pollini is famous Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini’s son. He was born in 1978. He made ​​his debut as a pianist at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro in the summer of 1997. He also participated in the Salzburg Festival and the Ruhr Piano Festival and made ​​his successful debut in Paris and in the United States.

He has appeared as soloist with the Orchestra Regionale Toscana, with the Orchestra of the Musical Afternoons and with the National Radio Symphony Orchestra In 2003 he performed at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under the Zubin Mehta, and in 2004 he gave a concert at the Venice Biennale.

His interests also extend to electronic music. His training as a director is linked to the Accademia Musicale Chigiana conducting courses, taught by Gianluigi Gelmetti. In 2002 he made ​​his debut at the Ravenna Festival with the RAI Symphony Orchestra, with a program including the IV and VII Symphony by Beethoven.

His repertoire ranges from classical and romantic authors to contemporary composers.

Zeitkratzer / Keiji Haino STOCKHAUSEN Aus Den Sieben Tagen

When KEIJI HAINO heard ZEITKRATZER rehearse for their Stockhausen performance at the Ruhrtriennale festival he spontaneously decided to join the group for that part of the programm too (HAINO was initially invited for what was released as ZEITKRATZER + KEIJI HAINO: Live At Jahrhunderthalle Bochum). Here too HAINO, one of the most prolific artists of the Japanese experimental / noise scene, focuses on his voice while ZEITKRATZER create the instrumental environment applying their extended techniques of amplification and unique skills as musicians. Once again the ensemble proves its outstanding quality that has gained them high reputation with recordings of such diverse artists / composers like THROBBING GRISTLE, CARSTEN NICOLAI (ALVA NOTO), LOU REED’s “Metal Machine Music” or JOHN CAGE and ALVIN LUCIER. “Aus Den Sieben Tagen” delivers 5 pieces of STOCKHAUSEN’s collection of in total 15 text compositions that he had written in may 1968 in reaction to a personal crisis and which the great renovator of 20th century music characterized as "intuitive music" - music primarily played by intuition rather than the intellect of the performer(s) where not one single note is defined. Which gives the musicians much space for interpretation – ZEITKRATZER and KEIJI HAINO demonstrate impressively that they know how to use this freedom!

Vanessa Benelli Mosell SCRIABIN - STOCKHAUSEN

Vanessa Benelli Mosell studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in his old age. Whether this makes her an authoritative interpreter of the Klavierstücke, specifically the one here extracted from the giant Licht (Light) opera cycle, may be debated. But she certainly gets the energy in this work, one of Stockhausen's most accessible, and she enters enthusiastically into its jazz accents and exotic vocal effects. The bulk of the program here, however, is devoted not to Stockhausen but to Alexander Scriabin. The "light" theme is intended to apply to both composers, but the early works of Scriabin performed here, the 24 Preludes for piano, Op. 11, and the even earlier 3 Pieces, Op. 2 and Etude, Op. 8, No. 12, carry little hint of the synaesthetic experiments to come later in Scriabin's career. Mosell seems to admit as much in the interview-style booklet, where she turns first to the totalizing tendencies of these composers. Nevertheless, the program holds together reasonably well on its own (and it's noteworthy to see the name Stockhausen on a major-label release). Mosell has a rather explosive style in the Preludes, which see the composer breaking out into his mature idiom. You could sample one of these very short pieces, such as the 47-second "Allegro agitato," for a taste of Mosell's style. The more Chopin-esque pieces in the middle of the program then take on the character of an interlude before the more extreme sound world of Stockhausen. This is the kind of release that makes you want to hear more from the performer involved, even if it does not succeed in every respect. (James Manheim)

STOCKHAUSEN DIENSTAG aus LICHT

Karlheinz Stockhausen is a composer who has never been prone to self-doubt; otherwise he couldn't have persevered through the process of creating his monumental seven-opera cycle LICHT (Light), a project that occupied him from 1977 until 2003. At just about twice the length of Wagner's Ring cycle, and requiring extraordinary performing forces (including four helicopters flying over the theater in one opera) it's probably safe to call LICHT the largest musical piece ever executed. The cycle follows the interactions of three archetypes -- Eve, Lucifer, and the archangel Michael -- and each opera is devoted to one day of the week. "DIENSTAG" (Tuesday), the shortest, lasts a mere two and a half hours; "SONTAG" (Sunday), the longest, clocks in at just under five hours.

The music for all the operas is derived from a single "super-formula," which gives the works a unity not immediately aurally apparent, but which must have been hugely helpful to the composer in organizing over 29 hours of music. "DIENSTAG" is scored for conventional solo instruments, some of which have dramatic as well as musical roles, vocal soloists, actors, dancer-mimes, orchestra, chorus, and electronic tapes. The music is very broadly eclectic, incorporating solo chant, extended instrumental solos, massed choral and instrumental sections, long silences, interpolations of jazz, and very prominent electronics. "DIENSTAG," like the other operas in the cycle, conveys an undeniable gravity and monumentality that would make it difficult to dismiss, even by listeners for whom Stockhausen's modernism is not exactly their cup of tea. The aural experience of the music can be so overwhelming that one wonders whether its effectiveness might be trivialized or diluted by any kind of stage action. Stockhausen's operas are by no means easy listening, but their inventiveness, variety, and sense of dramatic inevitably offer much to engage the adventurous listener. For the listener who wants a fuller understanding of the technical compositional processes used in developing the music, the composer's minutely detailed notes in the sumptuously produced program booklet should answer just about any question. (Stephen Eddins)

Vanessa Benelli Mosell [R] EVOLUTION Stockhausen / Beffa / Stravinsky

Between 1952 and 1961, Stockhausen composed a series of 11 piano pieces, mostly quite brief, which he later referred to as his “drawings”. In them he tested out the techniques that he used to such spectacular effect in his large-scale works of that period, and which took him stylistically on a rapid development from the pointillism of total serialism, through the concepts of musical groups and moments to his exploration of mobile forms that left many organisational decisions to the performer.

Much later in his career he would produce another eight piano pieces, all either conceived as part of his week-long opera cycle Licht or derived from music in it. But it’s the ground-breaking Klavierstücke from the 1950s that Vanessa Benelli Mosell, who studied with Stockhausen in the final years of his life, concentrates on here. She plays eight of them – omitting the two longest, the sixth and the monumental 10th, as well as the 11th, with its maze of alternative musical paths for the pianist to take – and ends with what’s perhaps the most notorious of all of them, Klavierstück IX, in which the opening chord is repeated obsessively 139 times, which seems like an early exercise in minimalism, though the music’s subsequent journey through a forest of trills is anything but minimalist.

Mosell confronts this music fearlessly, shaping the smaller-scale pieces (the shortest, Klavierstück III, lasts just 38 seconds) as elegantly as she can, taking their technical challenges in her stride and above all conveying the sense of cutting-edge invention and innovation that is so characteristic of Stockhausen’s early music.

The rest of her debut disc for Decca, though, is disappointing. It carries the title [R]evolution, though in piano terms there’s nothing particularly iconoclastic about the two works that follow the Stockhausen. The three-movement Suite by the French composer Karol Beffa (born 1973) is anodyne and utterly unremarkable, even though Mosell doesn’t seem to make as much of the music’s colouristic potential as she might, while her account of Stravinsky’s Petrushka Movements sometimes seems less of a performance than an assault, and a rough-edged and rhythmically slapdash one at that. The energy and enthusiasm that make her Stockhausen playing so arresting seem to be applied much less precisely elsewhere. (The Guardian)

Michele Marelli KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN Harlekin

HARLEKIN is a remarkable, and successful, extreme of variation form. A great deal of the long-lasting fascination of Stockhausen's music is produced by its exploration of the extreme boundaries of music, of what music can be. This work explores the extremes of music within a seemingly traditional framework, extensive variation of melody, a feature that provides a special fascination of its own.

Over a span of 45 minutes, the listener is confronted with nothing but one single melodic formula, with innumerable variations (in its original form the formula lasts about one minute, but mostly it is contracted to a much shorter duration). Broadly speaking and a little simplified (as will become clear later), the entire work consists of just a single chain of successive, yet varied, repetitions of this formula, connected like pearls on a string.

This alone would be remarkable enough, yet even more striking is the variation technique employed in relation to the duration of the entire work. Even though the work is so extended in duration, no complete transformation of melody takes place, as found for example in some late works by Beethoven, such as the Diabelli variations or the fourth movement of the String Quartet op. 131 (where the transformations of the material during the variation process are so huge that they amount to magical transfigurations).

On the contrary, in HARLEKIN the basic shape of the melody is mostly preserved, only slightly bent or furnished with different accents during variations, and there are wide stretches of the work that do not even split the formula melody up into motives. A similar kind of variation technique is often heard in slow movements of the Classical period. Among the better-known examples from this period, there are very successful ones, but also some where the music merely drags itself from one little 'neat' variation to another, inevitably producing some boredom on the part of the listener.

Such boredom is not inherent in the proceedings of HARLEKIN: What is so astonishing is that the small variations presented in the composition can hold the listener's attention during the entire duration of 45 minutes, a much longer duration than that of any variation movement in previous music.

An experience of this nature, however, can only take place once the listener has 'locked into' the formula, and therefore becomes able to follow all the alterations in a state of suspense. Given both the unusually expansive breath for this kind of music and the fact that the formula only slowly is 'un-wound', 'locking into' the formula may prove challenging for the listener. This may be why some listeners, even Stockhausen fans, do not initially find the work very compelling. Reasonable appreciation of the musical processes may require repeated listening.

The humour so central to the work, audibly and – in a live performance – visibly (keep in mind that this is very much a theatrical work), is an important vehicle for adding interest to the variation processes. It often contributes to special vividness and meaning of changes in accentuation of the formula.

HARLEKIN can be considered a showpiece of Stockhausen's solid compositional craft. Few composers could have accomplished this kind of composition with such evident mastery, and it becomes abundantly clear from listening to this and many other works that Stockhausen is not one of the dubious cases of contemporary composer whose music's 'fancy weirdness' conceals a lack of basic compositional technique and skills.

It should not be overlooked that without these skills in "traditional" craft of composition also phenomena like the organic transformations found in even more radical works such as HYMNEN would be impossible. This is an important reason why achievements such as HYMNEN cannot be emulated by electronic-studio wizards who are less sure-footed in basic compositional technique.

Suzanne Stephens STOCKHAUSEN In Freundschaft / Traum-Formel / Amour

“In Freundschaft” (“In Friendship”) was composed as a birthday gift for Suzanne Stephens in 1977. It was already from the beginning envisioned as a solo piece for different instruments. On this CD Stephens performs on a clarinet, but the piece can also be played on bass clarinet, basset-horn, flute, oboe, bassoon, recorder, saxophone, violin, cello, horn & trombone! This makes it as applicable and easily utilized as, for example, “Tierkreis”, which has also been performed in numerous instrumental versions.

Stockhausen works with three layers in “In Freundschaft”. He calls his method here “horizontal polyphony”, and indicates that it requires “a special art of listening”. This is surely true, but you can also dip into the flow and enjoy without any special preparations. Any set of sensitive ears hooked up to a sensibly sensible brain and mind will open up the world of “In Freundschaft” to the splendor of Stephens’ garlands of spiraling clarinet tones, in waves and vibrations of compressions from the shifting pillar of air inside her instrument.

 The “special art of listening” that you can practice and train, leads to a deepened and furthered act of hearing, though, and is strongly recommended to those who care very much for music and their perception of it - and I suppose you wouldn’t read this if you weren’t one of those! It is rewarding on many levels. As always in Stockhausen’s music, there are many different levels of possible listening, and like the characters in Herman Hesse’s novels you can develop a deeper understanding by evolving through level after level. This quality of Stockhausen’s music, which always inspires to deeper study and more attentive listening, separates it from all other compositional acts that I have come across, and makes his music so much more meaningful, with implications that go well beyond any purely musical border lines that restrain most other composers, making Stockhausen’s music a universal music, opening up unknown worlds and connecting them in intricate, transparent patterns to our immediate local intellectual, emotional and spiritual neighborhood, in experiences wherein the distant and unknown feels familiar, and the familiar and well-known, on the other hand, strange and wonderful. His music is always, in a way, an educative event; a spiritual refining act. This quality immerses his compositional work, his rehearsals with the musicians - and the minds of those who listen!

“Traum-Formel” (“Dream Formula”) for basset-horn is the second work. It is a short piece with its barely 8 minutes. It starts off with a prolonged and elaborated, repeated note, bringing me reminiscences of Klezmer recordings of the 1920s, or the intense soloistic efforts of a Mosaic Central European and Middle Eastern – also Russian – tradition by Dror Feiler on his CD “Celestial Fire”, where Mr. Feiler improvises on different kinds of saxophones in glowing little pieces like “Hallel” and “Sei Yabe”. The fire, the small-scale playfulness is inherent also in Stockhausen’s “Traum-Formel”, brilliantly conveyed by the masterly musicianship and pure identification of Suzanne Stephens. The instrument itself gives off some side-effect-sounds from the valves, and the nearness is stark and naked in this music, which dances blotting-paper-close to your body.

“Amour” is the concluding work. “Amour” is in fact a common name for a whole group of small compositions. The subtitle is “5 pieces for clarinet”. The pieces are: “Sei wieder frölich” (“Cheer up!”) / “Dein Engel wacht über Dir” (“Your angel is watching over you”) / “Die Schmetterlinge spielen” (“The butterflies are playing”) / “Ein Vögelin singt an Deinem Fenster” (“A little bird sings at your window”) / “Vier Sterne weisen Dir den Weg” (“Four stars show you the way”).

The first melody – “Sei wieder frölich” – was presented to Suzanne Stephens in 1974. It’s a tenderly opening miniature, rolling out a carpet of loving music for the sorrowful lady to tread on. I’m sure it did cheer her up when she needed some consolation and inspiration.

The other four pieces were composed as Christmas gifts in December 1976.

“Dein Engel wacht über Dir” was presented to Mary Stockhausen-Bauermeister. She is the mother of two of Stockhausen’s children, and has meant very much to Stockhausen, both privately and professionally (though those two aspects are inseparable in Stockhausen!). We may just remember how “Originale” grew out of animated conversations between Stockhausen and Bauermeister in Erik Tawaststjerna’s summer cottage on Lake Saimaa in a particularly enchanted part of Finland (drawing its spiritual significance on the old myths of the Kalevala) in the summer of 1961, opening the Fluxus movement. (Finland was a haven for all kinds of diligent people of the arts at the beginning of their deeds in the early 1960s. Terry Riley was there, and Folke Rabe, Ken Dewey [Dancer’s Workshop] and others as well.)