The
Donaueschinger Musiktage is the oldest festival for new
music in the world. Its founders included Ferruccio Busoni,
Richard Strauss and Franz Schreker. Among the first composers
whose work was premiered there were Berg, Schoenberg, Hindemith,
Stravinsky, and Hanns Eisler. After the Second World War,
the festival hosted premieres by Cage, Stockhausen, Carter,
Berio, Ligeti, Xenakis, Rihm, Nono and Ferneyhough. For
nearly 85 years it has represented the cutting edge of
new music. What happens there is worth following. This
recording features four of the younger composers featured
in the most recent festival for which a recording is available.
Andreas
Dohmen’s Lautung (Pronunciation) for large orchestra
with solo voices is an interesting, evanescent piece where
individual voices make sounds like solo instruments. Though
the orchestra is substantial, the scoring is sparse. Angular
shapes stretch out, suddenly terminated by percussion,
the voices then recurring unaccompanied. It is a challenge
in shifting tempi and volume; at one moment a singer is
quietly intoning at the very upper limit of her voice,
at another, the orchestra comes crashing in waves over
the soloists. Thus, each soloist controls his or her own
volume, both vocally and manually; the idea is, as the
composer says, to “open up extended dynamic potentials
and situations”. The theory is that you don’t know whether
they are singing loudly or quietly or whether they are
amplifying themselves in concert with the orchestra. I
don’t quite understand the effect of this, though it must
be very exciting for the soloists themselves to perform
with such a strong element of improvisation. Nonetheless,
it is an intriguing piece, the pure, clear tones of the
singer well contrasted with the clarity of the orchestration.
Says Dohmen, there is “tightrope walking everywhere”.
There’s
a very long written text setting out the ideas behind Rebecca
Saunders’ Miniata. It seems to be a meditation on
different kinds of redness – cinnabar, and vermilion. She
quotes Wassily Kandinsky’s theories on colour, and speaks
of “feeling the weight of sound ... being aware of the
grit and noise of an instrument, or a voice reminds us
of the presence of a fallible physical body behind the
sound”. Hence the vibrating resonances that follow loud
outbursts on timpani, and the echo of percussion sticks
as they clatter across the soundscape, imitated in turn
by piano. It is a piece about sensations, huge masses of
sound, both instrumental and vocal, building up and turning
on a pivot. About half way through, there is a massive
crescendo splintering in fragments of fractured sound,
transmuted into the vocal equivalent of “white noise”,
almost imperceptible variations on a long drawn out sigh.
In the final section, sound stretches into silence, murky
and still. At 32 minutes, it’s the longest piece on this
disc, but somewhat taxing on the listener. The pianist,
though is Nicolas Hodges, whose distinctive sense of timing
is impeccable.
In
contrast, Michel van der Aa’s Second Self is relatively
manic. A string quartet emerges from the body of the orchestra,
acting as an alter ego challenging the orchestra. As the
balance of power shifts between the strings and the rest
of the orchestra, a third “voice” emerges from a recorded
soundtrack. It’s interesting to follow the three “voices” beneath
the apparent cacophony, for they are repeating each others
figures in different ways. Gradually the orchestra seems
to implode, but as it dies, so does the string quartet.
A
student of Salvatore Sciarinno, Pierluigi Billone picks
up on the tradition established by Nono, of using “found” sounds,
particularly the sounds of everyday life. Mani is
a piece written for automobile strings and glass: ostensibly
it sounds like the sounds in a workshop, but infinitely
varied and inventive. Mechanical as it may sound, you are
very aware that the sounds are not made by machine, but
by human hands. When I read Billione’s long description
of the purpose of the piece, I laughed aloud, because it
was exactly what I’d imagined while listening. He refers
to the vibrations that a metalworker experiences while
working, and uses his music to explore the sensation for
its own sake. “I vibrate with the string and have become
part of the instrument ... I am playing on my own body”.
When the rhythmic energy becomes unstable, the glass adds
a cross-current, remaining clear and stable “like a polestar”.
In the middle section, the auto springs sound almost
like primeval folk instruments. In the final section, the
springs reach a kind of apotheosis, dissolving into abstract
sound, the vibrations lingering over silence. From industrial
by-product to pure artistic abstraction, this piece ranges
across the very landscape of sound. Just as Nono was adamant
that artists must not forget their place in the real world,
Billone reflects on the idea of sound as a “living and
open presence ... that means contact, revelation and belonging.” You
use all your faculties when making sound and listening
and you connect with others.
New
music admirers will want this, particularly for Dohmen
and Billone.
Anne
Ozorio
BUY NOW
Crotchet
Christian
Dierstein (percussionist)*** 
