Born in 1949, Carl Rütti is a contemporary Swiss composer known
for his religious choral music, including the well-known carol I
wonder as I wonder. His musical style is said to blend the English
choral tradition with other genres including jazz and blues. In this
high quality CD, duets for harp and piano are recorded to give voice
to a sense of desire, elemental harmony and spiritual searching.
On this CD Hug-Rütti (harp) and Genevieve Hug (piano), known
as Praxedis & Praxedis, perform some unusual poetic pictures and
minimalist impressions. For instance, the seven miniatures which make
up Im Glockenstuhl deines Schweigens were based on a poem by
Paul Celan and the woodcuts of Peter Wullimann. These ‘pictures
in music’ are a cross between Matisse’s cut-outs and Picasso’s
‘blue period’ paintings. Wullimann creates an otherworldly
sense of existence. The haunting glow of the moon seeps into the sharp
ethereal, yet real, images. Perhaps looking at these pictures offers
an insight into Rütti’s composition.
Taking after the poet Walter von der Vogelweide’s (1170-1228)
poem of the same name, the medieval sounding Under der Linden
conjures images of sweetly singing nightingales and green pastures
which leaves your heart ‘still throbbing in ecstasy’.
For solo harp, this piece is incredibly textured and has a reminiscent
air.
The Four Elements are a sequence of interrelated components
of masculine activity (fire and air) and feminine passivity (water
and earth). Closely associated in character, but differing in form,
these pieces are not affected or distracted by a layering of circumstantial
happenings. Separately these are individual beings, but as a whole
they form a collage of interrelated segments, a mosaic of images.
In this sense, both intimacy and grandeur can be felt through Genevieve
Hug’s evocative performance. Schwester Wasser is a font
of bubbling sensations. Characteristically Rütti manages to avoid
a cluttered sound and as a result this piece transcendentally surpasses
any hints of the merely mechanical. Vater Feuer breaks through
a shadowy world - created by a deep and tumultuous piano - and as
it ignites, fuels a sense of coming together, granted through assertive
chords and flashes of life.
Der Tanz des Gehorsams (1997) was written for the Duo Praxedis
and in honour of Silja Walter, a nun who wrote the volume of poetry
that inspired this touching work. These pieces are based on the poems
themselves which are usefully included in the sleeve-notes. The three
colours of Walter’s straw mat are divinely laid out for her
prayer (red), spiritual reading (yellow) and work (blue). These pieces
trace the journey ‘to no-mans-land’ and ‘enter silence’
where, ‘under the moon’ ‘there streams the silent
/ eternal sea’. Outlining the spiritual path to God chosen by
a nun, these sparse pieces are far from empty or isolated. The Duo
Praxedis produce silvery tones to unmask uncertainty and solve the
mysteries of Walter’s verse. A true sense of the astonishing
awe of wonderment in this work can only be grasped if I quote from
Silja Walter herself:-
Held in God’s Grasp
Captured from behind
in a dance
still warm
and twitching
held in God’s grasp
shimmering beautifully
silver and cherry-red
glassy
lilac and cobalt blue
that’s Gomer
in the cloister
Lucy Jeffery
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