jwilzewske: austria

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Matthias Kronsteiner: Futurism of Bassoon

M odified #3 is the modification and expansion of sound... a future of what can be done electronically with timbre... a full composition from one sound, manipulated and transformed into many sounds.”
— Gene Pritsker.

T he three solo pieces by Till Körber, Christof Cech, and David Lang each push the boundaries of bassoon playing in their own unique way.”
— Matthias Kronsteiner.

P lease have a listen to ‘modified’, a wonderful CD by bassoonist Matthias Kronsteiner and collaborators Lisa Preimesberger (bass clarinet), Thomas Frey (flute), Ernst Weissensteiner (double bass), Philipp Sageder (voice), and Gene Pritsker (electronics; percussion), a CD to be released this coming Tuesday by CCR/Naxos. The disc opens with two movements from Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas brasilieras No. 6, W392, but the rest of the recording consists of new compositions by Till Körber, Christof Cech, Gernot Wolfgang, David Lang, Johannes Berauer, and Gene Pritsker.

[40-sec clip, Matthias Kronsteiner, Heitor Villa-Lobos, ‘Bachianas brasilieras No. 6, W392 – Ária (chôro)’; (track 1), 2011, 1.3MB MP3]

V illa-Lobos’s entry into the Parisian art world took place in 1922, immediately before Modern Art Week in São Paulo. The composer was invited to a lunch in the studio of the painter Tarsila do Amaral where he met up with, among others, the poet, painter, and film-maker Jean Cocteau. After the lunch, the artists became engrossed in a lively conversation which drifted into a discussion on the art of musical improvisation. Villa-Lobos... sat down [at do Amaral’s grand piano] to improvise. Cocteau, known for his boutades and his playful behavior, sat underneath the piano on the ground, ‘so I can hear better.’ At the end of Villa-Lobos’s improvisation, however, Cocteau returned to his chair and launched a ferocious attack on what he had heard: in his opinion, the music presented by the composer was not futuristic at all, probably no more than an emulation of the styles of Debussy and Ravel. Villa-Lobos immediately began furiously improvising more. Cocteau, though, remained intransigent, questioning this time whether true improvisation could be made in this way, played-to-order. The two artists began a heated ‘discussion’ and thought about exchanging blows. Some years later, David Bowie took up improvising impromptu lyrics and melodies in this manner, the grandeur and menace of ‘Heroes’, and all.”
— Paulo Renato Guérios, Museu Nacional/UFRJ, 2006.

[30-sec clip, Matthias Kronsteiner, David Lang, ‘Press Release’; (track 6), 2011, 1.2MB MP3]

T he brilliant pieces that make up this disc are each virtuosic in their own way. Agogic emphases at downward leaps and fast passages with wide-ranging excursions spanning the entire range of the instrument provide lots of dramatic interest. One senses an affectionate irony in writing things that make the bassoon do extremely dangerous leaps, with a high probability of hard landings. The cumulative effect of these essentially asserts the concreteness and everydayness of [virtuosic] bassoon-playing, denying its mystical, expressive side as the performer navigates these hazards. That the attempt is ultimately successful, and that it is carried off with panache, takes it beyond the everyday, though, and turns it into something redemptive or transcendent (something like playing Czerny at-tempo).

T here are lyrical, genuinely lovely passages and other spiky, vehement ones. The quality is incontestable throughout, compositions and performances of excellent artistry. To this are added the promised merits of inventiveness of ‘futuristic’ timbres—both in the individual [analog and digital] sounds, and in the formulas and orchestrations, which at times assemble themselves into pantheistic sonic agglomerations where the Great Unity cannot be separated into constituent parts (esp. the Pritsker piece).

T he minimalism that is evident in several of the works—notably the Lang piece—is like looking at a portrait for many tens of minutes, to understand and enjoy its charm. Beyond a certain limit, it becomes a form of Zen meditation or hypnosis. Whatever it is, it is enjoyable and valuable.

C omposers Concordance Records (link below) production values are excellent. The studio recording and engineering processes have nicely captured the all of the expressive bassoonism here—athletic, taut key-presses; sharp attacks; emphatic articulations—particularly on Kronsteiner’s playing in the pulsatile Lang and Cech pieces. Never too much key-noise or reed and breath sibilants... just enough so that you feel like you are there, as if up-close in a live performance.

T he intimacy of this Studio Weinberg recording is captivating. There are beginnings, middles, and endings in these pieces—they are not entirely linear, and they always have intriguing complexities, but they are not severe ones that diminish their accessibility or joy. This is no priceless ceramic vase or objet d’art or museum gallery! The pieces on this CD invite you to friend them and use them.

[Matthias Kronsteiner, Christof Cech, ‘New Waves’, 2010]

S ome years ago, I was interviewing for a quant job on Wall Street and, as one of the provocations to challenge the poise of his interviewee, the head of the firm abruptly asked whether I had ever been with a mulata brasiliera. I did not laugh. I replied, No, I was happily married, but I had been with Bachianas Brasilieras Nos. 1 through 6 and found them deeply intriguing and satisfying. He did not laugh. I do not know if it was a good enough answer.”
— DSM.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Pre-verbal Music: Duo Stump-Linshalm’s Recording of Pierluigi Billone's 1+1=1

I s it possible to approach music in silent [wordless] comprehension, without falling prey to human psychological, intuitive, irrational, spontaneous influences—i.e., those forms of comprehension engendered by words, text, speaking?”
— Pierluigi Billone.

P ierluigi Billone’s aleatoric work reminds me a little of Peter Eötvös’s and Ensemble Modern’s performance of Helmut Lachenmann’s ‘Schwankungen am Rand’ [Fluctuations at the edge]. Pierluigi had in fact spent some time studying with Helmut some years ago...

A final angst-ridden attempt to strike water out of the stone of the dead monument known as [modernist] ‘music’.”
— Helmut Lachenmann, commenting on the aims of new music.

P lumbing the outer-limits of timbral space with each instrument. Sudden, explosive dynamics changes. Overblowing, harmonic-clipping and distortion of bass-clarinet reeds... wonderful, naturalistic colors. The harmonic palette is maybe a little like the songs of whales singing to each other, whales’ courting rituals...

T he title of the work, ‘1+1=1’, is a quotation from an Andrey Tarkovskij film which points to the special relation between the two instruments [achieving a transcendent union by their playing together]... One drop plus another drop makes one larger drop, not two.”
— Petra Stump & Heinz-Peter Linshalm.

I t is impossible to know whether it is a ‘proper’ language with subjects, predicates, etc. But it has harmonic and lyrical and rhythmic features that (a) invite interest, (b) reward whatever interest and patience are sent its way, and (c) propel the interested listener to various kinds of meditation.

T he variations that become part of instrumental technique through each individual discovery are traces—some clearer than others—of the human and cultural experiences that produced them and led to them. And they ‘vibrate’ in the act of listening—as particularity, identity, origin. They are sonic ‘layers’—living matter, with an intelligence of its own...”
— Pierluigi Billone.

L ooking at some of his scores, I wonder whether Billone is striving to be an archtypically ‘difficult’ composer. But electroacoustic digital material or specially-designed analog instruments or ‘found’ instruments, including rumbling and crumpling metal, play no role in this 70-minute composition. And the graphical/aleatoric score annotations are reasonably straight-forward, compared, say, to Stockhausen or Xenakis.

S onic materials and structure. Think like a whale and use what’s at hand. Reed, glottis, keys smacking against clarinet-body tone-holes, lungs. From time to time, things grind to a halt while Petra Stump and Heinz-Peter Linshalm slowly and punctuatedly smash hell out of their two bass clarinets’ keys). Alternately, there are moments where subtle, whispered tones only hint at the note that would sound were more air flowing past the expectant reed. Intertwining of pitch-bent/quarter-tone and microtonal passages by Stump and Linshalm are beautiful and wonderfully discursive, on account of the excellent recording and engineering of this disc. The beat-frequencies from the microtonal interferences between the two parts add extra depth to the music—a feature that’s accentuated by the spatial specifications that Billone designed for the piece to be performed.

T he two performers are positioned as far apart as possible (about 15 meters) while still permitting mutual acoustic influence and line-of-sight gesture. Each soul is spatially isolated... The interior of the studio is then “like the interior of a big instrument,” says Billone. No synthesizers or exotic digital sound-processing software were used in the recording/engineering of this CD. So, except for the technically and aesthetically excellent miking and mixing by Alfred Reiter at Klangforum Wien, it is almost an anti-technological work. Marine mammal-esque.

T he flow of energy and merging of performer and instrument... One finds archaic [pre-historical, paleological] images taking form. It seems as if they were musical incantations intended to counteract the commodifiability of which the world of ‘administrated listening’ rests.”
— CD liner notes, ‘1+1=1’.

B esides Pierluigi Billone and the ‘1+1=1’ piece, other composers including Beat Furrer, Bernhard Gander, Bernhard Gal, Erin Gee, Christoph Herndler, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, and Judit Varga have dedicated pieces to Stump and Linshalm. The diversity of Petra’s and Heinz-Peter’s playing and repertoire is really remarkable.

Heinz-Peter & Petra, photo (c) Jean-François Charles

Duo Stump-Linshalm’s upcoming performances are listed here.

P etra and Heinz-Peter reside (as is poetically fitting considering the rocky etymology of their given names) in Berg 31, Götzis, Austria—in the beautiful Alps foothills south of the Bodensee, between Zurich and Innsbruck. The photo gallery on their website shows images from a number of mountainous places they have trekked. Pierluigi is currently Gastdozent für Komposition at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt, having just completed a guest professorship in Graz. (Envious, I think I would like to adjust some life-priorities to be more like Pierluigi’s or like Petra’s and Heinz-Peter’s?)

[50-sec clip, Duo Stump-Linshalm, Pierluigi Billone, ‘1+1=1’, track2, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Duo Stump-Linshalm, Pierluigi Billone, ‘1+1=1’, track8, 1.6MB MP3]

T hey [Petra and Heinz-Peter] elicit the most unusual sounds from their instruments. These range from ethereal arabesques to enraged shrieking...”
— Ursula Strubinsky.