Stockhausen reviews
Stockhausen: Helicopter String Quartet - documentary by Frank Scheffer
Anyone who harbours doubts that Stockhausen’s creativity was, for better or worse, different in scope to that of other composers should watch this film. As for many of his works, a dream was the starting point of his Helicopter String Quartet. What set Stockhausen apart was that, rather than compose a sonic metaphor, he made a determined attempt turn a dream into reality. The Helicopter Quartet takes a genre founded on communication, and places each performer in a separate helicopter, flying in different directions, yet maintaining cohesion through a click track.
Stockhausen: Stimmung
Paul Hillier compares Stimmung with Monteverdi and Gesualdo. It’s a kind of extended motet, mixing meditations on the names of gods and goddesses with erotic poetry. Based on the harmonics of B flat, it comprises 51 ‘models’ (sections) which Stockhausen brilliantly binds into a single inexorably unfolding organic entity, creating a wonderland of floating, swirling, ebbing and flowing vowels, phonemes and chords.
Stockhausen, Berio, Boulez, Messiaen, Debussy, Varse, Kagel, Nono, Henze & PousseurStravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern & Berg
After several decades of substantial funding for the arts, especially music, and genuine political leadership on cultural life, it is easy to forget that post-war France was gripped by a kind of cultural torpor. In this context, Pierre Boulez was, for many, a prophetic voice crying in the wilderness, and the concerts of Le Domaine Musical a beacon lighting the way forward. Less emotively, the Domaine Musical was where Boulez honed his remarkable skills as a concert-organizer, and, crucially, it is where he cut his teeth as a conductor.
Messiaen, Stockhausen, Xenakis
A cappella works by pupils of Messiaen: what an excellent way of exploring the multiplicity of styles to be found in mid- to late 20th-century music. Dozens of notable composers went through the Messiaen class at the Paris Conservatoire, including many who are emerging only now on to the international scene.
Stockhausen/Kurt‡g
For all its status as a classic of the post-war European avant-garde, Gruppen, forty years old this year, remains a ‘difficult’ work, both for its three conductors trying to sort out the logistics of synchronising three independent ensembles, and the listener trying to probe beyond its glittering, hyperactive surface.
Stockhausen: Momente
Momente is among Stockhausen’s more complex works. Parts of it were performed in 1962 and 1965 but he finished the score only in 1969. This CD reissue comprises the same material as the previous DG three-LP set: a complete Momente from 1972 plus a 30-minute extract from the 1965 concert.
Stockhausen: Michaels Reise
Michaels Reise is a ‘soloists’ version’ of the second act from Stockhausen’s 1978 opera Donnerstag (part of the Licht cycle) adapted for performance by a small touring ensemble. As in the opera, there are solo parts for trumpet, basset horn and two clarinets but the original 28-piece orchestra is here replaced by trombonist, flautist, two percussionists and two synthesizer players.
Stockhausen: Montag aus Licht
Montag is the third opera from Stockhausen’s projected Licht cycle to appear on CD. Like its predecessors Donnerstag and Samstag, it bears little resemblance to conventional opera but is more akin to a spiritual ceremony that presents, in ritual form, the personal cosmology Stockhausen has distilled from various ancient myths and mystical traditions. So Montag (Monday) is Eve’s day, a celebration of birth and rebirth in which the element of water, the colours green and silver and the soprano voice are the principal components of its sonic and visual imagery.
Stockhausen: Helicopter String Quartet
Even by Stockhausen’s own standards the Helicopter Quartet, performed at the Holland Festival in 1995, is one of his most extraordinary creations. The members of a string quartet circle above the performance venue in four helicopters; the sounds and video images of their playing are transmitted back to the concert hall, where the results are projected to the audience.
Henze, Ta•ra, Smith Brindle, Carter, Cage, Stockhausen, Sciarrino & Tanguy
Whether the young Italian percussionist Jonathan Faralli’s excellent new disc features the ‘most important’ solo percussion works of the late 20th century (as the booklet note claims) is certainly open to debate: Reginald Smith Brindle’s Orion M 42 is an evocative sound-picture of a star cloud, pleasant but hardly ground-breaking, while John Cage’s Cartridge Music is actually scored for any instruments. But Faralli proves himself an exceptionally gifted performer, conjuring a bewildering variety of sounds and textures from often very simple resources.
Messiaen, Stockhausen, Evangelisti, Aldo Clementi & Boulez
With his CD journey of discovery through the piano music of John Cage well advanced, Steffen Schleiermacher has turned his attention to the music that defined the avant-garde in Europe at the very time that Cage was turning things upside down across the Atlantic. This is the first disc in a series to be devoted to the piano works that came out of the Darmstadt summer schools in the Fifties, when total serialism and high-octane polemics were the daily diet; the sheer energy and commitment of Schleiermacherperformances certainly augur well for what is to come.
Stockhausen, Hindemith, Lutoslawski, Poulenc, Bernstein
The idea of framing Stockhausen’s clarinet and piano version of Tierkreis with the more familiar repertoire for the same combination is intriguing and the fact that these five works cover a span of just 35 years demonstrates the astonishing diversity of styles being explored during this period.
Stockhausen, Powell, Roger Smalley & Souster
This enterprising disc is the ideal showcase for the more experimental side of trumpeter John Wallace’s exceptional talents. He gives characterful, committed performances displaying all manner of weird and wonderful techniques through the wide-ranging demands of these pieces – although whether you would want to listen to it all in one sitting is debatable.