SKU: PR.16400222S
UPC: 680160037841.
This work follows my Quartet No. 1 by five years. In terms of style and aesthetic aim, however, it seems light years away. Where the first work, a 28-minute, four-movement piece, took aim at cosmic conflicts and heroic resolutions, the present work is intended as a kind of divertissment. Harbor Music lasts a mere eleven minutes, is cast in a single movement with six sections, and should leave both performers and listeners with a feeling of good humor and affection. The title comes from my experience as a guest in the magnificent city of Sydney, Australia. One of its most attractive features is its unique system of ferry boats: the city is laid out around a large, multi-channeled harbor, with destinations more easily approached by water than by land. Consequently, inhabitants of Sydney get around on small, people-friendly boats that come and go from the central docks at Circular Quay. During a week's visit in 1991, I must have boarded these boats at least a dozen times, always bound for a new location - the resort town of Manley, or the Zoo at Taronga Park, or the shopping district at Darling Harbour. In casting about for a form for my second string quartet, a kind of loose rondo came to mind. Each new destination would be approached from the same starting-out point (although there are subtle variations in the repeating theme; it's always in a new key, and the texture is never the same). The result, I hope, is a sense of constant new information presented with introductory frames of a more familiar nature. The embarkation theme, which begins the piece, is a sort of bi-tonal fanfare in which the violins are in G major and the viola and cello are in B-flat major. It is bold, eager, and forward-looking. The first voyage maintains this bi-tonality, beginning as a 9/8 due for second violin and viola in a kind of rocking motion -much as a boat produces when reaching the deeper water in the harbor. A sweet, nostalgic theme emerges over this rocking accompaniment. This music is developed somewhat, then transforms quickly into a much faster and lighter episode, filled with rising and falling scales (again, in differing keys). A scherzando interlude in short notes and changing meters provides contrast, and the episode ends with a reprise of the scales. The second embarkation follows, this time in A major/C major. It leads quickly into a very warm and slow theme, in wide-leaping intervals for the viola. This section is interrupted twice by solo cadenzas for the cello, suggesting distant boat-horns in major thirds. The end of the episode becomes a transition, with boat-horns leading into the final appearance of the embarkation music, this time in trills and tremolos instead of sharply accented chords. The nostalgic theme of the first episode makes a final appearance, serving now as a coda. The rocking motion continues, in a lullaby fashion, leaving us drowsy and satisfied on our homeward journey. Harbor Music was written for the Cavani Quartet, and is dedicated to Richard J. Bogomolny. Commissioned by his employees at First National Supermarkets as a gift, it represents a thank you from many of the people (including this composer) who have benefitted from his vision and generosity. An ardent advocate of chamber music (and a cellist himself), Mr. Bogomolny has for many years been Chairman of the Board of Chamber Music America. -- Dan Welcher.
SKU: BR.KM-2261
ISBN 9790004501658. 16.5 x 11.5 inches.
Gran Torso, for string quartet, was composed in 1971 and revised in 1978. It belongs to a series of works, including Air, Kontrakadenz, Pression and Klangschatten, whose concept of material attempts to free itself from convention. That is, instead of using the sound itself as a point of departure, structural and formal hierarchies are derived from the mechanical and physical conditions present during the process of sound production. It is clear that such a radical break with tradition is not easily achieved: the instrument, the given means, the resonating body itself (as the embodiment of convention) all work against such attempts (with the extended performance techniques representing only the tip of the iceberg of deep-seated contradictions where the bourgeois artist is concerned). Implicit in such a challenge, however, is a claim to aesthetic pregnance: an offer, if one would have it, of uncomprosing beauty.(Helmut Lachenmann, 1978)CDs/LPs:Berner StreichquartettCD col legno 0647 277Berner StreichquartettLP col legno 5504Societa Cameristica ItalianaLP ABT ERZ 1003Arditti String QuartetCD KAIROS, 0012662KAIstadler quartettCD NEOS 10806The JACK QuartetCD mode 267Stadler Quartett, Rg. Caroline SiegersDVD NEOS 51001Bibliography:Alberman, David: Abnormal Playing Techniques in the String Quartets of Helmut Lachenmann, in: Helmut Lachenmann Music with matches, hrsg. von Dan Albertson, Contemporary Music Review 24 (2005), Vol. 1, pp. 39-51.Dulaney, Maxwell: Continuing the Tradition Untraditionally: Helmut Lachenmann's Restructuring of Musical Dialectic through an Analysis of his Three String Quartets, and an Original Composition, Harmonic Concerto, Diss. Brandeis University, MI 2013.Egger, Elisabeth: Kontinuitat, Verdichtung, Synchronizitat. Zu den grossformalen Funktionen des gepressten Bogenstrichs in Helmut Lachenmanns Streichquartetten, in: Musik als Wahrnehmungskunst. Untersuchungen zu Kompositionsmethodik und Horasthetik bei Helmut Lachenmann, hrsg. von Christian Utz und Clemens Gadenstatter (= musik.theorien der gegenwart 2), Saarbrucken: Pfau 2008, pp. 155-171.Hermann, Matthias: Helmut Lachenmann - Gran Torso, in: Analyse Musik XX. Jahrhundert (2). Postserielle Konzepte Klangflachen Aleatorik (= Materialien zur Musiktheorie 4), Saarbrucken: Pfau 2002, pp. 134-152.Hiekel, Jorn Peter: Die Streichquartett Gran Torso und Grido von Helmut Lachenmann, in: Lucerne Festival, Sommer 2005 Neuland, Konzertprogramm 6, pp. 65-69.Houben, Eva-Maria: Helmut Lachenmann: Gran Torso ..., in: dies., Musikalische Praxis als Lebensform (= Musik und Klangkultur 27), Bielefeld: Transcript 2018, S. 208-212Lehmann, Harry: Erhabenheit - Ereignis - Ambivalenz. Zur Asthetik der Neuen Musik, in: Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik 176 (2015), Heft 5, pp. 22-27.Mosch, Ulrich: Kunst als Medium der Ungeborgenheit. Streichquartette und soziale Funktion des Komponierens bei Helmut Lachenmann, in: Positionen 81 (November 2009), pp. 37-39.ders.: Was heisst Interpretation bei Helmut Lachenmanns Streichquartett ,,Gran Torso?, in: Wessen Klange? Uber Autorschaft in neue Musik, hrsg. Von Hermann Danuser und Matthias Kassel (= Veroffentlichungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 12), Mainz u.a.: Schott 2017, S. 163-186Nonnenmann, Rainer: Werke als Schlussel zu Werken? Zur umstrittenen Kategorie ,,Schlusselwerke der neuen Musik, in: MusikTexte, Heft 147 (November 2015), pp. 35-46.Stork, Astrid: Materialbegriff und Strukturdenken. Untersuchungen zu den Streichquartetten von Helmut Lachenmann, Magisterarbeit Ruhr-Universitat Bochum 1992Tsao, Ming: Helmut Lachenmann's Sound Types, in: Perspectives of New Music 52 (2014), Heft 1, pp. 217-238.Velazquez, Rossana Lara: Composicion y escucha burguesa: Principios de continuidad y ruptura en el cuarteto Gran Torso de Helmut Lachenmann, Diss. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico 2011.Zenck, Martin: Die mehrfache Codierung der Figur: Ihr defigurativer und torsohafter Modus bei Johann Sebastian Bach, Helmut Lachenmann und Auguste Rodin, in: de figura. Rhetorik Bewegung Gestalt, Text und Bild, hrsg. von Gabriele Brandstetter und Sibylle Peters, Munchen 2003, pp. 265-288.World premiere: Bremen (pro musica nova), May 6, 1972.
SKU: HL.51487045
ISBN 9790201870458. UPC: 888680745318. 6.75x9.5x0.244 inches.
In autumn 1895, after returning from New York once and for all, Dvorák took up his former position as teacher at the Prague Conservatory. This clearly had an inspiring impact on him because in the space of just four weeks he composed a new string quartet in G major. Together with the Quartet in A-flat major op. 105, it forms a glorious close to his chamber music oeuvre. Echoes of Bohemian folk music are here mixed with cantabile themes, while his motivic working shows him to be a master at the height of his powers. Even today, it seems almost as if we can feel the composer's satisfaction with this work: “I am working so easily and it is going so smoothly that I could not wish it better.â€.
SKU: PR.11441345S
UPC: 680160608829. 8.5 x 11 inches.
BACH-SHARDS was commissioned by the Brentano String Quartet as part of their Art of the Fugue companion-piece project. Ran deliberately stays within the realm of Bach-like vocabulary, altering syntax in ways that add up to something slightly different from the anticipated sum of the parts. The work builds up to a climax that makes the entry point into Bach’s Contrapunctus X seem thoroughly natural.While composing Bach-Shards I found myself gravitating, intuitively and gradually, toward a dual goal. First, though the tension and dissonance inherent in certain moments of Bach’s own maze-like contrapuntal structures could quite easily and naturally lead one into a pungent contemporary terrain, I opted not to stray outside the realm of Bach-like materials and harmonic language. Instead, it was my hope to alter their relationships and context in ways that add up to a something that’s slightly different than the anticipated sum of the parts. A mildly deconstructed Bach, if you will. The other important challenge I set for myself was building up the latter, toccata-like portion of Bach-Shards in a way that would make the entry point of the fugue which it precedes, Contrapunctus X, seem thoroughly natural. It was my intent to have the first fugal entrance feel like a huge and much welcome release of the energy created by my Prelude’s penultimate stretch, with its bravura figurations elaborating on an insistent dominant pedal point.
© 2000 - 2024 Home - New realises - Composers Legal notice - Full version
