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. * Reviews 0
Bernd Alois Zimmnermran
CELLO CONCERTO, OBOE CONCERTO, TRUMPET CONCERTO, CANTO DI
SPERANZA Heinrich Schiff, Heinz Holliger, Hakan Hardenberger SWF SO
Baden-Baden/Michael Gielen Philips 434 114-2
PRISENCE; INTERCOMUNICAZIONE; PERSPECTIVES; MONOLOGUES Saschko
Gawriloff, Siegfried Palm, Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky DG 437
725-2
Revolutions have a nasty habit of devour- ing their own, and
their victims can include not only the cannon-fodder of the
would-be-fashionable epigone but also those otherwise talented
individuals who had the misfortune to find themselves in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Born in 1918, Bernd Alois Zimmermann had
already reached what should have been the threshold of his artistic
maturity by the time at which the postwar musical revolu- tion of
Darmstadt hit town. And where near contemporaries such as
Lutoslawki, Tippett and Carter had the advantage of a few extra
years and a geographical dis- tance from events in central Europe
(and even then all three were notably late developers), Zimmermann
was pitched firmly into the middle of the fighting.
As it was, for Zimmerman, Darmstadt was probably not just a
revolution too late but also one revolution too many. Working first
within the ambience of German symphonic romanticism, later
absorbing elements of neo-classicism, it was not until the Violin
Concerto of 1950 that he began his belated struggle with the
earlier revolution of Schoenbergian 12- note music. At which point
(and the rest, as they say, is history) the world moved suddenly
on, his younger colleagues pulled the carpet from under his feet
and left him to start all over again.
But start again he did, progressing with- in little more than a
decade from Schoenberg and Stravinsky, through Webernian
abstraction and on into a high- ly personal world of serial
constructivism,
I I' I
ZIMMERMANN: REVOLUTIONARY HABIT
microtonal experimentation and polystylis- tic allusiveness,
culminating with the Cello Concerto of 1966 in a work of heady
fanta- sy as strange and remarkable as anything from the period.
It's a story neatly docu- mented by the works on these recordings,
one which begins with the Oboe Concerto of 1952. Here are two
rather heavy-handed neoclassical movements, aspiring to Stravinsky
but sounding rather closer to Hindemith, enclosing a wonderful slow
movement full of extravagant instrumental colourings and dramatic
gestures (although Heinz Holliger's toneless delivery does precious
little for it). By the time we reach the Canto di speranza for
cello and orches- tra of 1953/57 the point of departure has become
Webern rather than Stravinsky, but again there's an odd contrast
between the sober serial machinations of the opening and later
episodes of swirling harmonics and an extravagently sculpted cello
line; sudden cloud-bursts of colour and theatri- cality which sit
strangely in their surround- ings. They're works which already
suggest how Zimmermann's special gifts lay not in purely abstract
concert works, but in a sort of quasi-programmatic music of
fantastic and mimetic posturing. One doesn't listen for the fugues
and sonatas, but for the (to use Zimmermann's own favourite
metaphor) 'imaginary ballets'; the hidden scenarios with their
quirky plots, sudden eruptions, inexplicable borrowings. And
what is fascinating about subsequent works is not their
increasing formidable array of compositional strategies but the
impurities, the transgressions.
It is precisely these impurities, this raid over the borders of
art music into the world of jazz, which makes the exuberant Trumpet
Concerto of 1954 such a delight, with its smoky blues sound,
building from a marvellously brooding opening into a spirited riff
(complete with drum kit) before resolving in a set of variations on
the negro spiritual 'Nobody knows the trouble I see'. Not that
Zimmermann was the first, or even the last, composer to turn to
jazz, but whereas for Berg, Weill, Krenek et al. jazz was
essentially a populist genre to be absorbed and classicised,
Zimmermann is content to accept its differ- ence, and to write a
piece which is stylisti- cally open-ended; almost, one might say,
contaminated. And it's the curious contra- diction between the
continual search for abstract compositional techniques of ever-
greater refinement and hermeticism on the one hand, and a stylistic
trawl which drags its net ever wider and more promiscuously on the
other, which is perhaps the essence of Zimmermann's later
music.
The story continues with the four cham- ber works on the DG dis,
and it's difficult to believe that the first movement of the
two-piano piece Perspectives dates from only a year after the
Trumpet concerto. Here, suddenly, we're a million miles from the
extrovert pluralism of the concerto and apparently well and truly
in the mythical land of Darmstadt, all angular melodic lines and
chromatic clusters. Or at least that is one's first impression
until one notices the care for sonority and dramatic cogency, a
certain sense of rhythmic and formal periodicity, a feeling that
the music is being cast into intelligible paragraphs; even, heaven
forbid, the occasional octave. It's the first instalment in
Zimmermann's response to that quintessential challenge of early
postwar music: how to develop a per- sonality strong enough to
survive and shine through even the methodological fervour of high
serialism, with its almost irresistible tendency to make everyone
and everything sound exactly the same. For Zimmermann, survival was
ensured, paradoxically, by
The Musical Times 108 February 1994
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Reviews Reviews
twisting the system designed to guarantee absolute musical
purity and pastlessness on its head and allowing it to encompass a
subversive range of stylistic references. In Monologues of 1964,
also for two pianos, we find allusions to Bach, Debussy, Beethoven,
boogie-woogie, sometimes half-hidden, sometimes inscribed brazenly
into the middle of complex serial textures, while in the piano trio
Presence the deter- minedly abstract textures of the second
movement are suddenly and inexplicably invaded by a hedonistically
romantic Straussian quote. For Zimmermann the issue was not style,
but time, and such quotes were for him a way of evoking the
simultaneity of different epochs. I doubt whether many people will
find it possible to hear this music is such idealistically simple
terms, but as an eccentric counter- revolutionary brew it is oddly
convincing, and as a prophetic example of stylistic montage it is
post-modernist long before it's time.
Perspectives is cast as an 'imaginary bal- let', while Presence,
a 'ballet blanc en cinq scenes', evokes the imaginary encounters of
the improbable trio of Ubu, Don Quixote and Molly Bloom. The Cello
Concerto, 'en forme de pas de trois' (and I could almost kiss
Philips for having finally brought this gorgeously improbable work
on to CD) is yet another dance-inspired work which welcomes us to
Pierrotesque world full of the brittle and glacial sounds of glass
harmonica, celesta, cimbalon and string harmonics, plus that
ubiquitous drum kit. Classical concerto priorities are aban- doned
in favour of an open-ended, suite- like succession of five balletic
set-pieces in which the alternately plangent and quixotic cello
solo is just one voice in a scenario full of instrumental
role-playing, a voice finally reduced almost to the status of a
silent onlooker during the meandering solos - cimbalon, electric
guitar, jazz piano plus bowed cymbal among them - of the last
movement. One could hardly imagine a madder or more irresistible
cocktail. There's a lesson here, I think: the truly subversive do
not just survive revolutions, they create their own. GAVIN
THOMAS
twisting the system designed to guarantee absolute musical
purity and pastlessness on its head and allowing it to encompass a
subversive range of stylistic references. In Monologues of 1964,
also for two pianos, we find allusions to Bach, Debussy, Beethoven,
boogie-woogie, sometimes half-hidden, sometimes inscribed brazenly
into the middle of complex serial textures, while in the piano trio
Presence the deter- minedly abstract textures of the second
movement are suddenly and inexplicably invaded by a hedonistically
romantic Straussian quote. For Zimmermann the issue was not style,
but time, and such quotes were for him a way of evoking the
simultaneity of different epochs. I doubt whether many people will
find it possible to hear this music is such idealistically simple
terms, but as an eccentric counter- revolutionary brew it is oddly
convincing, and as a prophetic example of stylistic montage it is
post-modernist long before it's time.
Perspectives is cast as an 'imaginary bal- let', while Presence,
a 'ballet blanc en cinq scenes', evokes the imaginary encounters of
the improbable trio of Ubu, Don Quixote and Molly Bloom. The Cello
Concerto, 'en forme de pas de trois' (and I could almost kiss
Philips for having finally brought this gorgeously improbable work
on to CD) is yet another dance-inspired work which welcomes us to
Pierrotesque world full of the brittle and glacial sounds of glass
harmonica, celesta, cimbalon and string harmonics, plus that
ubiquitous drum kit. Classical concerto priorities are aban- doned
in favour of an open-ended, suite- like succession of five balletic
set-pieces in which the alternately plangent and quixotic cello
solo is just one voice in a scenario full of instrumental
role-playing, a voice finally reduced almost to the status of a
silent onlooker during the meandering solos - cimbalon, electric
guitar, jazz piano plus bowed cymbal among them - of the last
movement. One could hardly imagine a madder or more irresistible
cocktail. There's a lesson here, I think: the truly subversive do
not just survive revolutions, they create their own. GAVIN
THOMAS
SINFONIA SERENA; DIE HARMONIE DER WELT BBC Philharmonic/Yan
Pascal Tortelier Chandos CHAN 9217
ORCHESTRAL WORKS VOLUME 6: PITTSBURGH SYMPHONY; CONCERTO FOR
ORCHESTRA Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Werner Andreas Albert CPO
999 014-2
Students of 20th-century music have long been aware that Paul
Hindemith composed much wild and energetic music in 1920s, and that
in the 30s his style underwent a drastic period of revision and
simplifica- tion, leading to such austerely beautiful works as
Mathis der Maler and the ballet Nobilissima visione. But concert
promoters and record company executives alike have, in the 30 years
since his death, kept the musical public very much in the dark as
to what happened next. Word was that a promising angry young man
turned into a dull old professor, endlessly churning out 'useful'
(and boring) sonatas. As usual with stereotypes there is some
truth, but more that is misleading in this picture, and it is good
(at last!) to be able to welcome some fine new recordings of some
of his best later music.
The listener coming for the first time to the aptly named
Symphonia serena is likely to be struck by the music's sheer
geniality (not a quality much in evidence in the early Kammermusik
series, and perhaps a product of the composer's American years).
The sound of the opening is both spacious and deliciously airy,
while here and in the finale, with its long-drawn-out clarinet
melody, this performance is won- derfully successful in revealing
the music's warmth, and the touch of gallic lightness brought by
Tortelier is all to the good. In the more obviously Teutonic Die
Harmonie der Welt symphony he is less successful. The composer
himself brought greater weight to the first movement in particular,
and the BBC Philharmonic seems rushed here, even if they generate
considerable excitement. But the nobility of the slow movement,
with its beautiful coda for solo strings and glockenspiel is
SINFONIA SERENA; DIE HARMONIE DER WELT BBC Philharmonic/Yan
Pascal Tortelier Chandos CHAN 9217
ORCHESTRAL WORKS VOLUME 6: PITTSBURGH SYMPHONY; CONCERTO FOR
ORCHESTRA Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Werner Andreas Albert CPO
999 014-2
Students of 20th-century music have long been aware that Paul
Hindemith composed much wild and energetic music in 1920s, and that
in the 30s his style underwent a drastic period of revision and
simplifica- tion, leading to such austerely beautiful works as
Mathis der Maler and the ballet Nobilissima visione. But concert
promoters and record company executives alike have, in the 30 years
since his death, kept the musical public very much in the dark as
to what happened next. Word was that a promising angry young man
turned into a dull old professor, endlessly churning out 'useful'
(and boring) sonatas. As usual with stereotypes there is some
truth, but more that is misleading in this picture, and it is good
(at last!) to be able to welcome some fine new recordings of some
of his best later music.
The listener coming for the first time to the aptly named
Symphonia serena is likely to be struck by the music's sheer
geniality (not a quality much in evidence in the early Kammermusik
series, and perhaps a product of the composer's American years).
The sound of the opening is both spacious and deliciously airy,
while here and in the finale, with its long-drawn-out clarinet
melody, this performance is won- derfully successful in revealing
the music's warmth, and the touch of gallic lightness brought by
Tortelier is all to the good. In the more obviously Teutonic Die
Harmonie der Welt symphony he is less successful. The composer
himself brought greater weight to the first movement in particular,
and the BBC Philharmonic seems rushed here, even if they generate
considerable excitement. But the nobility of the slow movement,
with its beautiful coda for solo strings and glockenspiel is
tenderly and warmly brought out and for those that can allow a
passacaglia to have relevance even in 1951 there is a glorious- ly
Brucknerian glow to the closing pages.
The Hindemith series recorded by Werner Albert with various
Australian orchestras has been partially upstaged not only by the
BBC Philharmonic but also by some prestigious new records of the
San Francisco Symphony under Herbert Blomstedt. All the same this
Volume 6 is well worth buying, if not for the dully recorded early
Concerto for Orchestra, then certainly for the splendid Pittsburgh
Symphony, which demonstrates how won- derfully rich Hindemith's
late style can be. The work is a homage to the Pennsylvania Deusch
(or 'Dutch') as well as to the steel city, and it manages to
incorporate homages to Ives, to Germanic folk song and even to
Schoenbergian chromaticism. In the end this last is swal- lowed up
into some academic festival fun when the tune 'Pittsburgh is a
great old, Pittsburgh ' carries all before it! The CD also contains
a deliciously quirky late March and the inventive, humourous and
delightfully eccentric Sinfonietta in E whose four-movement pattern
is the work's only conventional feature. How strange that such
warm-hearted and bril- liantly woven music has been ignored for so
long! RICHARD DRAKEFORD
tenderly and warmly brought out and for those that can allow a
passacaglia to have relevance even in 1951 there is a glorious- ly
Brucknerian glow to the closing pages.
The Hindemith series recorded by Werner Albert with various
Australian orchestras has been partially upstaged not only by the
BBC Philharmonic but also by some prestigious new records of the
San Francisco Symphony under Herbert Blomstedt. All the same this
Volume 6 is well worth buying, if not for the dully recorded early
Concerto for Orchestra, then certainly for the splendid Pittsburgh
Symphony, which demonstrates how won- derfully rich Hindemith's
late style can be. The work is a homage to the Pennsylvania Deusch
(or 'Dutch') as well as to the steel city, and it manages to
incorporate homages to Ives, to Germanic folk song and even to
Schoenbergian chromaticism. In the end this last is swal- lowed up
into some academic festival fun when the tune 'Pittsburgh is a
great old, Pittsburgh ' carries all before it! The CD also contains
a deliciously quirky late March and the inventive, humourous and
delightfully eccentric Sinfonietta in E whose four-movement pattern
is the work's only conventional feature. How strange that such
warm-hearted and bril- liantly woven music has been ignored for so
long! RICHARD DRAKEFORD
HINDEMITH HINDEMITH
The Mltsical Times The Mltsical Times February 1994 February
1994 109 109
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16:02:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Article Contentsp.108p.109
Issue Table of ContentsThe Musical Times, Vol. 135, No. 1812
(Feb., 1994), pp. 65-128Front Matter [pp.65-125]News
[p.71]LettersCalling the Tune [p.72]... Still Calling
[p.72]Regrettable Indeed... [p.72]More Purcell [p.72]... and Yet
More [p.72]Tra-la-la-lee [p.72]Alfredo Campoli [p.72]And at Number
One... [p.73]It's Really That Simple [p.73]Myths and More Myths
[p.73]
Frst der Musik Aller Zeiten. On the 400th Anniversary of
Palestrina's Death, Peter Phillips Goes in Search of the Real
Composer behind the Myth [pp.74-79]Forgotten Frenchmen: Widor and
D'Indy. Andrew Thomson Pleads for a Fuller Appreciation of Two of
France's Forgotten Sons [pp.80-82]Heroic Motives. Roger Marsh
Considers the Relation between Sign and Sound in 'Complex' Music
[pp.83-86]Progressive Growth. Henri Dutilleux in Conversation with
Roger Nichols [pp.87-90]Music ReviewsBorrowed Plumes
[pp.92-94]untitled [p.95]
Book ReviewsMods and Cons [pp.96-98]untitled [p.99]untitled
[pp.100-101]untitled [p.102]untitled [pp.102-103]untitled
[p.104]untitled [p.105]untitled [p.106]Books Received [p.106]
CD Reviewsuntitled [p.107]
Bernd Alois Zimmermanuntitled [pp.108-109]untitled
[p.109]untitled [p.110]untitled [p.110]untitled
[pp.110-111]untitled [p.111]untitled [p.111]untitled [p.112]
Performance Reviews [pp.113-117]Summer Lovin'. Gavin Henderson
Reflects on the Summer Schools Phenomenon [pp.118-119]Listings
March 1994 [pp.126-127]Back Matter [pp.128-128]