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STRING QUARTETS BY CHRISTIAN OFENBAUER When Christian Ofenbauer composed his first string quartet movement in 1997, the work was preceded by a long period of doubt: didn't the genre carry too much historical ballast with it? At the time, he probably never would have dreamed that in the years 2008 to 2011 a kind of continuation in the form of five further string quartet movements would emerge in quick succession. This CD edition brings together these six works, some of which are closely related, some loosely related, and also relates them to the string quartet Destruction of the Room/Time 1999. In the Arditti Quartet's extremely conscientiously meticulous, but sensitively dazzling performances, they unfold their very own charm, which seems to announce beautiful riddles as well as monumental, iron greatness, which paradoxically grows out of fragile, ephemeral tones and a lot of silence. In Ofenbauer's oeuvre, time moves to the center in multiple ways, its passing accompanied by sound as well as its virtual standstill. On the outside, the year of origin always forms part of the title of the piece, thereby also defining the status of a personal situation and development. Structurally, Ofenbauer's works turn their backs on the espressivo, time and again bringing the otherwise mute passage of time to life, making slow, spacious progressions not only audible but also tangible in a special way - music, seemingly unintentional, self-sufficient and yet far above itself Pointing the way: with precisely defined sound events, which often follow one another according to sophisticated, limited aleatoric concepts. Clarity, calm, contemplation are the path and the goal at the same time. Im String quartet movement 1997 Ofenbauer tried to observe the dynamics of the chosen material - a passage from Webern's String trio op. 20. Located exclusively in the richly graded lowest dynamic range, the piece follows several intertwined paths: They lead from the solid to the loose, from sound to noise, from flowing to stagnation, from acoustic to gesture. Finally, the strings remain silent while the musicians "let the bow stick snap sideways through the air (like a whip)". This procedural course is in Destruction of the Room/Time 1999 large-format statics, which are based on incidental music to Horváth's Tales from the Vienna Woods based; the title quotes the stage directions for the final scene from Brecht Fatzer-Material. No single tones or even pauses are audible, rather the quartet creates a sound continuum that semper pppp runs in extreme slow motion and finally approaches its starting point. Stepless changes in color (from the usual position to the bowing on the bridge) and qualitative leaps (the completely noisy bowing of the string behind the bridge) are networked with wide-spanning, extremely slow glissandi, extremely dense tremolos at the bow tip and difficult harmonics. Just as concrete chords elude perception, harmony or the logic of progression seem suspended in the traditional sense. What is amazing, however, is how the glissandi remain virtually inaudible because they sometimes last for minutes and instead communicate themselves as a peculiarly intangible, never-ending inner tension of the sounds. The suggestion for Second string quartet movement 2008 (and subsequently for the whole subsequent cycle up to the 6th quartet movement) came through the string quartet 1 + one night (1995) by Nader Mashayekhi. Ofenbauer values it highly, but still felt the desire to provide both an answer and an extension at the same time. To do this, he notated four individual parts, each nine pages long, with a fixed grid of bars that can be read in rows or columns, from left or right, from above or below. From side to side, different courses intertwine and overlay each other: the action intensifies up to the central page 5, only to then thin out again – in the number of sound events, in the range of sounds, in durations, figures, dynamic gradations and types of play. How clearly this development becomes comprehensible depends above all on where in the musical text the individual players begin: they are free to choose their starting points as long as they are on the same or at least on adjacent pages; on page 9, if not already played, page 1 follows, and so on, until each part has gone through the whole composition. For the present recording, the dedicatee, the composer Thomas Heinisch, has determined the beginning for 2nd violin and violoncello on page 2, for 1st violin and viola on page 3. The Third movement for string quartet 2009 operates with four tone stock groups with two to three sounds, with one of the four groups evaporating in the middle of the piece. No tones are noted, but the respective group from which a sound is to be selected, for which the dynamics and articulation are already fixed at the exact point. The piece gains a special auratic character through the breaks in the already extremely slow tempo and the differentiated fermata, which is erased by a hectic final gesture. Das Bruchstück IX / Fourth String Quartet Movement 2010 grips, like all works by Ofenbauers fraction pieceseries, back to the older one, this time the 2nd quartet movement. If the course there is even more determined by chance, this time it is precisely controlled and presented concisely: the continuous wheezing eighth pulse at the beginning stumbles, changes into divergent, coagulates again to new regularity. Transparency and delicate brightness dominate. "Breathing heavily (snoring)" begins the particularly captivating, again more serious one Fifth movement for string quartet 2011. Similar to the first quartet movement, it leads in a linear development from very soft scraping noises to rhythmically completely divergent, rattling ones col legno-tone groups. The whiplashes of the bow from the first quartet movement are not the goal, but part of the eloquent gesture. In the chain-like structure with sections 1 bars long, a contrasting 18th bar also intervenes, which also undergoes a development and culminates in a quasi-quotation of the 19rd quartet movement, but then evaporates and merges into the now longer sections. The Sixth String Quartet Movement 2011 finally sums up the whole cycle in a very small space. In tingling, animated statics, which hovers peculiarly between density and decay, the relaxed, almost cheerful sounds show high relief through the wide dynamic range: Each voice consists of 180 bars, which are completely run through from a freely selectable bar line by line. The 6th movement thus approaches the 2nd quartet movement and closes the circle of this equally rich and haunting compendium of modern composition for string quartet. Walter Weidringer |
program:
CD 1 [01] String quartet movement 1997 17:40 [02] Destruction of the room / time 1999 48:04 CD 2 [01] Second string quartet movement 2008 25:00 [02] Third movement for string quartet 2009 11:34 [03] BruchPiece IX / Fourth String Quartet Movement 2010 11:31 [04] Fifth movement for string quartet 2011 22:23 [05] Sixth String Quartet Movement 2011 07:07
Arditti Quartet World Premiere Recordings |
Press:
05/2015
New music on new CDs presented by Max Nyffeler Christian Ofenbauer's string quartet compositions, which fill two full CDs, are mostly at the limit of hearing. They are unevolving variations of silence filled with gentle scraping, scratching and finger tapping. This principle is realized most radically in “Destruction of the Room/Time”, a three-quarter hour sonic gray veil agitated by all sorts of streaks. Because of the acoustic susceptibility, it is advantageous to hear it far away from our noisy civilization. Music for friends of the delicately colored air, with which the Arditti Quartet demonstrates that a lot can be gotten out of almost nothing. |
