infotext:
LIGHT AND SHADOW The program put together for this CD brings together three visually stunning and promising titles: On transparent threads, Concubia nocte and Danse interstellaire. The works, all linked by the basic instrumentation of the string quartet, revolve in the field of tension between tiredness and courage, light and shadow, sadness and consolation. They are exemplary for the musical experimentation and expressiveness of the composer David Philip Hefti, who knows how to exploit the spectrum between sound and noise, sensation and silence, tension and relaxation with virtuosity. Right in the first piece On transparent threads for mezzo-soprano and string quartet, based on a poem by Kurt Aebli, these aspects come into play. The poet dedicated his work Endless beginning of everything David Philip Hefti, with whom he has been friends for many years. Hefti then set it to music for voice and violoncello, commissioned by the Tonhalle Society and the Zurich Literature House, and only later wrote a new version for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. He dedicated the new composition to the singer Maria Riccarda Wesseling and the Amaryllis Quartet, who premiered the work on April 19, 2018 in Lübeck. Already the beginning of the poem calls for a musical interpretation: »The world came into being out of sound, that is why those who know say that they do not know, that is why their silence is never empty, that is why their emptiness is never dumb, that is why the correct is never beautiful, and that's why the beautiful is never correct.” The focus of Hefti's composition is thus on impressive and characteristic sounds. The playing instructions for voice and strings are expressive. While the singer clicks her first note and then produces with her voice, among other things, "speech song", "straw bass" and "multiphony" (polyphonic pressed sound), the strings play, for example arco gettato (throw the bow aside), col legno battuto (hitting the side with the bow stick) and »Shooting Stars«, which in this context means that the harmonic fingering remains unchanged during a glissando, so that several glissandos follow one another. In addition to dynamic contrasts, such as rapid changes from triple forte to double piano, emptiness and silence in the form of general pauses and fermatas play an important role. In addition, the individual voices are constantly in exchange with each other, adopting the rhythm or tempo of the others and emancipating themselves from each other again. The visual power in Hefti's music remains consistently concise when she comments on Aebli's lines from the last movement "when a piece of fabric that served as a curtain is torn in two" with overtones, scratches and carpets of sound, and thus the unembellished reality and the recognition and acceptance of one's own represents finiteness. The second piece of the program sounds from the middle of the night. Concubia nocte is Hefti's fifth string quartet and the second work of his night watches-Cycle which, in keeping with its title, deals with themes of insomnia, dream, twilight, darkness and hallucination. Concubia nocte - music for the second watch of the night was commissioned by the »Z Zwischentöne« chamber music festival in Engelberg (Switzerland) and is dedicated to the Merel Quartet, who also premiered the piece on October 26, 2018. In the months following the birth of his first son, Hefti made a virtue of his insomnia and began his night watcheswrite cycle. The result, according to the composer himself, is »real night music, often written in the darkest hours.« Concubia nocte is characterized above all by quarter-tone harmonies and a certain mysteriousness. As in the other two pieces, the timbres arise on the one hand through abrupt transitions, from furious (angry) to atmospheric (atmospheric) and sudden alternations of opposing dynamics and rhythms. On the other hand, Hefti also gives the sounds time to develop by letting individual tones rise and fall or stand out and shine. The atmosphere constantly changes between mystery and surprise. Towards the end, the play takes an unexpected turn. Through the game instructions scordatura the strings retuning their instrument will produce a different note than the one being played. The musicians also play arco inverso, that is, with the bow below the strings, so that the highest and lowest strings can be bowed at the same time. The resulting sound of the string quartet is reminiscent of the string psaltery, a further development of the medieval psaltery, precursor of later plucked instruments such as the zither, harp and harpsichord. In addition, harmonics and glissandi serve as a transition to the end of the piece. Because the sound is pulled into the light as if by transparent threads and suddenly unfolds as a C major chord. It sounds almost too good to be true, as if the sun were rising and chasing away the evil spirits of the night. Hefti lets the chord stand for two minutes, the time it takes for the piece to regain the stability and confidence that one scarcely dared hope for. The seemingly contradictory opposites of sorrow and consolation are united by Hefti Danse interstellaire, his »funeral music for basset clarinet and string quartet«, dedicated to the memory of his mother. Composed in 2014 on behalf of the Schwetzingen Mozart Society, the work was premiered on October 3, 2015 by Nikolaus Friedrich and the Amaryllis Quartet. The piece marks the end of the CD program and expresses the inseparable extremes of light and shadow most aptly. The clarinet represents impermanence, often leaving the strings alone, resulting in pure string quartet passages over and over again. Again, Hefti works with the absence of sound and thus with the meaning of emptiness and silence. Isolated, soft tones and the tremolos of the strings create a spooky mood, as if they had lost their bearings with the clarinet. From time to time, however, the clarinet flashes again with its song-like tone (singable) and sounds like a nice memory. Or she breaks with triple forte, furious (angry) and with fast, high movements, spiraling up to dizzying heights with the strings. At the end you can hear the clarinet “breathe in through the instrument”. Catching your breath becomes a feat of strength, continuing to live becomes a challenge. The strings play »soundlessly on the bridge«, the »left hand dampens the strings«. They remain lost and almost lifeless. But similar to Concubia nocte The play takes an unexpected turn towards the end. Because the basset clarinet suddenly mixes into the vacuum again, Dolce and atmospheric (sweet and atmospheric), and leads into well-known music: Bach's Invention No. 11 in G minor. From bar 244 of Heftis Danse interstellaire the tones of this miniature ring out with some careful adjustments, arranged for string quartet and basset clarinet. Bach's work, which for Hefti means "confidence and sadness at the same time" and is closely linked to the death of his mother, expresses the unspeakable where the grief increases immeasurably and the composer fails to find words. In the end, the strings take over singable the clarinet – a glimmer of hope. A great shadow lies over all three works. Dark, melancholic, sad and even desperate tones are struck. And yet the compositions strive towards life, towards the light. David Philip Hefti's music defies the melancholy with optimism and joie de vivre and shows in a virtuoso way that every shadow is also a signpost to the light. Deborah Maier |
program:
David Philip Hefti (* 1975)
On transparent threads (2018) 31:10
for mezzo-soprano and string quartet
based on a poem by Kurt Aebli
[01] 1. From sound 04:28
[02] 2. Inside the Words 04:32
[03] 3. Source, scar, face? 05:54
[04 [ 4. Endless beginning of everything 05:28
[05] 5. If I... 05:38
[06] 6. …think of the moment 05:10
Maria Riccarda Wesseling, mezzo-soprano
Amaryllis Quartet
[07] Concubia nocte (2018) 10:53
Music for the Second Night Watch (String Quartet No. 5)
Amaryllis Quartet
[08] Danse interstellaire (2014) 23:33
Funeral music for bass clarinet and string quartet
Bernhard Röthlisberger, bass clarinet
Amaryllis Quartet
Total playing time: 65:57
first recordings
Press:
09/2021
David Philip Hefti (*1975) calls the first movement of his composition “Aus Klang”. On transparent threads for mezzo-soprano and string quartet (2018). The penetrating sounds that open the piece – string chords sharpened with sul ponticello performance, a deep vocal sound that transitions into overtone formations, impulse attacks that are taken back into the piano, swelling string tutti – outline a space consisting of sound and decay, which the vocalist in the episode fills with vocal lines.
The native Swiss uses the chosen means in a varied and yet economical way in the total of six movements: He designs differentiated sound color fields, which he playfully enriches with noise components; allows the instruments, occasionally supported by the use of percussive bows, to break out in phases full of rhythmic energy; surrounds vocal phrases and interjections with differently composed shells of flexible and sometimes microtonally enriched string sound (particularly suggestive in the third movement “Quelle, Scar, Face?” as an alternating accumulation of overtone veils and noise explosions around creaking and whispering vocal articulations); and he thereby exposes the words from the underlying poem by Kurt Aebli to changing illuminations.
The Amaryllis Quartet, which, in cooperation with Maria Riccarda Wesseling's versatile, richly timbreed voice, creates one atmospheric moment after the next, is also convincing in the other pieces thanks to a careful reading of the scores. Hefti's fine textures also reflect this meticulousness in the fifth string quartet, which lasts just under eleven minutes Concubia nocte (2018): Here the composer charges the sounds with kinetic energy, stimulates the performers to incessant shifts in sound, noise and pitch and from this creates music that is constantly in motion, which, in addition to rough moments, also knows quiet phases and finally rises opens into a C major chord unfolding over two minutes.
The end of the publication is the funeral music Danse interstellaire (2014), in which the bass clarinetist Bernhard Röthlisberger joins the string quartet. The high, strained clarinet scream that opens the piece before being resonated by the strings in the high register marks one of the expressive extremes of this music. It is replaced by fragmented cantilenas enriched by multiphonics, to which the strings lend a sluggish style, or by the excited, verbal declamation with which the woodwind instrument moves through the tonal space, before Bach’s G minor invention ends shortly before the end from the musical context and reveals the compositional reference point of Hefti's music.
Stefan Drees
09/2021
Music of existential urgency
The new album “Light and Shade” underlines David Philip Hefti's status as one of the best contemporary Swiss composers in an exemplary manner. The three works to be heard complement each other in their existential urgency and thus form a kind of triptych.
“An Transparent Threads” is based on the poem cycle “Endless Beginning of Everything,” which the Swiss author Kurt Aebli wrote especially for Hefti. The composer first set the cycle for voice and cello and then rewrote it in 2018 for the dedicatee Maria Riccarda Wesseling and the Amaryllis Quartet - who also perform here. In the mercilessly good performance, the voice and strings interact with each other so intensively that the boundaries between human and instrumental sounds are transcended.
“Concubia nocte” (2018) is Hefti’s fifth string quartet and the second work in his “Night Watch” cycle. It is “real night music, often written in the darkest hours,” explains Hefti, who has created a modern nocturne with the ten-minute piece.
Hefti dedicated “Danse interstellaire” (2014) to the memory of his mother. At the end, in the greatest need, this solemn mourning music turns to the light and comforter Johann Sebastian Bach.
Burkhard Schaefer