program:
George Frideric Haas (* 1953)
[01] 40:13 p.m Hyperion (2006)
for light and orchestra
SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg
Rupert Huber, Management
rosalie, light installation
Jorg Widman (* 1973)
[02] 13:40 p.m Second maze (2006)
for orchestra groups
SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg
Hans Zender, director
total 53:53
Press:
03/2008
11.12.2007
light game music
Interpretation: 
Sound quality: 
repertoire value: 
Booklets:
As one of the few festivals, the Donaueschinger Musiktage offer an annual field of experimentation with large casts. Composers rarely have the opportunity to try out something innovative in an orchestra landscape that, despite all the subsidies, is subject to market constraints. A stroke of luck is therefore the in-house orchestra of the SWR, in whose history the new has tradition. Orders for the closing orchestral concert of the 2006 Music Days went to Jörg Widmann and Georg Friedrich Haas, among others; a recording of the concert was published by NEOS as the second episode of the Donaueschingen documentation 2006.
Jörg Widmann's 'Second Labyrinth', which the musicians of the orchestra received the SWR Orchestra Prize for, is a solidly crafted, but occasionally somewhat uninspired work that attempts to bring a dusty spatial sound model back to life. The orchestra is positioned around the audience, enveloping the listener in a layer of subtly crafted sounds. Widmann's composition presents itself as a kind of negative image of its substance, by consciously avoiding linearity, the 'thread is to be thought of in its absence'. However, the exhaustion of a spatial sound model alone does not guarantee musical stringency and so the 'Second Labyrinth' remains more of a working title for music.
Georg Friedrich Haas' 'Concert for Light and Orchestra' is much more innovative and offered the audience a lasting impression at the end of the music days, at least because of its eventful nature. Together with the artist rosalie, Haas has developed a concept in which the musicians of the orchestra have to play without a conductor, since the flow of their voices is structured solely by light commands. A few thousand translucent plastic buckets were attached to the walls of the Baarsporthalle, which was the location of the final concert. In the dark room, in which the audience could move freely, a choreography of light was created, the pattern of which served as a guide for the groups of musicians positioned in the hall.
Georg Friedrich Haas and rosalie have developed a concept of listening in which sounds wander through the room and are received very differently by the audience, depending on where the listener is standing, how they are moving, and which colored light is changing their reception. The synaesthetic idea of the work is definitely expandable and worth considering.
It remains questionable whether the basic idea of 'Hyperion' worked here. Of course, Haas' score contains the finely listened microtonal fields, a sound rich in beats, a particularly characteristic play of the overtones. Many of the subtleties of the piece, however, seemed stifled in a force of sound, for lack of direction from a conductor who could have better controlled the balance. Once the 'light machine' had been set in motion, there was no turning back. The result lay in the arbitrariness or insecurity of the individual musician in the face of numerous, disco-like light organ signals: in this case, a rather undifferentiated fortissimo mush emerged.
But that is also part of Donaueschingen: the supposed failure of an idea, a failure that can prove to be much more fruitful than an initial, much-celebrated success. However, the listener of this CD is denied the impression of this process: although the sound is very well spatialized, the experience of the interplay of light and music is missing in the purely auditory fixation. The medium of the record is no longer sufficient for such artistic visions.
As a pure documentation of the festival, this recording definitely has its value; as a copy of the work of Georg Friedrich Haas in particular, however, it looks like the photograph of a particularly refined culinary composition: looks pretty, but tastes like nothing.
Paul Huebner
Diverdi boletin 11 / 12 2007
