infotext:
Works for viola solo It was not until the 20th century that an independent solo repertoire emerged for the viola. Especially in the period after the First World War, when virtuosity and late-Romantic pathos were distrusted, the dark colours, the simple, but also the rough and robust viola began to attract interest. However, many works remain committed to a traditional compositional style in which neoclassical influences are mixed with free-tonal melody. The first work that radically breaks with this tradition and at the same time heralds a new era in viola literature is Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Sonata for Solo Viola. From now on, a new way of dealing with the viola is established: the instrument with all its possibilities and limitations, its qualities, but also its quirks is increasingly the focus of the compositions. This "instrumental" thinking is common to all the works on this CD, but the implementation is very different and quite contradictory. Bernd Alois Zimmermann's sonata has a tragic private background. The work is a twelve-part requiem on the death of daughter Barbara, who died shortly after birth: "...to the song of an angel" is the dedication and subtitle. The allusion to Alban Berg's violin concerto with the dedication "To the memory of an angel" is obvious, but the difference is also important: Zimmermann's work is about the singing of an angel. This chant becomes concrete in the final part of the sonata in the Luther chorale Gelobet sei du, Jesu Christ. The medieval melody of the chorale is performed as a canon in tritone intervals, with the voices running at different speeds. The tritone distance creates a chromatic harmony that covers the twelve-tone context of the sonata like a finely woven net. The slow canon voice begins on a flat, the fast one that overtakes it on Zimmermann's tone of fate and death, d. Later the melody is set in stretto, evoking a kind of viola chorus, precisely at the words »the Angels are looking forward to it«. Zimmermann, who was brought up in a deeply religious manner, finds this close reference to the text, which is reminiscent of J. S. Bach's allegorical compositional methods, so important that he wrote the text above the notes in the score. The religious background - albeit broken in many ways - becomes obvious in this way. What precedes this chorale is a seemingly chaotic succession of brief moments. Zimmermann has forced these moments into a twelve-part, motivically and rhythmically interlocking form that leads to the chorale like a Bach chorale prelude. The work is thus a very complex example of absolute music. At the same time, the programmatic background, which was hardly noticed in the XNUMXs, is now being perceived more and more clearly: a requiem for a life hardly lived, which dissolved in a few individual moments and only finds hope as a song in »Der Engel Schar«. Volte-Face by Georges Aperghis, the youngest piece on this CD, next to this closely knotted chorale prelude comes across as a free fantasy by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, associative speaking to the point of exhaustion. Just as a language consists of syllables with which words can be formed, Aperghis' speaking music is made up of tiny motifs that appear in ever-changing contexts. Nothing is riddled or hidden, but as the listener we are always there, everything is clear, and that's exactly why we understand this volte face, this turning around, the constant change. The violist cannot commit herself, jumps here and there. Contrasting elements, e.g. B. pizzicato-arco, up-down, jumps-scales, high-low, fast-slow, virtuoso chase each other or overlap. The essence of this music is best described in terms of the vowel: whisper, trill, scream, gasp, vibrate. The violist acts extravagantly, almost feverishly. Only in the last third of the composition does the exalted gesture suddenly shrink and lead to almost complete silence - as if the volte face had exhausted itself. In pianissimo and initially in simple fifths and fourths, the music is tuned in like new. After this resting point, however, the elements are juxtaposed in even closer alternations and combinations, until this viola-speaking collapses at the end, so to speak. The two compositions by Salvatore Sciarrino are not about clarity but rather about blurring: there is hardly an audible or recognizable tone, hardly any structure or playing technique that one could exactly identify. This music is scrawled as if through a blueprint, only in a few places does the energy erupt eruptively, but only briefly, more like a mere sign of the vibrating energy beneath the finely chiseled surface. The individual pieces remain in a state of twilight, so to speak, the contours are lost: a static, shimmering world of sound. Roman Brotbeck |
program:
Works for viola solo
Anna Spina, viola
Georges Aperghis (* 1945)
[01] Times-Face (2001) 09:53
Salvatore Sciarrino (* 1947)
[02] Ai limiti della night (1979) 09:22
Bernd Alois Zimmerman (1918-1970)
[03] Sonata for solo viola (1955) 09:10
Salvatore Sciarrino (* 1947)
Tre notturni brilliant (1974) 09:20
[04] by volume 03:27
[05] scorrevole and animation 03:24
[06] prestissimo precipitando 02:29
Gerard grisey (1946-1998)
[07] Prologue (1976) 16:59
total time 54:45
Press:
6/2011
Musical rating: 5
Technical score: 5
Repertoire value: 5
booklet: 5
Overall rating: 5
The violist Anna Spina pushes it out into the open. She searches for musical limits in order to overcome them in joyful intellectual play. […] The fact that this fragile composition of music does not simply become a catalog of the artistic achievements of modernity is due to Anna Spina's finely deliberating ear for sound values and mixtures.
http://www.musikderzeit.de/de_DE/journal/issues/showarticle,33574.html
06/2011
02/2011
09/2010
09/2010
07/2010
20.06.2010
Versatile viola playing
High-quality viola playing, which I was pleased to discover some time ago on the occasion of a recording of Mieczysław Weinberg's compositions by violist Julia Rebekka Adler, is currently booming. In fact, most young talents use all their skills to ensure that the instrument is perceived beyond the widespread clichés. In this sense, the Swiss Anna Spina has combined a series of five solo compositions from the past six decades on her CD released by NEOS, which break with earlier playing traditions and explicitly focus on exploring new areas of expression.
The oldest work in this series is Bernd Alois Zimmermann's 'Sonata for Viola' (1955), in the course of which the composer redefined and expanded the possibilities of the viola by using the framework of a strictly contrapuntal setting - one could describe the work as a kind of modern chorale arrangement - expanded to the limits of what was technically possible. Spina's rendition of the sonata is not only phenomenal in terms of these required technical details, but can also be representative of the entire production in terms of the clarity and care in her shaping of musical and tonal structures.
Gérard Grisey's 'Prologue' (1976) seems less closed in Spina's interpretation than in other recordings. This is due to the fact that the viola player consciously focuses on the contrasts between the disparate textures - the figurative movements in the tonal space on the one hand and the repeatedly intoned repetitions of the fundamental tone on the other - and thereby draws on the compositionally understood development of an overtone spectrum and the resulting the associated developmental process. By simultaneously emphasizing the roughness and disturbances that are increasingly embedded in the progression, she makes the work a gripping study of the transitional areas between sound and noise.
Consequently, the interpreter juxtaposes the 'Prologue' with the works 'Ai limiti della notte' (1979) and 'Tre notturni brillianti' (1974) by Salvatore Sciarrino, which were created almost at the same time and whose effect consists almost exclusively of the use of differentiated sound values. It is fascinating to listen to the energetic processes that Spina uncovers beneath the surface of the younger piece, shaping them into blurred, shimmering contours. Even more impressive, however, are the 'Notturni', in whose rendition the physical component of the virtuosity demanded by Sciarrino - especially its inextricable connection with the musician's breath and movements - emerges very clearly, almost with pictorial conciseness.
In a completely different way, Spina finally shows the interpretative facets with which she reacts to the monological situation that Georges Aperghis creates in 'Volte-Face' (2001), the most recent piece in the recorded selection of works: here her playing appears tender in passages and - sometimes even ironic and playful, and is then confronted with violent outbursts, but always moves in a space of association that reminds the listener of a spoken monologue. It's a bit unfortunate that the CD ends after just under 55 minutes; However, she offers an extremely versatile approach to the repertoire for solo viola, which is recommended to every listener who is not afraid of something new.
dr Stefan Drees
Interpretation: 
Sound quality:
repertoire value: 
Booklets: 
04/2010
El renacer de la viola
La viola siempre has sido considered como un instrumento gris, perdida entre los grandes protagonistas de la cuerda frotada: el violín y el violonchelo. Y, en consecuencia, muchas veces olvidada en su papel de solista oa solo. En nuestro tiempo (y no solo en él, como veremos) ningún instrumento escapa al interés del compositor, como demuestran los registros que presentamos, dos de ellos del sello alemán NEOS y, el tercero, de AEON.
El CD más reciente, aparecido hace unos days, lleva por título ”Works for Viola Solo” que, de la mano de la helvética Anna Spina, nos presenta un recorrido por compositores fundamentales de nuestro tiempo: Georges Aperghis, Salvatore Sciarrino, Bernd Alois Zimmermann y Gerard Grisey.
De Aperghis (Atenas, 1945) -por cierto, del que Spina fue alumna-podemos escuchar una obra de 2001, Times-Face, en la que el compositor trabaja sobre un discurso con presencia de la tradición aunque sin que el gesto “clasico” se presente de forma retórica.
Dos obras de Sciarrino (Palermo, 1947), ambas de los años setenta del pasado siglo, nos situan ante su poetica de forma diversa. En Ai limiti della night (1979) podemos observar y disfrutar de su apelación poetica al silencio ya esa frontera que lo separa del sonido. En Tre notturni brilliant (1974) nos encontramos a otro Sciarrino, más cercano quizá a una estética dionisiaca, en la que incluso podemos ver algunos gestos -no evidentes, por supuesto-que bien podrían atribuirse a determinados elementos culturales provenientes de su origen siciliano.
De Zimmermann (Bliesheim, 1918 – Königsdorf, 1970) podremos escuchar Sonata for solo viola, dated 1955 and the author also wrote a dramatic expression of the instrument, among the great quotes from Bach.
Finalmente, Anna Spina nos propone una version “eléctrica”, aunque lejana a cualquier efectismo fácil, de Prologue (1976), de Grisey (Belfort, 1946 – Paris, 1998), en la que los relieves se construyen -esta vez seguro- en un festival dionisiaco en el que se explota el instrumento en su vertiente más violenta y furiosa.
Mikel Gunkian
La viola sigue cotizando alto en el ambito contemporáneo y cada vez aparecen más trabajos que reúnen grandes páginas del repertorio de los siglos XX y XXI. Así, al reciente recorrido de Christophe Desjardins en el excellent Alto/Multiples (Aeon) hay que sumar Works for viola solo de Anna Spina, que sin abandonar sus raíces classics discurre con maximum efervescencia y efectividad por los cauces de la modernidad sonora.
Alumna de Georges Aperghis y miembro entre otros conjuntos del New Ensemble Contemporain, Spina entrega versiones elaboradas con detallismo de orfebre, buscando -como es habitual en estos casos- exhibir el colorista abanico tímbrico de su instrumento, pero sin ceder aquí a la llamada del efectismo .
Tentación que roza en su tremenda lectura de Prologue de Gérard Grisey, donde subraya el lado expresionista a veces oculto de esta música por medio de un festival de glissandi y estallidos de las cuerdas, llegando por momentos al límite de una viola(ción) en toda regla por la brutalidad de los ataques en su exploration of the armonicos. Impactante traducción, equilibrada a lo largo del disco por sus matizadas versions de dos piezas de Salvatore Sciarrino, Ai limiti della night y Tre notturni brilliant, de sonoridades exquisite variadas para descubrir en esa zona colindante with el silencio todo un universal de poesía.
Lirismo que se tiñe de acentos tragicos en la celebre y oscura Sonata by Bernd Alois Zimmermann, with his own quotes from Bach and large successions of cells and apariencia caóticas, articuladas por una series de alientos y motivos rítmicos.
Spina including además Times-Face de Aperghis, fantasía sabiamente elaborada a partir de contrastes between agudos y graves, tiempos lentos y rápidos, timbres punzantes y aleteantes, registros en lo que la intérprete no deja de demostrar su dominio.
Xavier Palace