infotext:
In each individual way, the composing of Gyorgy Kurtag and Jorg Widman as a constant productive dialogue with musical suggestions from the past.
In Kurtág's oeuvre, this corresponds to the wide range of creative means used, which ranges from the traditional triad and canonical techniques to the handling of noise textures and finds its ideal expression in the fragmentary miniature or in the cycle composed of miniatures.
In contrast, Widmann often feels drawn to the expressive attitudes of the Romantic period and combines their expressiveness with a very personal exploration of sounds.
With the "Messages of the late Miss RV Trussowa" for soprano and chamber ensemble op. 17 (1976-80), Kurtág created a composition whose texts - based on poems by the Russian Rimma Dalos - speak of the failure of human relationships. In language that is as grotesque as it is drastic, they describe a woman's statements about loneliness, exhibitionism and exposure to the limits of self-esteem.
Widmann, on the other hand, focuses on the modeling of the sound: individual instrumental textures with variable density replace one another and thus set in motion a process of different sound qualities gliding into one another, which in the end is increasingly thinned out and finally disintegrates into quiet fragments. In view of this fully composed fading away, the title, with the word formation often used in romantic literature, can be read “dark” as an indication of an existential horizon of reference for the music.
program:
Gyorgy Kurtag
Messages from the late Miss RV Trussova Op. 17 (1976/1980)
Playing time: 26:33
21 pieces for soprano and chamber orchestra based on Russian poems by Rimma Dalos
I. Odinočestvo [Solitude]
01. V prostranstve [In a room]
02. Den' upal [The day fell]
II. Nemnogo erotièeskoe [Something erotic]
01. Žar [Fever]
02. Dva spletënnych [Two intertwined]
03. Poèemu mne ne vizžat' svin'ej [Why shouldn't I squeak like a pig]
04. Èastuška [Chastushka]
III. Gor'kij opyt – sladost' i gore [Bitter experience – sweetness and sorrow]
01. Ty vynul [You took the heart]
02. Velikaja beda [Great Distress]
03. Kameški [Pebbles]
04. Tonkaja igla [The Thin Needle]
05. Znaju, ljubimomu [I know my lover]
06. Cvetov osennich uvjaden'e [Withering of autumn flowers]
07. V tebe svoë spasenie išèu [I seek my salvation in you]
08. Tvoi isèeznoven'ja [Your frequent disappearances]
09. Ja bez tebja [Me Without You]
10. Lyubi menja [Love me]
11. Rasplata [Retribution]
12. Igruška [toy]
13. Zaèem ty proiznës [Why did you say]
14. V livne [In the shower]
15. Za vsë [For everything (epilogue)]
Claudia Barainsky, soprano
Rudiger Bohn, conductor
œnm . Austrian ensemble for new music
Jorg Widman
... gloomy ... .
for chamber orchestra
Playing time: 22:33
œnm . Austrian ensemble for new music
total: 49:14
Press:
04.10.2008
Launched last summer by the former owner of the col legno label, NEOS is the latest arrival to disprove the notion that the classical-record industry is in its death throes. Initially released in Germany, the first batch of NEOS recordings has just arrived in Britain, and shows the same commitment to the wide range of contemporary music that has characterized col legno's output.
Naturally enough for a German-based company, there is an emphasis on central European composers, some of whom remain little known in Britain. But this pairing of György Kurtág's best-known work with an ensemble piece from 2000 by Jörg Widmann (born in 1973) deserves to travel farther.
Messages of the Late Miss RV Troussova, 21 settings of poems by Rimma Dalos, was the piece that cemented Kurtág's international reputation. Its fiercely concentrated aphoristic world, obviously indebted to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, still packs a punch, especially when sung with the dramatic panache Claudia Barainsky brings to it.
Widmann's ... gloomy ..., meanwhile, is a study in continuous textural change that uses its instrumental resources with great fluency.
Andrew Clements
11.2007
07.2007
