infotext:
SCHUMANN METAMORPHOSIS AND PIANO SONATAS Hermann Keller continues to compose "score music" and, when he improvises on the piano, always stirs the sleep of real discovery. For him, the fact that the passionate artist needs counterparts in order to give his music authenticity and vitality is a cardinal prerequisite for creative work. Using design techniques carefully, always wringing new facets from them, independently conducting research into materials, how they originally sound, in which contexts they arise and appear, and how they could possibly be processed are Keller virtues. Furthermore, the possibility of composing tensions, the major-minor tensions, for example, the tensions of Schumann's cross rhythm, the tensions that lie in the rhythmic fundus of European and non-European musical practice. cotyledons. Schumann Metamorphoses for piano Part 1 exposes a triad that seems to haunt the whole piece, but can never really exist. This goes until its destruction. Harmless at first, how the same is expanded, chromatized, brought to dissonance, only to then fall into a prepared environment (parts 2 and 3). Part 4, an Adagio, quotes verbatim - it is the only passage in the piece - four notes by Schumann himself, namely off Carnival, No. 8 »Réplique« (from this the No. 3 of the »Sphinxes«, a bass figure in pound notes, which is not played). The notes appear threefold: played on keys, plucked and muted. Part 6 brings something like chord games in changing positions and colors. Part 7 offers virtuoso figurations that dissolve into clusters of tones and single tones. A typical Schumann closing formula can be found – surprisingly – at the end of Part 8. Part 11 activates Schumann's counter-rhythm for the first time (cf. Presto-Intermezzo »Paganini« from No. 16 Carnival), whose pulse is taken to the extreme in parts 13 and 15. Keller calls them "cross-rhythmics." The contrasting section 14 sounds like an unfinished twelve-tone piece. Part 16 brings the already problematic nuances around the initial triad completely into crisis through wildest cluster actions, while the finale through wildly attacking fff-Forearm cluster puts an end to all appearances. Schumann Metamorphoses for violin and piano Of course, Keller accepts the old material he chose himself, but at the same time challenges it in the most outrageous way. There isn't a phrase in which the wire rake doesn't go through the invoice. Nowhere does Schumann's material strut straight across the stage. Everywhere lurks the differently tempered attack and assault. Clusters, whether blunt or cutting, are as little silent as harmonics demolishing all friendliness. Subtle preparations, biting glissandi, invigorating counter-rhythms and the like drive their evils. No matter how the duets behave, they both demonstrate and attack the beautiful memory. And – the more vehemently, more ingeniously they do it, the livelier the music is. 2. Sonata for piano Movement 2 organizes music in the spirit of minimal art, initially in a very small space, then expanding further and further. Only a sustained chord can stop the constantly changing, highly varied, furious process. Movement 3 articulates poetic tones. The chromatic total comes into play melodically. Gestures of remembrance and gestures of mourning are audible at the end. Movement 5 is the most important of the whole. An almost floating, dynamically abruptly changing introduction precedes a strictly constructed rondo, in which both familiar and new material are expressed in a playful way. The composition closes with the untameable cluster repetitions that are obligatory for Keller. 3. Sonata for piano (on two instruments quarter tones apart) In Tempo Adagio, Part 3 presents the sensitive handling of tonal and non-tonal chord formations, individual tones, timbres and preparations. In part 4, felt mallets dance cruelly and beautifully over the strings and rubber wheels roll irregularly over the keys. The final section 5 begins longingly and ends in quarter-tone garlands and rhythms. As expected, militant cluster cascades populate the end. Stefan Amzoll |
program:
[01] cotyledons Schumann Metamorphoses for piano (2001) 14:22
Herman Keller, piano
[02] Schumann Metamorphoses for violin and piano (1996) 16:38
Antje Messerschmidt, violin
Herman Keller, piano
2. Sonata for piano (2001) 23:14
[03] I. 06:53
[04] II. Perpetuum mobile 05:07
[05] III. elegy 02:53
[06] IV. Introduction 02:10
[07] V. Rondo 06:11
Tomas Bachli, piano
3. Sonata for piano (2008) 17: 53
[08] I. 04:30
[09] II. 01:54
[10] III. 04:40
[11] IV. 02:09
[12] V. 01:12
[13] VI. 03:28
Herman Keller, piano
total time: 72:08
World Premiere Recordings
Press:
21.03.2011
If you're the adventurous type, there are some interesting, ear-teasing sonorities here to explore.
Hermann Keller (born 1945) is a name that most classical music lovers on this side of the Atlantic won't have heard before. In fact, as far as I can tell, this is only the second recording of Keller's music available, both on the NEOS label. However, Keller may be familiar to jazz enthusiasts as a member of the Berlin Improvisation Quartet; his name seems to ring a bell with me in that context. At any rate, very little of his jazz roots inform the music on this disc, though much of it does have an improvisatory feel.
If you're looking for Schumann in the Schumann Metamorphoses, then you'll want to turn to the set for violin and piano. There are obvious quotations from Schumann's late Violin Concerto and not-so-recognizable ones from the song Mondnacht (Liederkreis, Op. 39) and Geistervariionen (Spirit Variations), the last piece Schumann completed before his final mental breakdown. Since the theme of Ghost Variations (which Schumann claimed was brought to him by the spirits of Schubert and Mendelssohn) markedly resembles that from the slow movement of the Violin Concerto, it seems Keller wants to explore the dark, haunted world of Schumann's musical imagination as he approached his final dissolution. Even the earlier Mondnacht concerns a nighttime reverie in which the speaker of the poem imagines his soul flying home over a moonlit landscape. Keller's music is appropriately haunted and, in spots, haunting: fragmentary, elusive, tormented, as Schumann's tender melodies are assailed by tone clusters, raking dissonances and glissandi. [If you're not completely geared up for this hard-hitting serialization, you might have your very own mental breakdown…Ed.]
Schumann is harder to find in Keimblätter (Ectoderms), where the only readily identifiable snippet comes from the bounding, virtuosic “Paganini” section of Carnaval, and this doesn't show up till more than halfway through the piece. But Schumann's addiction to cross-rhythms is explored in the frantic polyrhythms of germ layers. Teasingly, the work starts with a simple, entirely tonal rolled chord, and occasionally tonal bits and pieces well up in the prevailingly dodecaphonic musical argument.
As in the two sonatas on the disc, Keller seems most intent on exploiting various sonorities available to him at the keyboard—as well as under the hood, so to speak, as he calls for plucked or thrummed strings, either damped or undamped. For me, a little of this goes a long way. I was intrigued by the Schumann Metmorphoses, especially the set for piano and violin. But by the time I waded into the Third Piano Sonata, I felt I was familiar enough with Keller's idiom to know how this one would play out. Still, for the adventurous, for those who like to keep abreast of contemporary music for piano, and for those who are interested in modern German composers' fascination with their musical forebear Robert Schumann, there are some interesting and ear-teasing sonorities here to explore .
—Lee Passarella
04.10.2010
Hermann Keller Schumann Metamorphoses
Both as a composer and as a performer, Hermann Keller is a restless experimenter: always looking for a new variation, a change and a preparation of the sound in space. He has always devoted himself to improvisation, which for him always represents research into the overall context of a work.
Keller will still be known to some, or better known, as a founding member of the Berlin Improvisation Quartet and Trio alongside Manfred Schulze, which was particularly successful during the GDR era. Keller's works range from free improvisations with echoes of jazz from all areas of music around the world to fully composed contemporary serious music.
Confrontation with Schumann
Confrontation with Schumann
On the occasion of Schumann's year, the current CD includes two piano sonatas from 2001 and 2008 as well as two works that deal with the great jubilarian. Both are described by the composer as Schumann metamorphoses, but they differ greatly in terms of thematic-motivic conception and implementation. You will (almost) search in vain for direct Schumann quotations in the “Kem Leaves” for solo piano, which were created in 2001. Rather, it is selected structures of Schumann's piano music such as certain rhythms, figurative models and “infamous” modes of articulation that interest Hermann Keller.
Prepared worlds of sound
Prepared worlds of sound
A triad is thus exposed, which shimmers again and again in the course of the almost quarter-hour work, always distorted, expanded or broken down into its individual tones by tonally exciting filters. In doing so, Keller guides the listener through partially prepared sound worlds, which are by no means unheard (and certainly not unheard of), but significantly increase the listening pleasure. But such fine experiments never appear as mere illusions, they are always in a concrete context, often as a direct answer to what has already been heard.
Commented, developed further, alienated
Commented, developed further, alienated
The “Schumann Metamorphoses” for violin and piano (1996), on the other hand, use themes from the late Ghost Variations, the D minor Violin Concerto and the famous Moonlit Night. The processing is carried out in an almost “classic” way. The material is recorded, commented on, expanded upon and alienated by the counterpart. But Keller never allows a pure quotation; one always has the feeling that the two soloists do not trust musical memory - and the more sophisticated they do this, the more lively and exciting the music becomes.
Memories of a western piano
Memories of a western piano
In the two piano sonatas, Keller moves more in the micro area. His 3rd sonata (2008) can even be played on two instruments a quarter tone apart. The composer explores the relationship between consonance and dissonance in a most subtle way, major and minor frictions get their own inner tension through the slight distortion, which is sometimes reminiscent of a western piano. Cleverly added preparations breathe life into the strictly structured structure in a delightful way.
Johann Jan