Klaus Ospald: Tschappina Variations, Concerto for Ensemble and Violin

Tschappina Variations – Concerto for Ensemble and Violin

In the music of Klaus Ospald, one quickly perceives its great eloquence; his instrumental music also gives the listener the impression that he is being told something that can be grasped in language.

In addition to the unmistakable rhythmic design, which knows many states between the poles of almost torpor and driven rushing and often gives the progression of the compositions something almost scenic, it is the expressive gesture of the pitch contours and the specific sonority and coloring of the temporal progression that create the semantic impression amplify many times.

One of the essential constants is the process-related variation. The two components in the title of the Tschappina-Variations can be understood as a two-faced reference to this constant: “Variations” clearly designate the principle that is causal and consistently dominant for the formation of the piece, both in large and in compositional detail.

The name of the Graubünden mountain village Tschappina, on the other hand, stands abstractly and symbolically for the "place" close to nature, the observation of which inevitably and profoundly led Ospald to deal with questions of compositional design and the existential in general:

"The open encounter, the astute perception of nature, its evolutionary process allow one to experience its phenomena existentially, and if you don't discover something special in the smallest stone, even if it's on your doorstep, even the most distant distances won't help you. The fact that the sudden appearance and disappearance of life in the broadest sense, its passing, dying out and dissolving, comes to a metamorphosis in the process of transformation and thus repeatedly generates life […] connects them deeply with the essence of music.”

The beginning unites motif and gesture. Glissando movements, predominantly sinking down, but also slipping up, characterize the first events and then permeate the entire piece in many different forms; this core element can unfold spun lines in its course, conversely be reflected in the vertical and crystallize into repetitively recorded intervals.

If motif germs continue purely compositionally and form new states that are nevertheless reconnected in their substance, the state of mind articulated by this initial core, comprehensible not least as a gesture of lamentation, is transported in a variety of forms at the same time.

In addition, the principle of the variable remains elementary overall. All sections characterized by excitement and liveliness can already be heard one below the other as a chain of variants, but internally they also string together variations (the opening formal part already consists of an agitato with three variations, and sections with a variation are also provided several times in the further course).

These sections are interspersed with isolated insertions, in which elements of the beginning are reflected in a different state, even a kind of idyll (memory) is conjured up, but also the questioning, if not even resignation, is expressed. Towards the end of the piece – marked in the score by the inserted poem about loss “Geht, Kinder, nicht ans Wasser 'nan” from Rückert's Kindertodtenlieder – this restraint has the upper hand.

Viewed as a whole, the concerto for ensemble and violin is characterized even more strongly by listening to states and sensitivities; in a way it continues where the Tschappina Variations left off.

Here, too, there is contrasting, tangled movement and, towards the end, a violent outburst, but for long stretches there is an attitude of restraint, of letting go, concentrating on individual tones or soundscapes. The solo violin often feels its way, gives gestures and impetus, sings into vibrating surfaces or sound situations, but can also be completely absorbed in the group events.

A frequently recurring element of expression is the conscious grasping of tones over large spatial distances, as well as the contrast between height and depth is articulated again and again.

In the concert, too, a course of events develops that, despite all the contrasting moments, is carried by a single, pervasive energy. In the process, opposites can meet abruptly (e.g. in the calm flow of section I in the form of two parentheses – the first consisting of a few bars to be played agitato, which is characterized by the note Launische Replica, alluding to Schumann, a second, a longer outburst a little later effecting), but there are also structural and content-related interlockings over longer periods of time, for example when certain passages from the same basic attitude establish an overarching reference network.

Examples of this are the sections designated as heterophony 1, 2 and 3, which can all be understood as a derivation or new illumination of elements from the introduction and part I: the first is characterized by the superimposition of descending, lament-associating scales of different lengths and rhythms; the second starts from a single tonal axis, articulated differently according to playing style and rhythm; a field surrounding the repeated broken chords of the solo violin with short elements obtained from the same stock of notes and layered in and on top of each other, coloring the third.

Perception of nature, nature and the individual, the process of transformation and conversion, transience, reflection and intuition, humor (in the sense of Sterne or Jean Paul) these are the triggers and creative forces that can be named in these two pieces.

Hence the composer's confession that he has not yet found a more beautiful motto for his works than this saying by Jean Paul: "Here negatively electric philosophy and positively electric enthusiasm struggle with one another for a balance. […] When man measures and connects the infinite with the small world, as humor does, that laughter arises, in which there is still pain and greatness.”

Wolfgang Thein

21:53 Tschappina Variations (2001)
for ensemble

[01] I Agitato with 3 variations
[02] II trope
[03] III Presto with a trope, a variation and a reminiscence
[04] IV Capriccio with a variation
Enclave (Go, kids, not to the water 'nan)
[05] V very slow
[06] VI lo stesso tempo
[07] VII a little slower

36:00 Concerto for Ensemble and Violin .
Dedicated to Bettina Boller

[08] Introduction (“Broulliards”)
Monsieur Croche, the fog and the humorist...
[09] I slowly
1. Parenthesis (capricious replica)
2. Parenthesis
[10] II (Indian nocturne) heterophonial
[11] III (...like a song from afar...)
3. Parenthesis
“Brouillards” (only fog…)
[12] IV Heterophony 2 / Heterophony 3
[13] V alla tedesca 1
[14] VI fossil chorale / alla tedesca 2

total 58:02

Bettina Boller, violin
Collegium Novum Zurich
Peter Hirsch, conductor

04.02.2008

Powerful messages in silence

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We owe the young label NEOS not only releases of new music that has been blessed with media attention - the series of documentation CDs of last year's Donaueschinger Musiktage should be mentioned - but also music around which it is quiet, works by composers who are not have to get through to the public at all costs, but rather unswervingly translate their messages into sounds. Klaus Ospald is one such composer whose name is not often found in the current discourse on contemporary music, although his Tschappina Variations were awarded the SWR Orchestra Prize in Donaueschingen, which was awarded for the first time in 2005. This hidden activity, the evasion of contemporaneity, can certainly help the music to gain greater depth; The recently released recording of two works by Klaus Ospald on NEOS bears witness to this: The Tschappina Variations for ensemble and the Concerto for ensemble and violin, both in interpretations by the Collegium Novum under the direction of Peter Hirsch.
In his Tschappina Variations, Ospald sets nature abstractly as a counter-image to everything superficial, to the senseless appropriation and exaltation of human achievements, through the reference to a Swiss mountain village. 'If you don't discover something special in the smallest stone, even if it's on your doorstep, even the most distant distances won't help you.' Discovering something special and worth living on a small scale becomes the central concern of Klaus Ospald's music. The Tschappina Variations in particular are dominated from the start by the finely tuned gesture, which, like the human being, 'comes out of nowhere and disappears into nothingness'. The rough is alien to this sonority at heart, and is only used when it is supposed to antithetically confirm the truth of what has been heard. The final chorus from Beethoven's ninth symphony – appropriated and decontextualized as a European anthem – is ironically alienated as just revenge on the ruthlessness of a social structure dominated by self-interest.
Klaus Ospald's music puts its thorn deep into these encrustations, but not with the means of its opponent, but with the modest size of the small and still. Ospald avoids the danger of naivety and simplicity through the constant process nature of his music. His ensemble piece is entitled 'Variations', and the variative becomes the basic pattern of the progression of the music. In addition, Ospald zooms his compositional gaze into the microstructure of what is described, so that extremely polyphonic, multi-layered and moving lines emerge.
The Collegium Novum Zurich under the direction of Peter Hirsch provides a lively interpretation of the work, clear and pure in structure, colorful and sensitive in the sound design.
Similar to the Tschappina Variations, the concerto for ensemble and violin also consciously exposes the contrasts between the silent and the sudden. Observing conditions, listening to what could happen, dominates the course of the music for long stretches. An intimate, consensual dialogue develops between the ensemble and the violin, which is determined by reacting to one another, by giving back and caution to what has already been heard and what is still being formed. Bettina Boller, herself a member of the Collegium Novum, communicates here as a soloist in a subtle way with her colleagues and perfectly captures the unpretentious character that characterizes the piece. With her, the instrumental difficulties never stand alone, as a virtuoso end in themselves, but blend imperceptibly into a homogeneous overall sound.
Characteristic of Klaus Ospald's music is a subtle, gentle sense of humour, which is particularly important in this concerto; a 'capricious replica' or a 'fossil chorale' in the movement headings suggest this. The awareness that man is only 'a glance at nature' prompts Ospald to a musical serenity, which, however, never turns into arbitrariness due to his fine tonal and structural powers of observation. A quote from Jean Paul guides him to his works: 'When man measures and connects the infinite with the small world, as humor does, that laughter arises, in which there is still pain and greatness.'
With this recording, the listener holds a highly intellectually stimulating compendium of deep musicality and structural thinking. Without a doubt, Klaus Ospald's music deserves to open the view of what is obvious to a larger audience.

Paul Huebner