program:
Maurice Kagel (* 1931)
[01] 27:39 p.m Divertime? .
Farce for ensemble
Schoenberg Ensemble Amsterdam
Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor
Alberto Posadas (* 1967)
[02] 22:27 p.m Anamorphosis (2006)
for large ensemble
Schoenberg Ensemble Amsterdam
Reinbert de Leeuw, conductor
total 50:06
Press:
TBU
On my first listening to this disc—with the somewhat undescriptive title “Donaueschinger Musiktage 2006, Vol. 4”—these two works seemed odd discmates indeed. Aside from the fact that they were commissioned by the SWR and appeared on the same concert, they seemed to have little in common. The Kagel, in keeping with the tone of many of his works, is jokey and light-hearted. The Posadas is a very powerful and intense work.
I have enjoyed the work of Mauricio Kagel (b. 1931) since I happened upon an LP with his Fantasia for Organ with obligatory many years ago. Self-taught, Argentinean born, now German, he first began writing music in a reaction against the musical strictures of the Perón government. His works are generally very theatrical, involving the performers in actions and attitudes outside of the mere playing of the music. He also frequently appeals to a sense of the absurd, making his points—political, personal, or professional—in an almost slapstick fashion. I'm not sure that they are always supposed to be funny, but the Fantasia, with its flushing toilets, trains, and egg timers certainly appealed to my Monty Python side, then and now. Divertimento?—Farce for Ensemble appeals to me in the same way. Kagel ponders, in his notes, the relationship between the conductor and the performers who create a performance through the voluntary submission of their wills to that leader with the score. The farce represents what happens when that relationship breaks down to an absurd degree. Therefore, what one hears is chaos: bits and pieces of melodies overlap and collide; radios are tuned; whistles blow; violists hold notes for an eternity. Occasionally something like unanimity is achieved and then it all falls apart, or is torn apart, or blows up. Great stuff. I only wish I could see what is happening.
Spanish composer Alberto Posadas (b. 1967), on the other hand, has written a work as serious as the mathematics he used to create it. I say that with some trepidation, as mathematically derived music can be very sterile. Anamorfosis is definitely not sterile. Though I won't pretend for a minute that I can discern how the music is developed, I can say that the result is very striking. Posadas takes his inspiration from anamorphic imagery, a type of visual art in which what appears distorted in a normal straight-on viewing becomes recognizable when viewed at an extreme angle. He applies a set of logarithmic transformations to the sound spectrum, creating shifting harmonic relationships and sound textures. These are developed, overlaid, and built to remarkable climaxes. It is not “easy” music by any means, but listening to the sometimes Ligeti-like chords being pulled and twisted until they seem to come into focus and then twist away again is absolutely mesmerizing.
So, on closer inspection—and a perusal of the composer-written notes is a big help—it is apparent that there are, after all, some threads of similarity here to make a challenging program. At the least, both works are making serious statements in their own very different ways, and both deal with order and distortion and confusion and resolution. It seems almost impossible that these are but two of four new works played at this one-up festival concert. The execution is amazing, as both of these works make tremendous demands on the technical ability of the players of the Schönberg Ensemble Amsterdam. Reinbert de Leeuw is the long-time conductor of this extraordinary ensemble, which I see from their website is about to be combined with the equally talented Asko Ensemble. I trust this does not signal a regrettable reduction in their activities. There are notes on the music and composers in German, English, and French. The sound from the CD layer is warm, clear, and focused. The stereo SACD layer adds more detail and depth. I did not audition the 5.1 surround version. Given the realities of the recorded music market, I suggest that you move quickly if you would like a chance to hear these remarkable works. Their time in the catalog is almost certainly limited.
Ronald E.Grames
03.2008
15.02.2008
One of the features of the newly launched Neos catalog is its recordings of premieres from the new music festivals of central Europe.
The Donaueschinger Musiktage is perhaps the most distinguished and influential of all those gatherings these days, and this pair of premieres - from an unpredictable elder statesman of European contemporary music alongside a work by a Spanish composer still in his 30s - is one of four discs released on Neos this month devoted to pieces introduced at the festival in 2006.
Alberto Posadas's Anamorfosis is the easier to reckon with, for its spectralist soundscapes are shaped into a dramatic profile that packs a real punch. Typically, however, Mauricio Kagel's Divertimento? is hard to describe and quantify. Kagel calls it a “farce for ensemble”, and the audience laughter caught on the recording suggests that some important elements go missing in this audio-only version.
However, the music, with its strangely disorienting harmony and sudden, arresting gestures, remains compelling in its own right.
Andrew Clements
13.12.2007
Old and young and new and old
Interpretation: 
Sound quality:
repertoire value:
Booklets:
The Donaueschinger Musiktage are a melting pot of musical CVs. This is where careers begin, but this is also where established composers allow the public to pay homage, delivering confessional or irrelevant late work. At last year's Schönberg Ensemble concert, three young composers presented themselves to the public with new works, and Mauricio Kagel, a well-known composer, was also a guest. That sounds like an exciting juxtaposition, which appeared in part on the fourth installment of the Donaueschingen documentation 2006, which is being published by the young label NEOS.
A radical work by a young Russian composer, 'Contra-Relief' by Dmitri Kourliandski, stuck in the audience's memory above all. On this CD, however, Alberto Posadas' 'Anamorfosis' represents the younger guard. The work of the young Spaniard is extremely complex, intelligently formulated in its filigree sonority and consistently well thought out: based on logarithmic relationships, Posadas tries to achieve a constant distortion and equalization of the musical texture, similar to the anamorphic technique in painting, which involves different perspectives is working. As a whole, however, the work has its tiring lengths, the basic principle of the composition often falls behind due to the dense internal structure and thus comes across as unconvincing. The aftertaste is a beautifully formulated nothingness that sounds somehow new, but doesn't want to be carried away into a compelling statement.
Completely different is Mauricio Kagel's new ensemble piece 'Divertimento? – Farce for Ensemble', a work that one would have expected from Kagel in this way and in no other way, and which, thanks to its inner stringency and the power of the personal style, was able to find better access to the audience. Kagel's farce is musical theatre, a renewed attempt to question the conductor's position, to musically illuminate differences and conflicts within a group. The result is a whole series of scenic episodes, seasoned with a strong pinch of Kagel's typical sense of humour. Behind this entertaining surface, however, things are bubbling away, and Maurico Kagel does not limit himself to theatrical effects: the platitude questions itself, the choice of what is obvious becomes self-criticism.
The work was also excellent thanks to the congenial collaboration of the Schönberg Ensemble Amsterdam under its conductor Reinbert de Leeuw. De Leeuw is predestined like no other for the interpretation of Kagel's irritations, and so a highly personal, musically and theatrically deep and at the same time entertaining performance emerges. The fact that the listener can only understand the auditory level in the present documentation must be seen as a clear shortcoming, even if Kagel himself did not want the visual level to be overrated. However, many apparent musical flatnesses can only be explained by the dramaturgy and so remains Divertimento? strangely one-dimensional in the canned version.
Paul Huebner
12.2007
