PETER RUZICKA – PIANO WORKS
FIVE SCENES
Peter Ruzicka remarked in 2009 on the occasion of a new production of his opera CELANthat some central moments of the full orchestral score can also be "represented" in a new aesthetic form in the linearity of the piano writing. In this opera, key traumatic experiences in the life of the poet, who survived the Holocaust, are often re-examined and alienated.
The first piece opens with a central motif of the opera. Extraversion and introversion are constantly changing. In the following piece, two chord bells engage in a dialogue that seems to be determined by the rhythmic vagueness of a gentle wind. Finally, they break apart into five individual bells – until finally, united in one bell, they sink into even, introspective beats like in a prayer. Musically determining for the third piece is an obsessive focus on the note A and on percussive effects that are realized with the knuckles. Peter Ruzicka wrote about this piano cycle that in part it was "settled on the verge of being unplayable," which in this piece refers to the required jumping technique while at the same time realizing a highly differentiated dynamic. The fourth piece begins with a tender, cantabile, four-part movement, a quotation from the composer himself from his cantata composed forty years earlier Tonight. The piano writing, which escalates to extreme expressiveness, embodies Celan's psyche, which struggles to the point of conflict. In the final piece, the obsessively pounding gestures of the third scene are sublimated by a special play of timbres: ten times a chord repetition is pedaled so subtly that the tied last chord appears as its own pianissimo phantom. This pausing of the music should go hand in hand with the listener's »self-awareness«.
PAREREGON
The six-part cycle was written in 2006/2007 parallel to Ruzicka's second opera HOLDERLIN. Instead of being communicated in the dramaturgy of the stage, what is happening is now communicated solely through the music. After the opening piece - in the opera presented in several scenes in rich string sound - has faded away, this phenomenon can be clearly experienced in the following piece, which is a concentrate of the scenes »Expulsion from Paradise« and »Angst nicht als Angst, das Trembling Kollektiv« . In fact, the music (»shadowy«) consistently represents flight and fear of death. As a consequence, the third piece follows: In the opera, the scene title is »The human does not pull up (...)«, the scene description »in wild turmoil everyone throws themselves on everyone (…) «. On the piano, this corresponds to a »cannibalism of the voices« in the sense of pure desire to destroy as well as the thirst for survival. In the next piece follows, in quadruple sforzato, a collapse of the sky, repeated three times - the climax of the intoxication of violence in the PAREREGONcycle is reached. In the contemplative fifth piece, four voices floating in space and time form the polyphony at the beginning, eventually leading to a chorale movement that is central to the opera. The music plunges into the oppressive silence of a spiral of repetition, in which time seems to stretch out endlessly, even seem to dissolve – there is no escaping the pull of eternity. In the final piece there are archaic-sacral imaginations of Japanese gagaku music, which also seem to echo the instruments used, such as the sho mouth organ in the chords in the right hand. »Points of light« appear in the form of surprising fifths. This calm, concentrated to the extreme, is increasingly replaced by an inner urge of the music. After the climax, a process of reconciliation begins - the music finally makes peace in the sense of Hölderlin's sentence "Man's eternal longing for unity with himself and nature".
PRELUDES
The six-part cycle composed in 1987 can be understood as Ruzicka's piano work, in which he identified most intensively with the instrumental quality of the piano. In this cycle, the piano can be a »percussion instrument« in the best sense of the word. Formally, this cycle is subject to an intricate pairing of structurally similar musical forms. The first and fourth pieces are associated with wooden sticks such as marimba and xylophone. Both preludes are opened by an impulse from which a string of pearls-like leggierezza cascade emerges – dynamically comparable to a wind chime made to dance by a capricious and mysterious wind. The fourth piece with the performance marking with delicacy is characterized by a central sighing motif G#-D-C#, which appears five times in succession as a counterpoint to glockenspiel-like garlands. The Target Tone Are you there forms an imaginary nucleus in this Prélude. Both preludes close with meditatively insistent chords like distant cathedral bells. The second Prélude closes with the same gesture, but obsessively, as if one were standing in the tower of that cathedral. This final signature is indicative of the character of this prelude, which frantically recites the loud frenzy of a percussive sound speech. In a related sequence of tones, descending and ascending movements of the chromatic demisemiquavers also determine the fifth prelude, which appears like a virtuoso humoresque. In the third prelude, Religious - overwritten, floating chords in the middle voices form the calming pole, while the voices, clearly contoured in treble and bass, move with increasing expressivity. They reach a climax in the piano's most tense register, only to end in ever deeper resignation in a wide-ranging coda. Each beat that follows the previous one in a crescendo seems like the appeal of a Chinese gong: the ambitus becomes larger, the harmonic density more and more demonic. Tomb, the sixth Prélude, is characterized by an eight-part chord, similar to the third Prélude, reminiscent of the last of Schönberg's Six Little Piano Pieces remind. This »death bell motif« is characterized by the tritone interval in both the melody part and the accompaniment. It's the oppressive timbre of death.
GUESSED THE TIME…
The three night pieces composed in 1969 are among the works in which Ruzicka found his own compositional language. In the foreword he writes: »The three night pieces were formed during my encounter with the poems of the cycle Glowing puzzles by Nelly Sachs. They are reflections of inner movements, which received their impulse from the communication with the central layers of these poems«. Like the poet's lyrics, the music she reflects stimulates the synaesthetic sense - it's as if she were creating a painting with traces of sound. Playing, dancing, exalted and introverted is revealed in the first night piece Jeux d'eau in all its color facets. We also encounter the element of water in the second night piece, which appears like a danced natural catastrophe. In the middle part follows an elegy that seems to feel its way forward without orientation, which makes it clear that this piano cycle could be subtitled “Songs without Words”. That with Elegiaco The titled third night piece is characterized by the composer's "fields of memory" that preserve essential moments of silence: from Beethoven's Piano Sonata op. 110 and the last of the Six Little Piano Pieces op. 19 by Schoenberg. »To the point of complete extinction« – coming out of stillness, this cycle finally descends into nothingness.
COMPENSATION
The approximately two-minute serial study with the date of origin »1966-2009« owes its existence to a strange coincidence. After its premiere in 1970, the manuscript was lost. In 2009, Benjamin Fenker reconstructed the pure musical text based on the audio recording of the world premiere, which Peter Ruzicka reworked in terms of tempo, dynamics, phrasing and rhythm. The work experienced a kind of journey through time and is the hidden Opus 1 - but at the same time his youngest piano work for the time being.
Sophie Mayuko cousin
