SWR Sinfonieorchester / Sylvain Cambreling HELMUT LACHENMANN Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern

Concertante recording of Helmut Lachenmann’s groundbreaking opera, and the first to feature the revised version, the so-called “Tokyo-Fassung” which the composer now regards as definitive. The opera, while loosely based on Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale is not a work that admits of a single “meaning”, its plotline is multiple and diffuse, but an undercurrent of social criticism is implied as Lachenmann views the pauper (The Little Match Girl), the terrorist (Gudrun Ensslin)and the visionary artist (Da Vinci) all as outsiders, figures on the fringes of society, driven to the margins by circumstances and by society’s coldness, and, in consequence, playing with fire in their responses. Coldness, figuratively and literally, is one of the opera’s subjects. Extreme cold and burning desire, as attitudes and conditions, counterpoint each other in the music. The action evolves through the suggestibility of the sounds which Lachenmann deploys like no one else and with a poetry all his own. “Not only is ‘The Little Match Girl’ by far the biggest work of one of Europe’s most esteemed composers, but it magnifies the qualities of strangeness and intensity, of huge but frustrated power, that have given him his reputation” (Paul Griffiths, The New York Times)

Münchener Kammerorchester / Alexander Liebreich TOSHIO HOSOKAWA Landscapes

ECM’s ongoing series of recordings with the Munich Chamber Orchestra continues with an intriguing album of new and recent pieces by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa. Amongst the featured compositions are “Sakura für Otto Tomek” and “Cloud and Light”, both written in 2008, and “Ceremonial Dance”, written in 2000. These 21st century pieces are brought together with “Landscape V” (originally from 1993 and for string quartet, and subsequently expanded into an orchestral version). Mayumi Miyata, perhaps contemporary music’s best-known shô player, is heard here with the MKO in a recording made at Munich’s Himmelfahrtskirche (Church of the Ascension) in October 2009.

Paul Griffiths describes the internal processes of Hosokawa’s music in the liner notes: “The interplay of shô and strings, and in particular their mutual imitation, is the driving force – or perhaps one should say ‘drifting force’, given that the music carries itself so lightly. 

These two central components moving in tandem suggest the confluence of vapour and light of which clouds are made. (…) Almost everything is centred in the shô and its world of far-off harmonies, soft yet scintillating – harmonies as impalpable and ever-changing as clouds. Like clouds, Hosokawa’s music is constantly in motion yet constantly the same. As the piece continues, its effect is of observing clouds in a largely peaceful sky, clouds that are mostly white but occasionally show shadows and briefly stir into more turbulent action.”
Landscapes is ECM’s second reckoning with Hosowaka: his music was previously featured on the critically acclaimed Yun/Bach/Hosokawa album of Thomas Demenga (ECM 1782), issued a decade ago. Since then, the composer’s music has been heard with increasing frequency in Europe. In July of this year, Hosakawa’s opera “Matsukaze”, with choreography by Sascha Waltz, was premiered at the Berlin Staatsoper and received much positive media attention including a full page in the NY Times. (ECM Records)

CHAYA CZERNOWIN Afatsim

Born in Israel, composer Chaya Czernowin has lived in Germany, Japan and the U.S. Her teachers included Dieter Schnebel, Joan Tower, Brian Ferneyhough and Roger Reynolds.
Czernowin's sound occupies a unique world. Often many instruments are used to become one "composite" instrument. Time is slowed down, so that the slow flow of sound enables one to perceive the smallest details of a texture or a sound. The resulting music can feel fluid, dense or agitated, at times echoing that of Xenakis and Ferneyhough.
She has been awarded numerous international prizes including: Gaudeamus Composer's Workshop, DAAD Scholarship (Berlin), Stipendium Preis and Kranichsteiner Musikpreis (Darmstadt), Asahi Shimbum Fellowship (Tokyo), NEA Composition Commission Grant, ISCM and IRCAM commissions.
Czernowin is on the composition faculty of the University of California at San Diego. This is the debut recording of her works.
A special opportunity to hear an exciting voice in New Music. (Mode Records)