Elisabeth Kufferath TWO

                                                                                TWO

FRIEDRICH CERHA / FRANZ SCHREKER

As Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich points out in his liner notes, Friedrich Cerha (born 1926 in Vienna) is a musician who has stood above the “schismatic rivalries” of musical modernism, being one of very few composers associated with both streams of Viennese dodecaphony: J.M. Hauer’s on one side, and Schoenberg’s on the other. The post-Schoenberg school is especially indebted to him for his completion of Act 3 of Alban Berg’s “Lulu”. Around the world, the work continues to be performed in Cerha’s version. In 1958 Friedrich Cerha co-founded the ensemble ‘die reihe’ which remained under his direction until 1983 and continues to be a committed force in the cause of contemporary music. Cerha’s orchestral cycle “Spiegel” and his operas “Baal” and “Der Rattenfänger” are amongst his major works.

In 1989 the Wien Modern Festival commissioned a cello concerto from Cerha. The result was “Phantasiestück in C’s Manier”, now the 2nd movement of the present three-movement concerto completed in 1996, in response to a commission from the Berlin Festival. It is a powerful work of concentrated energy and textural density. Cerha notes that “Intricacy and multi-layeredness are characteristic elements of my recent essays in concerto form.” Cerha sets Heinrich Schiff some tough challenges in his journey through the ever-changing symphonic fabric, and brings the solo cello into arresting timbral combinations with unorthodox instrumentation that includes organ, soprano sax and conga drums, as well as more conventional orchestral forces. Jungheinrich: “The point is not so much colouristic effects as rather, in Cerha’s words, the ‘integration of fundamental modes of musical cognition.’”
Friedrich Cerha has been awarded a number of composition prizes, including the Prize of the City of Vienna (1974) and the Great Austrian State prize (1986) - which he donated for performances of works by young composers. In 2006 he was given the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement (leone doro alla carriera) of the Biennale di Venezia.
Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony in one movement is a richly inventive work in glowing timbres written in the middle of World War I, in 1916, to celebrate the centenary of the Vienna Academy of Music. Schreker (1878-1934) loved sound above all, dreamed of new instruments, and tried to substitute for their absence with compound blendings. “I often hear sounds that can scarcely be realized with existing means”, he admitted. His visions were timbral, biographer Christopher Hailey has noted, “his complex emotional insights captured in the iridescence of his orchestra.” He sought “a dematerialized array of ever-changing colours. No work better captures this sonic ideal than his Chamber Symphony…Its shimmering opening, in which first the flute, then the violins float above the aural mists of celesta, harmonium, piano and harp, is music of otherworldly magic.”

Ditta Rohmann SOLO CELLO PORTRAIT

For the performing artist, a concert offers the possibility of freedom and spontaneity, the transient moment; while a sound recording, by capturing a crystallized production, makes it possible to record for posterity the current idea of the artist about the given piece of music. Ditta Rohmann chose the order of the works deliberately, fitting in a Kurtág piece as a bridge and also as an essential reflection between compositions by other composers. 

Her program gives a selection from about a hundred years of Hungarian cello literature.

I first met Ditta in the student orchestra of the Basel Music Academy. I have been following her career since, as her sound and technique were getting ever richer, and as her unwavering interest in everything important, valuable and special has grown. When I came across musical or technical difficulties that other musicians were unable to solve, I invited Ditta for concerts and first performances. Now, listening to this recording, I realized that when composing I always hear Ditta’s especially richly textured cello sound in my ears. (Péter Eötvös)

Peter Eötvös / Ensemble Modern HELMUT LACHENMANN Schwankungen am Rand

The New York Times recently asked the question "Who is the most influential European composer of the moment?" and answered that no name "comes to mind more immediately than that of Helmut Lachenmann: The best of his work takes you by the hand and will not let you go until it has shown you things you could not have suspected."

The first New Series disc by the great German composer/inventor resounds with startling sound-events, realized brilliantly – and dramatically – by the Ensemble Modern and the Ensemble Modern Orchestra, under the inspired direction of Peter Eötvös. These compositions from 1974/75, 1983/84 and 1992 represent key moments in Lachenmann's restless voyage of sound-discovery. But as he reminds us, uncovering "new" sounds is but the beginning of the process: "The discovery of a sound, or even a new soundscape ... does not merely open up a new creative paradise to the composer; at the start it generates 'problems' ... It is, after all, a question of the permanent opening up of aural perception..."

In an insightful liner note, Lachenmann writes of the way in which the composing of "Schwankungen am Rand" („Fluctuations at the Edge“) changed his work and his life: "When the project was completed, I was no longer the person I had been; I was ready for adventures in other thought zones. Finally, I seemed to have arrived at a place that allowed me to look in all directions..." The compositional process had been a laborious one. Taking his cue from the "thunder sheets" used in his former teacher Luigi Nono's Diario Pollacco I, Lachenmann had spent weeks exploring the sound properties of sheets of steel: "I began banging on them every which way, dragging them across the floor over soft and hard surfaces, plying them with metal rods. I struck them, scraped them, dropped them edge first onto the floor, so that the glissando-ing metal sheet bent, doubled up, contorted, acquired nicks ... and at some point these objects turned into radically deformed monster violins with super-pizzicato-fluido sounds, or they took on the character of huge, exceedingly reverberant flexatones ..." An ensemble was implied of real and imaginary instruments, incorporating "an arsenal made up of sources of sonance and resonance ranging all the way to the naked white noises of loudspeakers, 'crumple zones' of crushed wrapping paper crackling, and expansive echo chambers." In the process, Lachenmann found himself asking what, in this context, does a tone, an interval, a chord, a figure, mean? And what, indeed, is music?

"Schwankungen am Rand" is an important pioneering work, and one that prompts Jürg Stenzl, in a CD booklet essay to assert that, to certain extent Lachenmann "reinvented instrumental music [...] To claim that Lachenmann's works present a challenge is seemingly to state the obvious. But our musical culture has scarcely anything so exciting, fascinating, moving and terrifying to offer its inquisitive listeners as the music of Helmut Lachenmann."
Both the Ensemble Modern and its larger offshoot, the Ensemble Modern Orchestra have worked closely with Helmut Lachenmann. When the expanded EMO gave its premiere performances in 1998, it played "Schwankungen am Rand", under the direction of Peter Eötvös. Eötvös is also the dedicatee of "Mouvement – vor der Erstarrung", and the Ensemble Modern gave the German premiere of this dark work in 1984, a performance described by the composer as "incredibly inspired and precise". Lachenmann has called "Mouvement" a "final attempt to strike water out of the dead monument known as music"; it is, he says, "a music of dead movements, almost of final quivers."

"Die ... zwei Gefühle ...", incorporating texts of Leonardo da Vinci, was written in 1992 while Lachenmann was working on what has since become his most highly-acclaimed work, the opera "Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern"; in expanded form, the piece was subsequently incorporated into the opera.

In the context of the present CD, "Die ... zwei Gefühle ..." traces a connection to the Nono-inspired "Schwankungen am Rand". It was written "near the Sardinian town of Alghero, in the empty house of my friend Luigi Nono, who had died two years earlier. And like him, I had been driven by my burning desire to perceive the enormous confusion of diverse and strange forms brought forth by ingenious Nature ..." (ECM Records)

I Solisti della Scala / Andrea Vitello OCTETS

Studiomusica Hungary proudly presents: Friday May 11 CD release "Octets" - Warner Classics I Solisti della Scala, conductor: Andrea Vitello.

Produced by Studiomusica Hungary and realised in cooperation with Warner Music Italy.

It comprehends the world premier recording of "Octet" by Peter Eötvös, "Octet" by Igor Stravinsky and three new compositions by Alessio Elia, Albertas Navicaks and Rita Ueda.
Quoting from the booklet notes by Guido Barbieri: “Stravinsky is the root, the seed, the humus, and the feeding ground. A ground that not only nurtures the intricate tree that is 20th century music, but also the tender and new, or rather, ever-new branch this disc represents. The Octet for Winds (1923) is in fact, the matrix that germinates almost spontaneously from the other accompanying four pieces. [...] Hidden polyphony and objectivity. These are the two categories – respectively in the linguistic, and aesthetic fields - that orientate the map of Stravinski’s Octet inner outline. These categories represent also, and not accidentally, keys for browsing the pages in which the other four works of this album elegantly find their place, telling us their own identities, identities that strengthen in the differences.”

Kojo / Sundqvist / Aalto / Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra EÖTVÖS - NIELSEN - SALLINEN Levitation

Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto is an unusual and uncompromising work. Cast in a single movement, and with a strange orchestra of strings, two horns, two bassoons and side drum, it casts a powerful spell. The opening is pastoral and almost neo-classical in atmosphere, giving no clue to the highly dramatic nature of what is to follow. Conflict is at the heart of much of the music, with repeated and sudden changes of mood. (The booklet notes offer a clue to this, in that Aage Oxenvaad, for whom the work was written, suffered from bipolar disorder.) The musical language, too, ranges very widely, from sweet and gentle harmonies to passages where the clarinet screams wildly in a highly chromatic upper register. The work closes in a kind of calm, though all is not resolved. The work has become a classic but has lost little of its power to surprise and challenge. If you are mainly looking for this remarkable work I feel duty bound to recommend an alternative performance from the many distinguished ones available, that by Martin Fröst on BIS. It is coupled with the concerto by Kalevi Aho, complicating an already difficult choice, as the present performance also has very worthwhile and generous couplings. And it is, in any event, a very fine performance. Christoffer Sundqvist is the principal clarinettist of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and his technical mastery is never in doubt. He is brilliant in the more virtuoso passages, and exquisitely tender where required, as in the introspective unaccompanied passage in the first section of the work, as beautifully played here as I have ever heard it. I don’t think he has quite the range of tone colour as Fröst, and the orchestral contribution is not quite so vivid, but the difference is marginal, and Sundqvist’s performance, taken on its own terms, will not disappoint.
And then there is the rest of the programme. The notes tell us that each of the four movements of Peter Eöstvös’s piece explores different aspects of the subject of levitation. The first movement has street furniture - phone boxes and road signs - flying about in a hurricane, whereas the second evokes a recurring dream the composer has of his own body floating, horizontally, over a landscape. The third movement describes gondolas on - or presumably above - Venetian waterways, and the last has Petrushka, buoyant, high above the world that has dealt so cruelly with him. Since the notes, and presumably the composer, give so detailed a “programme” it seems logical to comment on it. In fact, there is not much in the way of contrast in this work. Each movement is a kind of mood painting, with no themes as such, but fragments, motifs, mostly without any discernible pulse. If there were no gaps between the movements I’m not sure that I should know which one I was in, at least, not for the first few hearings. Thus the first-movement conjures up the gentlest, most beguiling hurricane you could imagine, and you will listen in vain, in the third movement “barcarola”, for any suggestion of the characteristic rhythm that normally goes with the name. The writing for the three solo instruments - two clarinets and accordion - is completely without show or bravado. All this does not stop this piece creating a powerful impression. The sounds the composer finds within the ensemble are exquisite and, for the most part, astonishingly tranquil, restful, tender and subtle. Maybe it’s another of those pieces that one would appreciate more, or at any rate no less, if the composer gave no information about it. I enjoyed it enormously the first time I heard it, and it positively compels the listener to return to it.
Getting to know the music of Aulis Sallinen - I would recommend the opera The King Goes Forth To France (Ondine) or any of the symphonies in the admirable CPO series - is an ongoing pleasure that continues with the double concerto on this disc. Its three movements deal with issues related to man’s relationship with animals. The first is a gentle lament for two dolphins drowned in a fisherman’s net in the Baltic Sea, and the third pays homage to the noble bull destined to die in the arena. Only the middle movement, “Les Jeux”, which deals with games, seems to stretch the theme somewhat, the parallels between animals and humans appearing to extend no further than the fact that playing of any kind is unimportant for the survival of a species. The work opens with a duet, accompanied only by timpani, for the two soloists. Other instruments are added gradually, and the movement progresses, via a series of ravishing sounds, to create an unforgettable atmosphere of gentle sadness and regret. Anger at man’s treatment of animals appears in the final movement only in one or two rare passages of display for the soloists. Otherwise this is an expression of deep sorrow that we should be capable of such things. The middle movement is a rapid, colourful scherzo, brilliant and witty, beautifully written for the whole ensemble. The programme is revealed by the composer in the booklet note, with almost no reference to the music. At least the message is a simple one - no complex theorising, nor, thank goodness, any attempt to transform the shape of a dolphin into a musical cipher! And the music itself is at once challenging yet easy enough on the ear to be enjoyed even at first acquaintance, so commentary is scarcely necessary. Even so - and once again - there is no doubt in my mind that the work can be enjoyed just as much by a listener unaware of the message behind it. 

This is a beautifully recorded CD, and the performances from all concerned are exemplary. The side-drum player in the Nielsen is named in the booklet, but not - a serious omission - the accordionist in the Eötvös. Sallinen provides the short commentary on his own work, whereas the informative notes on the other two pieces are by Jouni Kaipainen. All the notes are translated into English by Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, whom many readers will know as a distinguished composer in his own right, especially of choral music. (William Hedley / MusicWeb International)

Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon / Kent Nagano / Peter Eötvös EÖTVÖS Drei Schwestern

Since its world premiere at the Opéra de Lyon, France, in March 1998, Peter Eötvös' Three Sisters has received instant recognition, with several new productions scheduled in Germany, Holland and Hungary for the season 1999/2000, and more to come later. No wonder Deutsche Grammophon decided to publish this astonishing lyrical masterpiece in its "20/21" collection. Former co-conductor, along with Pierre Boulez, of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, the Hungarian Peter Eötvös is hardly a newcomer on the contemporary scene; but the tremendous dramatic and musical impact of Three Sisters has taken everyone by surprise. Part of the success may be explained by the story, based on Anton Chekov's eponymous play. Peter Eötvös and his librettist Claus H. Henneberg have considerably changed the original: the action is concentrated in a single section instead of four acts. But the true originality of the libretto (sung in Russian) is that the story is presented three times in as many sections, adopting each time the point of view of a different character: first Irina, then Andrei, and finally Macha. This re-composition, or de-construction, of the original plot allows Eötvös to dig deeper into the characters' souls, expectations and inner life, while the return of the same scenes, shown slightly differently each time, translates with amazing force the painful passing by of time in a world of deceived ambitions, where life flees and nothing ever really changes.

To match musically this universe of solitary souls, the Hungarian composer displays a stunning array of sonorities, from the lonely opening accordion melody, to intensely dramatic, spectacular clusters, through rarefied sound-clouds of the utmost refinement. Two orchestras respond to each other, one made of 16 soloists in the pit, the other, in full formation, set backstage. In this world premiere, all the feminine characters are sung by countertenors! This is by no means a choice imposed by the composer (other productions opt for sopranos instead); but the alchemy between ambiguous vocal timbres and the expressionist use of instruments contributes to create a haunting, hallucinated atmosphere of mystery, and ultimate fascination. The music itself pays tribute to Berg (painful melancholy mixed with "popular" material), Ligeti (ferocious irony surrounding Dr. Chebutykin), perhaps even early Bartók (mysterious suspended harmony), but retains its fundamental originality all along.

Conducted by Kent Nagano (soloists ensemble) and the composer himself (backstage orchestra), the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon plays with superb concentration and exemplary commitment, while the vocal distribution appears absolutely flawless. If Albert Schagidullin (Andrei) and Dietrich Henschel (Baron Turzenbach) are particularly impressive in their characterizations, all of the singers participate equally in the success of the production. Though not exempt from stage noises, the live recording provided by Radio-France's engineers has presence, dynamism and clarity. As a fill-up, Peter Eötvös reads a well-done 8-minute listening guide (with music excerpts) in English, German and French. Who said opera is dead? (Luca Sabbatini)

Kim Kashkashian / Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra / Peter Eötvös BÉLA BARTÓK - PETER EÖTVÖS - GYÖRGY KURTÁG

“Kim Kashkashian’s playing of that most vexing and vulnerable of instruments, the viola, always seems to convey both the pain and the joy, the beauty and the toil, that go into the making of music. As it’s been said, she is a virtuoso who doesn’t play like a virtuoso. You don’t get just the notes, the surface brilliance...you get the subtext, the deep feelings – the composers’, hers, yours.” – Bradley Bambarger, Schwann Opus.

Typically impassioned, committed performances distinguish Kim Kashkashian’s New Series recording of music for viola by three great Hungarian composers. Kashkashian’s intense focus, superb craftsmanship and explosive virtuosity are brought to bear on Béla Bartók’s final work, on one of György Kurtág’s early pieces, and on an important new work written especially for her by Peter Eötvös.

Interconnections between the composers and the interpreter are many. Something akin to a line of transmission runs from Bartók to Eötvös via Kurtág. Kurtág has famously said that his “mother tongue is Bartók”, and his Movement for Viola and Orchestra was directly influenced by Bartók’s Violin Concerto and Concerto for Orchestra. Peter Eötvös was born, like Bartók, in Transylvania, befriended Kurtág in Budapest, and his musical development was decisively influenced by the work of both composers. “György Kurtág’s music”, Eötvös has noted, “is deeply rooted in European tradition. The certainty and glowing intensity of his works remind me of Van Gogh and Dostoyevsky. The increasing success of his music comes on the one hand from the fact that his powerful, subjective ability to express himself cannot be pigeonholed in any of the familiar stylistic movements, and on the other hand, from the fact that his music has an unusually vital relationship to the living and the dead.” A similar claim might well be made for the musics of Eötvös himself and Bartók, in which innovation and respect for the weight of tradition are keenly balanced.

Kashkashian, who has worked closely with Kurtág, was instrumental in bringing his music to the New Series and made the premiere recording of his revised six-part cycle “Jelek” (ECM New Series 1508). She has also worked under the baton of Eötvös and has, furthermore, been playing the Bartók Viola Concerto for three decades now. In preparation for the current project she went back to some of Bartók’s own sources, “listening to a lot of the Hungarian folk music he collected to study the articulation of melody, rhythm, phrasing.” (ECM Records)

Reto Bieri CONTRECHANT

Reto Bieri’s New Series debut is a brilliant recital for solo clarinet that looks at new developmental possibilities in the ‘language’ of the instrument in modern music. Bieri quotes with approval Heinz Holliger’s statement “My entire relation to music is such that I always try to go to the limits”. Here the Swiss clarinettist has brought together pieces from the border regions of compositional exploration, as well as the pathways that link them. Under examination here are, for instance, the border region “between silence and the birth of sound and noise, a magical region”, touched upon in the music of Salvatore Sciarrino, Heinz Holliger and Gergely Vajda. Then there is the juncture of speech, sprechgesang and melody (referenced in Holliger and Luciano Berio), as well as the border region linking gesture, dance, ritual and game – as in Holliger, Elliott Carter and Péter Eötvös.

In Holliger’s “Contrechant”, the piece that gives Bieri’s album its title, all the regions are illuminated, calling for “a new kind of virtuosity from the player”, a challenge to which Reto Bieri rises. With the exception of the late Luciano Berio, the clarinettist has worked closely with each of the featured composers to realize optimum performance of these pieces. What a fascinating group of composers it is, too: from Elliott Carter – at 102, America’s Grand Old Man of new music – to Gergely Vajda, former student of Eötvös, who wrote “Lightshadow-trembling” when he was only twenty.

Paul Griffiths, in his liner notes, emphasizes the ‘singing’ quality of the performances: “Song. Some of the titles nudge us in that direction – Lied, Contrechant, Rechant – but what makes the conclusion inescapable is the fluency, the nuanced variety of Reto Bieri’s playing. This is indeed song: song without words … song in which sound alone sings”.

Bieri views the choice of pieces for the present album as an extension of the ideal repertoire suggested by the 1995 ECM solo clarinet recording “dal niente” by Eduard Brunner, with music of Lachenmann, Stockhausen, Stravinsky, Boulez, Scelsi and Yun. (Both solo clarinet discs were recorded at Propstei St Gerold, with Manfred Eicher producing). “Contrechant” is destined to prove no less influential. (ECM Records)

Peter Eötvös / Etienne Siebens / Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra / Claron McFadden MICHEL VAN DER AA Here Trilogy

A branch snaps with icy confidence. It seems like an everyday occurrence, an everyday sound. But within the oeuvre of Michel van der Aa (1970), the snap of a branch means more than just that. In a musical context removed from the ‘everyday’, the gesture suddenly suggests loneliness, insanity, anger. And while the crisp noise a breaking branch makes is indeed pure nature, with closed eyes it also carries an electric charge. The gesture and the sound carry more layers and more weight than one might think. That breaking branch is a symbol for Michel van der Aa’s oeuvre in general and the Here trilogy in particular.
The interaction between natural and electric sounds and a visual-theatrical component are recurring themes in the Here trilogy, composed between 2001 and 2003. The cycle is thematically related to the chamber opera One (2002). In One an anonymous female character (soprano) undertakes an obsessive search for herself, and enters into a dialogue with her alter ego on film. In the second and third sections of the Here trilogy the soprano returns in the same vain quest for herself and for a connection with the world around her.
One and – in a more abstract, purely musical way – the Here trilogy both owe their confrontational dramatic effect to the theme of loneliness verging on insanity. The drama is not an imposed extramusical idea, but rather a product of the musical structure. It is not surprising that Michel van de Aa’s oeuvre is often referred to as the musical equivalent of the work of M.C. Escher. Escher’s perspectivist suggestions and spatial manipulation find a musical parallel in Van der Aa’s equally intriguing play of acoustic distortion.
‘I am fascinated by the contradiction between what is and what seems,’ says the composer. ‘The sculpture When I am Pregnant (1992) by the English sculptor Anish Kapoor appears, seen from the front, to be a solid wall. You only see the belly by looking at it sideways. In all its simplicity, this is an extremely dramatic effect. I strive to create a similar kind of drama in my music.’
In the Here trilogy as well, the dramatic content is an organic consequence of the poetics in Van der Aa’s music. Tension is aroused by the audible failure of the music itself, in which the musical present (live chamber orchestra or ensemble) clashes with the past (soundtrack). As a whole, that failure of the musical progress leads to the sensation of chilling, detachment and disunity that, after the purely instrumental first movement Here [enclosed], is given a voice in Here [in circles] and Here [to be found]. (Mischa Spel)

Peter Eötvös ELLIOTT CARTER / PAUL GRIFFITHS What Next?

“What Next?” Carter’s first opera, written in 1997 and 1998, begins with a car crash and follows, obliquely, the development of six survivors crawling from the wreckage. The chain of events has a dreamlike quality. “The survivors are five adults and a child. Mama (a dramatic soprano) is the most insistent of them: as she understands things, the adults were all on their way to the marriage of her son, a clownish baritone who calls himself Harry or Larry, to Rose, a self-absorbed performing artist (a lyric soprano). The glib guru-like tenor Zen is Mama’s former husband, and the astronomer Stella (a contralto) is his current girl friend. The sixth figure, Kid, a twelve-year-old boy alto, is a mystery to Mama, who repeatedly tries to focus everyone’s attention on their joint predicament. While the others generally concede that Mama’s assessment of their relationships may be correct, they have other agendas. Zen seeks to maintain his status as ‘a teacher, a master.’ Rose doesn’t really care who the others are; she is still grooving on the triumph of her last performance, and expects the others to be similarly appreciative. Stella thinks she was on her way to work at her astronomical observatory. Harry or Larry doesn’t care. Eventually, two Road Workers arrive and poke around in the percussive wreckage, initially ignoring the importuning of the crash victims, who finally walk away, still disputatiously engaged.”(David Hamilton, in the CD booklet notes).

“Carter's music, from the opening crash of the prelude, remains active throughout the entire single act - in the spasms and splinterings of the percussion, where the coalescing of the sounds are continually being torn asunder again... So the central interlude of the work provides a great surprise: the lost characters abandon the stage, the dreamlike scenery becomes even more unreal, the wrecked car seems to explode in slow motion. Here Carter suddenly develops, in extraordinarily skilfully constructed music, a powerful sense of poetry, whose magic is sustained through soft sounds and melodic lines. It is the sound of transformation...” Wolfgang Schreiber, Süddeutsche Zeitung

Peter Eötvös / Ensemble InterContemporain / Quatuor Arditti NUNES Esquisses - Musik der Frühe

Emmanuel Nunes was born in 1941 in Lisbon where he studied harmony and counterpoint between 1959 and 1963 in the Academy of Music with Francine Benoît. From 1961 to 1963, he followed courses of Germanic philology and Greek philosophy in the University of Lisbon. He undertook summer courses in Darmstadt (1963 to 1965), where he was particularly marked by the courses of composition of Henri Pousseur and Pierre Boulez. The analysis of Momente, by Stockhausen, is seen by Nunes as the most significant stage of his first initiation to composition. He teached composition, since 1981, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, and, from 1986 to 1992, he also taught at the Musikhochschule of Freiburg-im-Breisgau. Emmanuel Nunes was nominated professor of composition at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in 1992. He also pursued his teaching activities at Harvard University, at IRCAM, at the Darmstadt summer courses and at ICONS (Novara, Italy).

Hardenberger / Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra / Eötvös GRUBER Aerial - EÖTVÖS Jet Stream - TURNAGE From the Wreckage

Virtuoso trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger's skills are prodigious and seem made to order for the three cutting-edge concertos presented on this 2006 Deutsche Grammophon release. These are not the flashy crowd-pleasers that most players trot out, but serious modern works that derive equally from the avant-garde and neo-Romanticism, as well as from jazz and popular music. Furthermore, Heinz Karl Gruber, Peter Eötvös, and Mark-Anthony Turnage are not generally noted for writing accessible, easily digested music, yet only the most hardened conservative will resist their colorful, dramatic, and highly expressive pieces. The first movement of Gruber's Aerial (1998-1999) has the melancholy feeling of a jazz nocturne, and Hardenberger's sweetly soulful playing makes it an atmospheric reverie. The melodically angular, rhythmically irregular second movement is edgy and perhaps a little difficult to follow in its lopsided activity, but its quirkiness and charm carry the work to an ebullient conclusion. Eötvös' Jet Stream (2002) is decidedly darker in mood and harmonically denser, and the trumpet has to penetrate rather thick textures; yet Hardenberger soars above the roiling orchestration undaunted, and makes the frequently segmented line cohere through his intensely focused tone. From the Wreckage (2004-2005), a violent tour de force by Turnage, was composed specifically for Hardenberger, and features a progression from flügelhorn to trumpet to piccolo trumpet, showing off this musician's fluid ease in all registers and his wide range of effects. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, under Eötvös' acute direction, provides a vivid and responsive accompaniment, and the high level of excitement in the playing is apparent in all three performances, but seems even greater in From the Wreckage, where the ensemble has the most material to work with. The reproduction is first rate, with realistic presence and clear separation of the trumpet from the orchestra. (Blair Sanderson)