infotext:
VOCAL MUSIC II
When my wife, the Jewish religious philosopher Francesca Yardenit Albertini, died in March 2011, I could do nothing but keep her memory alive by writing a book about her (Germany or Jerusalem. The short life of Francesca Albertini, 2013), on the other hand decided to compose a commemorative work. But not a requiem, but a portrait. Francesca was a writer at a young age and was even invited to appear on Italian television. This episode was short-lived, but I found numerous teenage poems in her estate, written between the ages of 17 and 20. From these I chose ten. They revolve around the themes of truth, death, pain, being forgotten, Michelangelo, dawn, uprooting, letters, thinking, agony and shadows. These are sung in five major stanzas, accompanied by the orchestra. At the same time, almost every instrument receives a solo that plays independently of the orchestra in terms of tempo. A few interludes are also inserted, which result in a narration that follows our 13-year life path together.
The central poem reads:
Do you still die?
Dentro di noi.
A cadavere resuscita
ad ogni pensiero.
where are the dead
Inside us.
A corpse rises from the dead
with every thought.
Even many years after her death, this is emotionally unacceptable. You get used to the facts of the case, but ultimately the death of a loved one is unthinkable and represents an insoluble paradox of one's own existence, especially when their life was suddenly torn from their lives at the age of 36 in an accident. In February 2018, Menachem Ben-Sasson, Chancellor of the Jewish University of Jerusalem, gave the Francesca Yardenit Albertini Lecture at the Free University of Berlin. According to Ben-Sasson, Francesca's smile is still remembered in Jerusalem today, 16 years after her two-year research stay. I'm trying to capture that smile with this work. "Dov'è?" means in German: "Where is he / she / it?"
432 Park Avenue. Homage to NYC – I am fascinated by New York City, mainly because it is very different from the rest of the USA. NYC is like a state of its own, a world of its own. In September 2015, I was walking through Central Park and, peeking out from between the trees, spotted a very tall and extremely narrow building, towering into the sky like a single spaghetto. This building, which was only built for living, measures 426 meters. It towers in classic beauty and elegance. At the same time it is an expression of capitalist decadence. The prices are so exorbitant that only the very rich can shop there. The investor advertises with calm, since the residents are likely to be absent most of the time. I use texts from the website of this building for the singer. At the same time, the baritone plays a MIDI synthesizer on which original sounds from the city of New York are stored. Together with the sonority of the three wind instruments, a portrait of New York emerges.
If I had a second life, I would study mathematics and physics to understand how the world is structured and, above all, where it comes from, yes, why it even exists. These questions are also philosophical questions. For the five-movement work Astronomical I took texts from astronomy textbooks and reformulated them. In each of the first four movements, a duo consisting of a singer and an instrument (flute, clarinet, percussion, violoncello) is in the foreground, accompanied as it were in recitative by the others. The last and longest movement is contested by all eight musicians. The (usually spoken) texts have these thematic cores: background noise; black hole; wormhole; ekpyrosis; Inflation.
Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf
program:
[01] Dove? for 5 voices and orchestra (2017–2018) 32:01
New vocal soloists
(Johanna Zimmer, Susanne Leitz-Lorey, Truike van der Poel, Martin Nagy, Andreas Fischer)
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB)
Michael Wendeberg Dirigent
Live
[02] 432 Park Avenue. Homage to NYC for baritone and 3 instrumentalists(2018) 14:12
loadbang (New York City)
Live
Astronomical for 4 voices and 4 instrumentalists (2019) 20:42
[03] I 04:09
[04] II 03:35
[05] III 03:37
[06] IV 03:38
[07] V 05:43
SCHOLA HEIDELBERG / ensemble aisthesis (Sound Forum Heidelberg)
Walter Nussbaum Dirigent
Total playing time: 67:21
first recordings
Press comment:
07/22
Sound – illuminated from within
New releases of new music relativize old prejudices beyond the style category
Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf has the reputation of being an extremely intellectual composer. But the intensity of his compositions is not only due to structural competence and multiple suggestions between philosophy, literature and science. [...]
Dirk Wieschollek