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WORKS BY FRIEDRICH GOLDMANN AND GEORG KATZER Friedrich Goldmann (1941–2009) and Georgkatzer (1935–2019) were influential figures in a group of composers who were younger at the time and had been growing since the late 1960s. They countered the clichés of musical folk ties and mass appeal with compositional concepts that – with the help of suggestions from Western European modernism and avant-garde – aimed at absolutely self-determined stylistics and a degree of technical complexity that corresponded to international professional standards. This set in motion a phase of constant sonic experimentation, which initially met with massive rejection in the cultural bureaucracy, but also differed from the Western situation in that there were traditions of composing with regard to a fixed concept of the work with the intention of intellectual messages or more affective not really radically disclosed messages. In the four compositions compiled on this CD, one can easily notice, as a kind of postmodern commonality, the farewell to serial hermeticism and the opening up to chimes with conventional tonality and traditional craftsmanship, which the connection of these works - and quite unepigually creative - with Traditions of European music history deliberately addressed. Friedrich Goldmann's one-movement Ensemble Concert II for 16 players (string and wind quintet, trumpet, trombone, harp, piano and two percussionists) was composed in the summer of 1985 on behalf of the Dresden Musica Viva Ensemble. This group gave the world premiere a short time later, before the West German Ensemble Modern included the work in its repertoire. Conversely - as a striking sign of the sometimes well-functioning German-German musician contacts - three years earlier, at the suggestion of that group, a first ensemble concert for the same line-up had been composed and then taken over by the Dresdeners. Like the older and many other earlier pieces by the composer, the younger piece follows an arched form that is as firmly established as it is easy to grasp and forms reprises. Five sections, well separated from each other, fit into the almost classical rough scheme ABCBA. Two extended, statically slow corner sections surround a middle section that is also time-consuming but extremely impulsive and motorically agile, with a shorter section with a transitional character placed between these sentence-like progressions. In the midst of the fast section, tonal chord sequences linked mediantically appear, which seem to have been taken from the diction of late romantic symphony and represent a veritable foreign body in the midst of Goldmann's otherwise atonal-serial tonal language. In fact, it is an almost "literal" quote from Bruckner's original version Fourth Symphony and is found there at the beginning of the coda of the first movement as one of the many passages that fell victim to the later radical revision. (Goldmann conducted this original version together with Henzes Tristan Preludes precisely during the composition of his work in a concert with the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra.) Many interpretations are conceivable, but the composer himself contributed nothing to them. In summary, however, there need be no doubt that the work - not least because of this enigmatic music-historical reference - is one of his most mature, musically most brilliant and ideally richest creations. ... almost frozen unrest ... 2 is the centerpiece of a chamber music trilogy composed between 1992 and 1995. Its title refers to an idea of Walter Benjamin's, with which he sought to capture a certain form of historical movement, and which Friedrich Goldmann may have found to be an apt description of the political upheavals that were moving him in Berlin during the conception of the plays. The three pieces are only loosely connected, with the size of the ensembles increasing from 6 to 9 to 12 musicians, so that wind and strings are given equal weight. "They all have in common", says the composer, "the interest in ambivalence, when something rigid proves to be flexible, expressionless develops a peculiar expression (or vice versa)" and - particularly striking in the middle of this number 2 - the play with three-notes -tonal chords in contrast to an otherwise strictly atonal texture, which is unfolded from an eleven-tone series that is initially firmly fixed in a wide tonal space. In a commentary on the Berlin premiere in November 1992 by the Ensemble Insel-Musik under his direction, Goldmann writes: »The beginning is characterized by predominantly rigid sound aggregates, divided into three instrumental groups: wind trio (flute, clarinet, trombone), vibraphone and piano as well as string quartet. Alternating arrangements of these aggregates (by swapping, shifting, approaching, repelling, etc.) determine the first part, which is largely static in character... In the middle part, an acceleration process follows: Differently overlapping rhythms become even pulsations, complex sounds become simple triads. At the last acceleration stage, of course, it tips over again. Noises or more complex sounds prevail ... The specificity of the sounds used in this part gives the music a peculiarly changing quotation character, although there are no direct quotations. This is canceled out in the final part, which picks up on the original material of the piece in a different way. Microtonal deviations come into play as a new element.« If music could talk, then the controlled, dosed play with tonal vocabulary would also be the theme of Georgkatzers string music 1 from 1971. Originally the title contained the suffix »with A major«, but the composer wisely suppressed it, or put it back in the score, where, right in the middle of the piece, he barely discerned the first »touch of A major« written down. Otherwise, listeners would all too easily be tempted to misunderstand it as a kind of sounding picture puzzle and to miss the whole of the work in search of a pure, oh so longed-for triad. You will find it - but not as a "solution" to a riddle about lost harmony, but as a special, significant color in a richly differentiated palette of playing forms and sound values, through which "different aspects of a string orchestra" are shown and "all the tonal possibilities of the string instruments of the 'Classical beautiful tone' up to noise-like sounds," as the composer noted in the program of the premiere on February 17, 1973 in the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin (by a chamber orchestra of 14 strings conducted by Max Pommer). A major forms, so to speak, only the traditional tip of a pyramid of sound vocabulary, the basis of which is serial, aleatoric or sonorous material, with special consideration of non-traditional playing styles. Towards the end, the sound is increasingly attracted by tonal flair, but also resolutely defends itself against its attractiveness in tense gestures to the end. The Three sound speeches for string orchestra composed in 2004 on behalf of Deutschlandradio Kultur for the Deutsche Streicherphilharmonie. It is a youth orchestra that was founded in 1973 in the GDR to promote young interpreters and has continued to exist after political unity since 1991 under the sponsorship of the Association of German Music Schools. In one of its regular concerts, the ensemble gave the premiere of the new composition bykatzer in 2005 in the Essen Philharmonic under the direction of its then chief conductor, Michael Sanderling. With its title, it demonstratively refers to a term from classical-romantic musical thinking - first coined by Johann Mattheson, who in his treatise The perfect Kapellmeister from 1739 describes important principles of compositional thinking analogous to rhetorical rules, as they have been alive since antiquity. They should give the tonal processes motivated developments and thematic commitments that our analytical vocabulary still refers to today. Such closeness to verbal speech, to the character of language, developmental logic and emotional intentionality has sometimes been strictly avoided in serial New Music in particular, but Katzener has quite consciously acknowledged such rhetorical usages from time to time, which is particularly evident in the sound speeches with its concise motives, thematic development and emotive dynamics is relatively easy to understand by listening. In his introductory words, he himself emphasized that when composing he »never completely gave up the idea of development. The Three sound speeches furthermore, with their three-movement form fast-slow-fast, establish a close connection to tradition, for example to the early classical symphony. Of course, the tonal material is different here, free tonal with more or less clear references to dodecaphony.« Frank Schneider program: george katzer (1935-2019) [01] string music 1 for 14 solo strings (1971) 11:46
Frederick Goldman (1941-2009) [05] ... almost frozen restlessness ... 2 for 9 players (1992) 11:19 [06] Ensemble Concert II for 16 players (1985) 21:59 Total playing time: 59:47 Munich Chamber Orchestra Munich Chamber Orchestra Violin: Daniel Giglberger (concertmaster) ∙ James Dong ∙ Viktor Stenhjem ∙ Nina Takai ∙ Simona Venslovaite ∙ Michaela Buchholz Viola: Kelvin Hawthorne (principal) ∙ Stefan Berg-Dalprá · Indrė Kulė · David Schreiber Cello: Mikayel Hakhnazaryan (principal) ∙ Peter Bachmann · Benedikt Jira · Michael Weiss Double bass: Tatjana Erler (principal) ∙ Anselm Legl Flute: Anne Catherine Heinzmann Oboe: Tamar Inbar Clarinet: Oliver Klenk Bassoon: Kaspar Reh Horn: Franz Draxinger Trumpet: Matthew Sadler Trombone. Quirin Willert Drums: Richard Putz ∙ Patrick Stapleton Harp: Marlis Neumann Piano: Jean Pierre Collot Press:
07/22 Sound – illuminated from within The fact that new music in the former GDR was largely an artistically ambiguous “statesmanship” is a widespread prejudice that is constantly shaken as soon as one deals with it. This becomes very clear once again in this brilliant recording by the Munich Chamber Orchestra: Georg Katzer and Friedrich Goldmann. […] Dirk Wieschollek |
