With the double album METAMORPHOSE – NOMINA, Robert M. Helmschrott presents an impressive compilation of central works from his spiritual oeuvre for organ. The recording combines large-scale psalm meditations with personal, partly memorial organ pieces and opens up a multi-layered sound space between contemplation, memory and spiritual reflection.
DThe first part of the album is the cycle Metamorphose – Meditations on the psalms De profundis, Ad te, Domine, levavi<, Da pacem and Laudate Dominum. Helmschrott understands meditation as a conscious turning towards the essential. His music becomes a place of inner contemplation, in which existential experiences such as lament, hope, trust and joy take shape in sound. From Gregorian-inspired phrases to eruptive clusters of sound, a dense, symbolic tonal language unfolds.
The symphonically conceived version for organ and exceptionally rich percussion – recorded in 1984 at Munich's Liebfrauendom – reinforces the dialogical structure of the works. Organ and percussion are not presented as opposites, but as communicating forces of sound. Music becomes ‘language’ in the true sense of the word: sound as a symbol and vehicle of spiritual experience.
The second part, NOMINA, brings together smaller organ works from the years 1971 to 2012. Created partly spontaneously shortly before the dismantling of the Munich Steinmeyer organ, the recording preserves its characteristic timbres as a musical legacy. In the three-part cycle Nomina names become musical codes – personal dedications are transformed into multi-layered sound figures.
he programme is complemented by memorial works such as the Drei Stücke für Orgel »in memoriam I. S.« (Igor Strawinsky), the Epitaph für F. B. (Fritz Büchtger) or Réflexion et lumière, a homage to Albert Schweitzer.
Robert M. Helmschrott (born 1938), a multi-award-winning composer and long-standing president of the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts, combines spiritual depth with tonal innovation. METAMORPHOSE – NOMINA is an invitation to a contemplative listening experience – music as a path to the centre and as a transformation of sound into insight.