Orchestra Works - Vol. 1 | Philipp Maintz | NEOS – your online music store for contemporary music and special classics

THREADS AND HANGING GARDENS

As is widely known, “Hedera helix”, “Campsis tagliabuana”, “Hydrangea petiolaris” and “Euonymus fortunei” are all species of vines and climbers. These plants form no supporting structures; they share the common features of being able to grow along very different axes whilst winding around and drawing threads. They appear to pursue only one single aim: to go on ever further, ever wilder. They spiral to the left at times, or to the right – and sometimes they even turn around and grow back onto themselves, so to speak.

This excursion into the field of botany may appear strange but it is not without reason: concerning the formal disposition of his orchestral work hängende gärten (hanging gardens), Philipp Maintz wrote that “virtual vines are formed …”. The work was premiered in 2017 at the Berlin Philharmonie by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, to whom it is also dedicated. The composer’s statement hints at an appropriate field of association that both grabs the listener and stimulates his imagination. Not only are the tempi and formal dispositions woven together, allowing the listener to sense a formal plan that is constantly proliferating in various directions.

The immediate sonic experience also has something of a plant-like sprawl with its numerous, frequently tiny, ramified lines. Be that as it may, it is not a monochromatic undergrowth that sprawls here (to stay with this image) but always splendidly colourful, wild splendid growths. It is not for nothing that the title alludes to one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: the myth-enshrouded Hanging Gardens of the legendary Assyrian Queen Semiramis, extolled by numerous ancient poets. “It was exactly this image”, the composer says, “that best applied to the idea of this orchestral piece: as an installation in which one can place plants, gardening and caring for them, watching them grow (indeed, writing ‘music out of music’) – and also as a ‘garden of longing’ in which things should blossom beautifully and proliferate.”

In earlier works, Maintz has frequently worked with this type of formal and motivic vegetation, as well as with fine, tender lines that occasionally appear in the overall polyphonic texture for just a short time before being transformed into another musical shape. In hängende gärten Maintz works on details just as consistently, almost obsessively. A paradigmatic example is the harp part in the first two bars: Maintz notates seven tones here which, upon closer observation, turn out to be different colourations of a single pitch (f1) in four different variants (as octave harmonics or as enharmonic tones). Moreover, each pitch variant also has a corresponding dynamic form – thus, within the closest space, the tender plant “f” is tended and cultivated from various sides. But some tender lines can also bring forth enormous energy, e. g. when several tones break away from an almost incidental bass clarinet solo, shifting into the tutti of the large orchestra and resulting in unpredictable and strongly rhythmic, almost voracious passages. These hanging gardens are obviously not merely tender and colourful – danger apparently lurks within them as well, for the poisonous “blackeye root” is also a climber which makes it scrubby trouble in even the most beautiful gardens.

The three orchestral songs of tríptico vertical, dedicated to the singer Marisol Montalvo and the conductor Christoph Eschenbach, are based on the Quinto tríptico vertical by the Argentine poet Roberto Juarroz (1925–1995), whose work is still relatively unknown in Europe. Maintz reports that the pianist and Lied specialist Axel Bauni drew his attention to Juarroz: “When poems cause something to resound in me at the very first encounter, the conditions are ideal.” The almost ruthless orientation towards the melodic line, lyric and expressive in equal measure, appears even more clearly in tríptico vertical than in hängende gärten because Maintz concentrates here completely on the developmental possibilities of the voice of Marisol Montalvo, for whom the work is literally tailor-made.

The orchestra, frequently used in a sparing manner reminiscent of chamber music, reacts – almost seismographically – to the text’s most refined nuances of content and language. Here, too, the opening can serve as a prime example: Juarroz’s text reads: “No tener más objetivos / que las manos abiertas – Have no further goals / than open hands.” The voice begins, in a rather deep register at first, with a melodic line that is both plain and introverted. The idea of the “open hands” has both a sonic and a structural echo, for the work begins entirely openly. No fixed tempo or metre is established – the passage is to be sung in a nearly improvisatory manner – “libero” is written in the score.

The orchestral accompaniment must also arise out of the openness of a void: alongside a few hardly audible percussion sounds, several strings play a toneless, breathed sound on the bridge. The voice is thus surrounded by a kind of instrumental lung that also allows for air and space, always breathing together with the intimations of the text. Whilst the voice continues to develop, some time is needed before clear pitches finally emerge from the orchestra. Maintz goes beyond this in the third song, allowing a much wider space for the voice to unfold without accompaniment. The void of the orchestra is here primarily an empty stage for the voice: “Hilos que se desprenden de la ausencia, mínimas fluctuaciones del vacío – Threads that break loose from the absence, the slightest fluctuations of emptiness…”

Threads and the slightest fluctuations: such metaphors also describe the wild proliferations in hängende gärten and clarify the intimate relationship between both works on this CD regardless of ensemble size or large-scale design. It this becomes apparent that Maintz is not merely setting a text in the traditional sense in tríptico vertical, but also providing information about fundamental aesthetic positions with it, extending far beyond the concrete work itself. Maintz composes threads that constantly appear to be in a state of high tension. The ear stays alert – for it remains uncertain when the threads will tear.

Gordon Kampe
Translation: David Babcock

#6_2018

(...) ... widmet sich Philipp Maintz in den drei zusammenhängenden Liedern des tríptico vertical ... vor allem der Gestaltung von wechselnden Atmosphären: Im Mittelpunkt steht eine ständig neu ansetzende, aus Einzelphrasen zusammengefügte Gesangslinie der Sopranistin, die sich, von Marisol Montalvo dynamisch ausgefeilt und mit feinsten Vibratoschattierungen vorgetragen, geschmeidig durch den Tonraum bewegt und immer wieder auch von gezackten Koloraturen durchzogen ist. (...) Hinter all dem steht - durch die hervorragende Klangqualität der Produktion unterstrichen - unverkennbar die Vorliebe für das Melos, die Maintz' Musik manchmal sympathisch altmodisch wirken lässt.

Stefan Drees

Januar 2019

Treffend vergleicht Philipp Maintz seine Orchestermusik mit Kletter- und Schlingpflanzen, die "keine stützenden Strukturen ausbilden und an verschiedenen Achsen entlang wachsen, sich dabei winden und Fäden ziehen. Manchmal kehren sie sogar um du wachsen in sich zurück". (...) Maintz' Musik ist stark rhythmisch betont. Er staffelt den Orchesterapparat auf. So ergeben sich Schichtungen, die permanent ineinander- und auseinanderlaufen. Ganz anders "triptico vertical": In den Liedern nach Gedichten des argentinischen Dichters Roberto Juarroz steht der Sopran von Marisol Montalvo dem eher begleitenden Orchester vor. (...) Teilweise muss die Sopranistin Passagen allein meistern. Sie tut es mit Bravour.

Tilman Urbach