German composer Cornelius Schwehr is a new breed in terms of creating new or avant garde music. As this disc will attest, the first thing he's done is eschewed the serial tradition altogether. Schwehr is a texturalist. He likes the way instruments feel in and of themselves and the way they work with and against each other's textures to create slurred harmonics, new voicings, and parsed intervals. Four works dating from 1980-1993 are compiled here with an inspired performance by the Ensemble Recherche. The title work, "Poco a Poco Subito" for piano and cello, and "Aber die Schönheirt des Gitters" are the two standouts. On the latter, violin, viola, cello, flute, piano, clarinet, and percussion are all engaged at the level of microtonal balancing against pitch and what would normally pass for meter. These spare phrases, tense and restrained, are executed by the exploration of the particular musician extracting from her or his instrument, its most elemental texture, col legno, perhaps, the bowing of the instrument with the wooden side of the bow. What it produces is a series of relationships between tones and their echoes, between tensions and also of course, between textures, which produce the essences of other sonorities. This may sound like it is primarily head music, academic in the extreme, but it doesn't feel that way. The small phrases link to one another by their physicality and create a musical body that while spare is clearly visible and beautiful to behold. "Poco a Poco Subito" for piano and cello, is a work of singular elegance among the composers of Schwehr's generation. Here, his sense of musical restlessness and innovation is not bound by the rigors of the vanguard. Schwehr's sense of humor will spill the elemental detritus of popular culture into the guts of the piano as the cello texturally plays its foil. From pianississimo dynamics to blistering decibels of pathos, Schwehr will take melodies and structures from popular music and pit their bright harmonic exigencies against the fragmented, purely textured shadings of the cello and then revoke them with whacked sustain or modulated pedal harmonics and percussive sounds. Over 17 minutes, the work moves from tonal stasis to overtone hyper-action all within a restrained dynamic field of language that leads to a discovery of semi-quavers being released from their cages by the instruments' interaction. It's brilliant in its perversity and quite gentle for all of its tensions. The rest here is also very inventive, original even, if a word like that means anything anymore. Cornelius Schwehr is a brilliant composer who has written an entirely new language for Western classical music. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
Tracks
Track Title
Composers
Performers
Time
Aber Die Schönheit des Gitters
Cornelius Schwehr
Ensemble Recherche
(15:20)
Do You Know What It Means to Miss...
Cornelius Schwehr
Ensemble Recherche
(9:50)
Ser Ihnen Ihres Nicht Tanzt Spottet Der Verabredeten Bewegung
Cornelius Schwehr
Ensemble Recherche
(12:10)
Poco a Poco Subito
Cornelius Schwehr
Ensemble Recherche
(17:25)
Quintus I: Jus de Tablette
Cornelius Schwehr
Ensemble Recherche
(:34)
Quintus I: Inventio 1
Cornelius Schwehr
Ensemble Recherche
(:58)
Quintus I: Nullstellen
Cornelius Schwehr
Ensemble Recherche
(1:45)
Quintus I: Inventio 2
Cornelius Schwehr
Ensemble Recherche
(2:15)
Quintus I: Conclusio
Cornelius Schwehr
Ensemble Recherche
(1:48)
Credits
John Corbett (Liner Notes), Pia Uehlinger (Producer), Barbara Maurer (Viola), Christian Dierstein (Percussion), Martin Fahlenbock (Flute), Melise Mellinger (Violin), Uwe Möckel (Clarinet), Stephan Hahn (Recording Supervision), Lucas Fels (Cello), Mark Foster (Conductor), Werner X. Uehlinger (Producer), Harry Vogt (Producer), Francois Eckert (Recording Supervision), Ensemble Recherche (Performer), Michael Peschko (Recording Supervision)
