Helmut Lachenmann: Schwankungen am Rand [CD]

Helmut Lachenmann is, nowadays, my favourite composer and the one I think has gone higher in the complexity of his works, a route that comes from the `60s and which Lachenmann explores time after time in the search of new technical possibilities of expression.

This CD is a clear example of how far he has gone and how wonderful his music is. Some of these works are composed under the crucial influence of Luigi Nono's `lessons' to Helmut Lachenmann, we have to remember that Lachenmann was the only `student' Nono had and that Nono asked Lachenmann for listening everything he could, exploring nature and human sounds. Lachenmann used to say that Nono even wanted he listen the sound of the grass growing, something very typical of Nono's late style, in the works that follows Fragmente-Stille, key fragments of the western music from Lachenmann took lot of learning for his works about the concept of `ascoltare' (=listening) which Nono worked so much. Mouvement or ...Zwei Gefühle, Musik mit Leonardo are clear example of this.

But first of all let me write about the players, the performers of this CD, whom make the miracle possible. The Ensemble Modern is, with no doubt, my favourite group of contemporany music and the one that has the highest technical level, together with a musicality really incredible and a great affinity with this modern scores. I could only think about other ensemble in this outstanding level, that is the Arditti Quartet. In fact, like that quartet, there are many works that are composed and thought to be played by them, like Helmut Lachenmann's last piece, `Concertini', which the Ensemble Modern has recorded for ECM too and which I hope be on CD next year 2006. I think about Mason's last work, which is composed too for the EM and which has been just released by Col legno. This very small ensemble, that has an orchestral version too (like we listen in that wonderful CD of Birtwistle in DG 20 21), is a virtuoso player in every instrument, joining together people who really feel and love the contemporany music. When other ensembles have to think about how to play a work, trying just to do it technically, the EM plays it in a incredible natural way and a completely `idiomatic' style of vanguard music. Apart from being very flexible and able to perform music so different like that by Zappa or Lachenmann, Ligeti or Reich, Nono or Nancarrow. Brasses, woodwinds, drums, strings... all of them are simply ¡perfect! in all the modern repertoire, specially in complex works like those you can listen in this CD.

I know Mouvement performed by the Klangforum Wien, a good recording but nothing compare to this recording, like Musik mit Leonardo, which I know by the Klangforum too and in the opera "Das Mädchen mit dem Schwöfelholzern".

Schwankungen am Rand was recorded in Col legno by Ernst Bour... when I listened this version I really thought it was a new work, the difference is the bigger I ever listened between two versions in any music, I think. This performance by the EM is ¡¡¡INCREDIBLE!!!, the only one in which the work shows all the amazing possibilities, one of my favourites in Lachenmann's early works.

As you cam imagine, this is one of my favourites CD of classical music of all time, so you shouldn't miss it if you really love modern music and Lachenmann's works specially.

Helmut Lachenmann recently came to my attention thanks to Paul Griffiths. He is mentioned briefly in MODERN MUSIC AND AFTER (1995 -- see my review), but not at enough length to make an impression. But then in November of 2001 (11/04/01), Griffiths wrote a long piece in the New York Times called "Making All Sounds Equal," reviewing several Lachenmann recordings and calling him "the most influential European composer of the moment." Incredible, given that Lachenmann will be 68 this year! Lachenmann studied with Nono in the late 1950s, and has been composing since the 1960s, but only now is he being recognized outside the German-speaking countries.

This ECM disc is the perfect introduction to an uncompromising avant-garde composer. "Schwankungen am Rand" ("Teetering on the Brink"), from 1974-5, is also the lead piece on Col Legno's Collage disc of Lachenmann. "Mouvement (-- vor der Erstarrung)," or "Movement Before Paralysis," from 1983-4, is featured on one of several Kairos discs of Lachenmann. And "...zwei Gefuhle..." ("Two Feelings -- for Leonardo"), from 1992, is incorporated in toto into the second half of Lachenmann's new non-opera DAS MADCHEN," "The Little Match Girl," also on Kairos. With all three of these major compositions, there is little doubt, then, that this ECM disc is the place to begin. The music is played by the Ensemble Modern, with Peter Eotvos conducting. Eotvos, a composer in his own right, was musical director of Pierre Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain (EI) at IRCAM from 1978 to 1991. The German Ensemble Modern, along with the EI, is one of only a few orchestral ensembles to specialize in contemporary works. The booklet includes an essay by Lachenmann on the composition of "Schwankungen am Rand," as well as an essay by Jurg Stenzl, both of which illuminate the music.

Superficially it might seem that Lachenmann has followed Cage into the realm of chance procedures. Actually Lachenmann's path is different, pursuing and constructing sounds, the physicality of the production of music, with great care -- nothing is left to chance. As you might imagine given that he began with Nono, Lachenmann sees his project as part of an effort to challenge the commodification of music -- a commitment to the ideals of Adorno. I realize I have only vaguely suggested what the music actually sounds like, and I think I'll leave it at that -- despite the apparent lack of a system such as serialism or stochastic methods, these compositions have a clear structural integrity -- order is reconstituted from the deconstructed parts of the "conventional orchestral engine."

It's interesting that the "late Nono" may have repaid his student by learning from him in turn in his compositions from the late 1970s on. And the recent JAGDEN UND FORMEN ("Hunts and Forms" -- see my review) by Wolfgang Rihm seems to me to be influenced by Lachenmann as well, specifically by his most often performed work "Mouvement," which concludes with a vigorous, rhythmic, tarantella-like passage. If everything so far has sounded dry and intellectual, it should be emphasized that there is a tremendous amount of humor in this music, just as there is in Beckett's writings. Rihm seems to have incorporated that as well.

In conclusion, let me echo Paul Griffiths and encourage you by all means to hear the music of Helmut Lachenmann!

The obsession with timbre,attack,amplification etc.as opposed to pitch leaves me cold with some contemporary composers but Lachenmann is a special case:i'm often intrigued by the sounworlds he creates inspite of the fact that this isn't quite my kind of thing.There's no doubt about it,Lachennman is 100% sincere about what he does and the architectural sense is exemplary.Also,a glance at any of his scores will reveal just how painstaking this guy is at arriving at these results.

At times Lachenmann is akin to the last dessicated remains of western music,the final burning embers.A romantic image for the least romantic of composers and there's something terribly earnest about the spoken element in Musik mit Leonardo.Still,this is obviously the place to start if you've never heard any of his music.