Cerha: New work for oboe, cello and piano

Ittinger Whitsun Festival

On 11 June the world première of Friedrich Cerha’s Four Paraphrases for oboe, cello and piano will take place at the Ittinger Pfingstkonzerte.

Cerha on his new work:

“When I have previously used quotes in my work, they have often created allusions that only I can understand. In my Four Paraphrases for oboe, cello and piano, written to a request by Heinz Holliger for a specific programme, I have made my quotes clearly audible for everyone. It was appealing to me, by combining the originals with new elements, to show another side – in my opinion an unexpected side – of the original material.

In the first Paraphrase it is the B-minor Scherzo by Chopin, in the second the Rigoletto-arias by Verdi, in the third the well-known Humoresque by Dvorak, and in the fourth a mix of Johann Strauß, Offenbach, the Marseillaise, the Internationale and Lohengrin. Perhaps the recognition of something distorted within the banal can be a source of pleasure, although it is very clear to me that by their technically proximity to my chansons from the 1980s they amount to a borderline case within my oeuvre.”