Out of the 51 composers he picked for this year-long series, 13 are UE-composers – that’s a quarter! It goes without saying that this fills us with great pride. And here they are, in all their glory, from Sir Richard Rodney Bennett to Karlheinz Stockhausen:

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett	Luciano Berio	Sir Harrison Birtwistle
Pierre Boulez	Morton Feldman	Michael Finnissy
György Kurtág	György Ligeti	Arvo Pärt
Steve Reich	Wolfgang Rihm	Alfred Schnittke
Karlheinz Stockhausen

Carrie Cracknell’s new production of the opera will be performed six times between 11 and 25 May under conductor Edward Gardner:

Alban Berg: Wozzeck
Opera in 3 acts | 105’
11, 13, 15, 18, 23 and 25 May, English National Opera, London
Leigh Melrose, Wozzeck; Sara Jakubiak, Marie; Tom Randle, The Captain; James Morris, The Doctor; Bryan Register, The Drum-Major; ENO Orchestra, cond. Edward Gardner

Download a PDF file

The included complete listing of Universal Edition’s titles for violin (with approximate gradings) will prove invaluable as a ready reference for teachers and performers.

Watch pupils and teachers from the Musikschule Waidhofen/Ybbs in Austria performing the pieces from Violin Selection.

For the Pupil …

• Instrumental parts with fun cartoons for inspiration
• A CD providing stimulating demonstration performances to listen to as well as "minus-one" accompaniments for playing along at home
• Cartoons can be downloaded for free for colouring in

For the Teacher …

• Sheet music for selected piano accompaniments can be downloaded for free – just follow the web link provided in the pupil’s book!
• If preferred, the accompaniments of all of the 12 pieces can be purchased in one printed and bound volume

James Rae
Recorder Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21616
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21617

 already available:

• Cello Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21534
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21535

• Violin Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21532
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21533

• Clarinet Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21526
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21527

• Flute Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21528
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21529

• Saxophone Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21530
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21531

Morton Feldman: Coptic Light
for orchestra | 30’
4 4 4 4 - 4 4 4 1 - timp, perc(4), hp(2), pno(2), str(18 16 12 12 10)
19/8/2013, Royal Albert Hall, London; BBC Scottish SO, cond. Ilan Volkov

Leoš Janácek: Sinfonietta
for orchestra | 25’
4 2 4 2 - 4 12 4 1 - timp, perc(2), hp, bass tpt(2), t.tuba(2), str
14/8/2013, Royal Albert Hall, London; Bournemouth SO, cond. Kirill Karabits

Gustav Mahler: 2. Symphonie
for soli, mixed choir and orchestra | 80‘
4 4 5 4 - 10 8 4 1 - timp(2), perc(5), hp(2), org, str
9/8/2013, Royal Albert Hall, London; Genia Kühmeier, ms; Anna Larsson, s
Bavarian Radio Symphony Chorus, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, cond. Mariss Jansons

Arvo Pärt: Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten
for string orchestra and bell | 6’
1/9/2013, Royal Albert Hall, London; Orchestre de Paris, cond. Paavo Järvi

Karol Szymanowski: Concerto No. 1
for violin and orchestra | 24’
3 3 4 3 - 4 3 3 1 - perc(2), hp(2), cel, pno, str(12 12 8 8 6)
2/9/2013, Royal Albert Hall, London; Baiba Skride, vl
Oslo Filharmoniske Orkester, cond. Vasily Petrenko

Karol Szymanowski: Symphony No. 3
for tenor, mixed choir ad lib and orchestra | 24‘
4 4 5 4 - 6 4 4 1 - perc, pno, hp(2), cel, org, str
18/7/2013, Royal Albert Hall, London; Michael Weinius, t
BBC National Chorus of Wales; BBC Symphony Chorus; BBC National Orchestra of Wales, cond. Thomas Søndergård

Kurt Weill: Suite from “The Threepenny Opera“
for orchestra | 16‘
2 2 2 2 - 4 2 2 1 - timp, perc(2), hp, pno, guit, str
5/8/2013, Royal Albert Hall, London; tenThing

The full Proms programme is on the BBC website.

“points on the curve to find…”
for piano and 22 instruments | 11’
3 2 3 2 - 2 2 1 1 - cel, alto sax, vla(1), vc(2), cb(1)
26/4/2013, Porto; Jonathan Ayerst, pno; Remix Ensemble, cond. Jonathan Stockhammer

Sinfonia
for 8 voices and orchestra | 35’
4 3 4 3 - 4 4 3 1 - perc(3), hp, e.hpsd, pno, e.org, alto sax, t.sax, str
26/4/2013, Porto; Theatre of Voices; Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Musica, cond. Lothar Zagrosek

Cries of London
for 8 voices | 12’
27/4/2013, Porto; Coro Casa da Música, cond. Paul Hillier

E si fussi pisci
for mixed choir a cappella | 2’
28/4/2013, Porto; Coro Casa a Música, cond. Paul Hillier

Tempi Concertati
for flute, violin, 2 pianos and other instruments | 16’
1 2 3 1 - 1 1 1 0 - perc(4), hp(2), pno(2), vln(1), vla(2), vc(2), cb(1)
28/4/2013, Porto; Remix Ensemble, cond. Jonathan Stockhammer

David Fennessy on 13 Factories:

“It was the seemingly most innocuous of images that stayed with me from my trip to PRD and ultimately provided me with the starting point for 13 Factories: A woman talking on her mobile phone on a crowded train; her hand cupped over the mouthpiece in an attempt to maintain her own privacy and respect the privacy of those around her. I also noticed it in people at restaurants – while using a toothpick with one hand, the other hand would come up to protect the mouth from view. Somehow this image took on a metaphorical significance for me – the mouth as a vehicle for self expression and the difficulty of making its individual voice heard in a place as densely populated as Hong Kong, Shenzhen or Guangzhou.”

13 Factories
for ensemble and electronics | 19’
0 0 0 0 - 0 1 1 0 - 4 hand-held speakers, pno(2), vln(2), vla, vc, cb – electronics
US prem: 20/4/2013, New York; Talea Ensemble, cond. Eduardo Leandro

Angelus (2008)
for orchestra | 20’
3 3 3 3 - 4 3 3 1 - timp, perc(3), hp, pno, org/synth, str
18 and 20/4/2013; Kungliga Filharmonikerna, cond. Nikolai Alexeev

Symphony No. 1 (2001)
for orchestra | 30’
3 3 3 3 - 4 3 3 1 - timp, perc(3), hp, pno, str
18/4/2013; Kungliga Filharmonikerna, cond. Nikolai Alexeev

Open Ground (2006)
for orchestra | 10’
3 3 3 3 - 4 3 3 1 - timp, perc(3), hp, pno, str
20/4/2013; Kungliga Filharmonikerna, cond. Nikolai Alexeev

Wunderbare Leiden (2010)
for two pianos and orchestra | 20’
3 3 4 4 - 4 3 3 1 - timp, perc(3), hp, cel, str
20/4/2013; Ivetta Irkha, pno; Vardan Mamikonian, pno; Kungliga Filharmonikerna, cond. Nikolai Alexeev

Colours of Autumn (2002)
for string orchestra | 11’
21/4/2013; Musica Vitae, cond. Michael Bartosch

Creation of the Hymn (2013)
for string orchestra | 15’
world prem. 21/4/2013; Musica Vitae, cond. Michael Bartosch

Djurgården Tales (2011)
Suite for two pianos | 12’
21/4/2013; Ivetta Irkha, pno; Vardan Mamikonian, pno

„...im Klosterhofe“ (1999)
for violoncello, piano and tape | 11’
21/4/2013; Erik Wahlgren, vc;

Secret Beauty of Waters (2004)
for piano | 6’
21/4/2013

7 Singing Butterflies (2005)
for clarinet and string quartet | 11’
21/4/2013; Niklas Andersson, cl; Stenhammar Quartet

Universal Edition and Wiener Urtext Edition in Hall 3.1, Stand C42

The Frankfurt Music Fair is the world's leading trade fair for the world of music. You’ll find a complete range of products with everything required for making music, not to mention innumerable workshops, concerts, demonstrations and discussion events.

10–13 April 2013
open from 9am to 6pm

Trade visitors: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Public day: Friday afternoon, Saturday

We look forward to seeing you at our stand!

• An introduction to the world of the tango with easy pieces progressing to the more advanced
• Background information and helpful advice with every piece
• The CD provides authentic performances demonstrating the stylistic characteristics of the tango
• Arrangements of Volver, El flete and 21 further compositions

Diego Collatti
Viva el Tango!
The Tango Piano Tutor
UE 36000

Tilmann Dehnhard's confidence-building approach and helpful, practical advice will ensure good progress in this exciting genre and kindle the self-assurance to improvise and experiment.

Each chapter is complete in itself and working through the book from the beginning is not required. Specific skills can be worked on in any order - just as you please.

All of the exercises in the book are demonstrated on the DVD which is invaluable - bringing to life the techniques explained in the book.

Tilmann Dehnhard
The New Flute
Workbook & DVD
UE 35320

Friedrich Cerha’s compositional work: After the Second World War, Cerha was in close contact with the Art Club and due to his avant-garde aspirations, he received insight into the views of Schoenberg by Joseph Polnauer, while at the same time playing the works of his composition colleagues as a violinist. When introduced to the current methods of composition in 1956 – 1958 at the Darmstadt summer courses, he became very interested in serialism, as well as in John Cage’s chance operations. Thus Cerha, who constantly questioned power structures and allegiances, refused to join any educational institution and rather worked on different methods of composition, altering them according to his own ideas and letting them flow into his work. In compositions, like “Netzwerk” [in English: network] (1981), based on “Exercises” (1962-67), he lets the heterogeneity of styles exist side by side and combines avant-gardistic principal parts with historically backward regressions. In other works such as „Spiegel I-VII“ [in English: Mirror I-VII] (1960-72), he refers to a compositional method, which either forms static structures or continuously follows the musical momentum. The rise and fall of the orchestral sound in “Spiegel VII” [in English: Mirror VII] creates a powerful, seemingly organically evolving continuum of sound – sound masses, which can also be found in “Fasce” or „Mouvements“. Despite the stylistic variety of compositional means, Cerha’s works are combined by comprehensibility. It is the continuous swaying of tension, the development of singular or multiple overlapping lines which characterize the individual compositions and always manage to arouse curiosity.

There is a precise concept for the stage implementation of the compositions “Spiegel”-cycle and “Netzwerk”. The concept does not follow any strict plot but deals with the characteristics of human beings on a principle level, which Cerha describes as “world theater”. Influenced by his experiences during the Second World War when he was recruited by the German army, which he deserted and came in contact with the opposition, he deals with the “… questions about the possibilities and opportunities of the individual to deal with power …”. This is also the theme of the opera “Baal” (1974/81), the “Rattenfänger” [in English: Pied Piper] (1987) and “Der Riese vom Steinfeld” [in English: The Giant of Steinfeld] (2002), in which the attention is always on the outsiders. In instrumental works such as the violin concert or the saxophone concert, it is the ratio of an instrument in confrontation with the mass of the orchestra, which reflects the ratio of a single individual to society. In “Eine Art Chanson” [in English: some kind of chanson] or in “Keintate” he deals with the basics of poems, including parts from the Viennese group with Viennese language – again various styles run along with the tradition of the Viennese, contrasting each other, first alienated, but then find a new form.

However composing alone has never been enough for Cerha. Inspired by the impressions in Darmstadt, Cerha founded in 1958 with Kurt Schwertsik the ensemble “die reihe” [in English: the series]. The name of the ensemble says it all, it didn’t stick to one performance, the goal was the continuous dissemination of contemporary music. And so they offered the Viennese public works of classical modern music as well as more recent compositions – always quite confrontational, for example the performance of the Piano Concerto by John Cage, which turned into a veritable scandal. But even this could not bring the ensemble down and so it still exists to this day. In the 1980s Cerha initiated together with Hans Landesmann the concert series “Wege in unsere Zeit” [in English: ways in our time] in the Konzerthaus Vienna, which again gave the public the opportunity to get familiar with the contemporary music scene. The fact that Cerha is not limited to one style is not only valid for his compositions, but also for his career as a conductor. Thus, while working for the ensemble “die reihe”, he was also engaged in conducting the ensemble “Camerata Frescobaldiana”, which performed works of the early Italian Baroque on period instruments.

Even with 87 years, Cerha is still active and dedicated to his creative work in his hometown Maria Langegg, where he has erected a chapel. The composer with multiple interests not only composes music, but is also an active painter and sculptor. Another passion of Friedrich Cerha is – just like some other fellow composers – mushroom hunting, an activity where he can find peace for his numerous endeavors. You would think that things are now becoming more quiet around Friedrich Cerha, but this is not the case. Just recently he received a “Carta Blanca” from the Orquesta Nacional de España. During 5 days, from the 7th-12th of April 2013, six compositions for orchestra and ensemble will be performed in the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid. All six compositions are national premieres in Spain.

Doris Weberberger

(translated from German)

This text was first published on austrian music export

Like a Tragicomedy (2008-2009)
for large orchestra | 20'
3 2 3 3 - 4 4 4 1 - timp, perc(4), hp, alto sax(Eb), mand, str
7/4/2013, cond. Nicholas Collon

Bruchstück, geträumt (2009)
for ensemble | 18'
0 0 0 0 - 2 0 1 0 - perc(3), hp, pno, vln(3), vla(2), vc
9/4/2013, cond. Arturo Tamayo

Quellen (1992)
for ensemble | 13'
0 0 1 0 - 1 0 1 0 - perc(3), acc, org, sop.sax, guit, str(1 1 0 0 0)
9/4/2013, cond. Arturo Tamayo

Serenade (2006–2007)
for ensemble | 17'
2 1 2 1 - 1 1 1 0 - perc, hp, mand, vln(2), vla, vc, cb
9/4/2013, cond. Arturo Tamayo

Konzert (2007–2008)
for percussion and orchestra | 35'
3 2 3 3 - 6 4 4 2 - timp(2), perc(4), hp, cel, sop.sax, str(14 12 10 8 6)
12/04/2013, cond. Arturo Tamayo, sol. Juanjo Guillem

Spiegel VI (1960, 1961)
for large orchestra | 6'
5 4 5 4 - 8 4 6 0 - timp(3), str
12/4/2013, cond. Arturo Tamayo

The issue of the “scandal concert” was not merely a question of how an audience treated the performers – it was about partisanship at a crossroads of musical history. The audience’s response was so unruly that the evening was cut short before the last piece on the programme (Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder) could be performed. Everyone understood that date. It was a sign, duly reported the next day in the Neuen Wiener Tagblatt daily newspaper, thus: “One is not wrong in alleging that scenes like the one yesterday have never before happened, neither in Vienna nor certainly any other concert hall in any other cultural city.” The “scandal concert” was not merely an ephemeral annoyance in musical life; every commentator saw it at once as a special occurrence – the day when the audience turned its back on new music.

“Scandal Concert“
Anton Webern: 6 Stücke
Alexander Zemlinsky: Vier Orchesterlieder
Arnold Schönberg: 1. Kammersymphonie
Alban Berg: 5 Orchester-Lieder
Gustav Mahler: Kindertotenlieder
Christiane Oelze, s; ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, cond. Cornelius Meister
Friday, 5 April 2013, 19:30
Musikverein, Goldener Saal
Ö1 | Listen live

Excerpt from a letter from Henri Pousseur to Universal Edition on 6 November 1995

Votre Faust
Variable work in the operatic genre
1 0 1 1 - 1 1 0 0 - perc, hp, pno, alto sax, vln, vc, cb
30/3/2013 Berlin; Lydia Brotherton, Kerstin Stöcker, Kai-Uwe Fahnert, Martin Schubach; work in progress Berlin, cond. Gerhard Müller-Goldbloom

Haas has also composed new interludes to join the works together and to create a new musical and scenic dialogue.

nocturno – HAIKU/ATTHIS (2013)
for soprano, baritone, female choir and 14 instruments
0 1 1 1 - 1 0 0 0 - perc(2), hp, acc, pno, vln(2), vla, vc, cb - female choir (in “nocturno”)
world première: 23.03.2013 Bonn, Ensemble musikFabrik; cond. Christopher Sprenger; soloists: Solisten des Theaters Bonn Frauenchor

We look forward to welcoming you to our stand, Hall 4 - Stand A207.

What happened to cause that change? This book seeks to answer that question with the aid of interviews with the great Mahler conductors of our day. The discussions range from Mahler's reception by audiences in different countries to the way his audiences gradually came to understand his aesthetic as an expression of the modern human condition, its longings and its aspirations.

Gustav Mahler
The Conductors' Interviews
edited by Wolfgang Schaufler
UE 26311

Presented here for descant/descant/treble or descant/treble/treble recorders, these pieces can also be played on the lower recorders (tenor and bass). A variety of possible instrumentations is listed in the book.

The seven folksong arrangements in this first publication of the series are joined by an original piece: Parrots of the Caribbean. Each book includes short explanations about the pieces as well as tips for alternative instrumentations allowing tenor and bass recorders to be used.

Ensemble Dreiklang Berlin
Recorder Trio
for soprano and treble recorders
Volume 1
UE 35731

Video language: German (with English subtitles)

We mourn the passing of our trusted companion and supporter of our composers.

Otto Tomek began his career in 1953 at Universal Edition and remained closely connected to the company for his whole life. Through his role as chairman of the supervisory board (until 2010) and as the head of the artistic committee, he made a significant and lasting contribution to the history of UE.

Tomek studied musicology with Erich Schenk in Vienna, writing his doctoral thesis on "Structure phenomena of the music of the 16th and 17th centuries". After his early years at UE he joined West German Radio in Cologne. As head of the new music department and the electronic music studio he turned Cologne into a centre of contemporary music. During his time as programme director of the concert series "Music of our time", he was responsible for innumerable world premieres and provided Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Mauricio Kagel, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, Morton Feldman and many others with working conditions second to none.

Tomek's visionary talent was seen as early as January 1958 when he asked David Tudor about the new piano concerto by John Cage. The world premiere of the concerto took place in New York in May 1958 and resulted in a veritable scandal. This did not, however, discourage Tomek, who continued to organise the German premiere, which was performed in Cologne on 19 September 1958.

It was this unwavering commitment to discovery that brought him not just respect but also the personal appreciation and friendship of many great composers, for whom he was a particularly competent companion. Many works were dedicated to Tomek.

In 1971, following the death of Heinrich Strobel, Otto Tomek took over as artistic director of the new music festival in Donaueschingen. In the same year, in his role as head of the music department, Tomek founded the experimental studio at SWF Radio in Freiburg.

From 1977 Tomek led the music department of SDR Radio in Stuttgart. In addition, from 1967 he was co-editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik.

His great knowledge, his untiring commitment to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries and the heartfelt warmth of his great personality will always be an example to us.

The supervisory board, directors and staff of
Universal Edition AG.

Video language: German with English subtitles

Cristóbal Halffter has composed a new work for Kiel Opera: Schachnovelle, a story about chess, resistance, madness and self-discovery. The libretto is by Wolfgang Haendeler, after Stefan Zweig’s novella.

Halffter’s Don Quijote had its German premiere in Kiel in 2006 where, in summer 2008, the opera house’s 100th season climaxed with the world premiere of his Lázaro; now the cooperation between Halffter and Kiel Opera is crowned with the world première of Schachnovelle on 18/5/2013.

The story: Czentovic and Dr. Berger are chess players who could not be more different from each other. One of them can only play when he has the chess board and the pieces directly before his eyes, whereas the game saves the other man from Nazi persecution, even if it only happens in his mind, against himself and drives him to the brink of madness. The two players meet in New York on a passenger ship, and a decisive “match” ensues – materialism versus idealism. Although a formal error ends the game in a draw, Dr. Berger wins something else …

Translation: Grant Chorley

Flesh and Blood

The conclusion is that she does then send him away, knowing he will never return, or only as a body. It is therefore shown that it is the mother (rather than, conventionally, the soldier) who makes the supreme sacrifice of their flesh and blood.

The music for the mother is at first lyrical and expressive, and that for her son more rhythmic and driven. As the piece develops, the two types of music gradually swap over.

David Sawer

Please note that this text is not to be used as a programme note.

The world première of Flesh and Blood will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.
Friday 15 Feb, 7.30pm London time. Listen here.

View the full vocal score

Flesh and Blood
for mezzo-soprano, baritone and orchestra | 30‘
3 3 3 3 - 5 3 3 1 - timp(2), perc(4), hp(2), cel, str
15/2/2013, Barbican, London; Christine Rice, ms, Marcus Farnsworth, bar; BBC Symphony Orchestra, cond. Ilan Volkov

Atspindys (Widerschein)
for divided choir and in the version for choir and tape (1991)

Pasaka
a fairy-tale for piano solo and in the version for piano and tape (1995-1997)

Pusline
for ensemble (1997-2000)

Sinfonia
for ensemble (1996)

Our catalogue now spans more than two decades of the compositional oeuvre of Vykintas Baltakas.

Diego Collatti's arrangements retain all the captivating and magnetic charms of the Tango made so popular by Gardel in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Calos Gardel
Tango - Trio
for violin or flute, cello and piano
arranged by Diego Collatti
UE 35581

already available:

Tango - Violin Duets
UE 33651

Tango - Cello Duets
UE 34681

Tango - Violin & Piano
UE 35013

Tango - Violoncello & Piano
UE 35261

They may have been composed for a specific occasion, perhaps as a musical bouquet for a soirée in a Parisian salon hosted by a certain Monsieur Paston, to whom they are dedicated.

Fernando Sor
Trois pièces de société Op. 36
UE 34490

Please find here a complete list from all titles of the New Karl Scheit Guitar Edition.

“She was created to incite to sin, to lure, seduce, poison—yea, murder, in a manner no man knows.” (Frank Wedekind, Erdgeist)

Alban Berg's first inspiration for the composition of the opera Lulu proved a decisive experience for the twenty-year-old composer. On 29 May 1905 he saw a performance of Frank Wedekind’s Büchse der Pandora staged by Karl Kraus in Vienna, and was entranced by the play's uninhibited sensuality and sexuality – a theme which still grips audiences today.

The première of David Pountney’s new production of Alban Berg’s Lulu (arranged by Kloke) takes place on 8 February at the Wales Millenium Centre.

David Pountney’s Blog grants a look behind the scenes.

Ingo Kerkhof is the stage director, Yordan Kamdzhalov conducts the Philharmonisches Orchester Heidelberg.

Wolfgang Rihm: Dionysos
New Production
Heidelberger Theater
Stage Director: Ingo Kerkhof
Main Soloists: Holger Falk, Ariadne Sharleen Joynt, Diana Tomsche, Carolyn Frank, Guadalupe Larzabal, Namwon Huh
Philharmonisches Orchester Heidelberg , c. Yordan Kamdzhalov

Beginning with a performance level which is outlined by pieces such as Bach's Minuet in G (BWV Anh. 116), Mozart's Minuet in F (KV 5) or Schumann's Wilder Reiter (Op. 68/8), works by three different composers are selected for each volume of the Urtext Primo series, with the aim of offering piano pupils (or even adults who want to resume piano playing) a wide range of repertoire pieces on the basis of which they can enhance their technical and musical skills.

The pieces' range of levels of difficulty is relatively narrow so that the volume can be used continuously over a period of about two years. This is what distinguishes the Urtext Primo approach from almost all common anthologies. The selected repertoire takes into account not only pieces of the classic canon of lessons, but also lesser known works which are in no way of less importance for piano lessons. The Urtext Primo volumes are published in the internationally recognised standard of the Wiener Urtext editions.

The explanations included in each volume shall help to deepen the knowledge of musical styles, music history and piano playing. A repertoire chart at the end of each volume gives a rough overview of the levels of difficulty of the selected pieces.

Urtext Primo - Volume 1
Bach - Händel - Scarlatti
Easy piano pieces with practice tips
UT 52001

Sample pages

All together easy Ensemble!
Volume 2
James Rae
Content: O du lieber Augustin • The force of Destiny • Loch Lomond • Premiership Blues
UE 21581

already available:

All together easy Ensemble!
Volume 1
James Rae
Content: All Through the Night • Ridgway Rock • Skip to My Lou • St. Anthony Chorale
UE 21580

There are obituaries in the Guardian, the Independent and the Telegraph. Tom Service presented a portrait of the composer in his guide to contemporary music this summer.

Universal Edition is grateful and proud to publish a substantial catalogue of Sir Richard's works.

Have you conducted the chamber version before?

Jordan: No, I unfortunately never conducted the chamber version, but I did the Webern version from the piano, which I find very beautiful and exciting. There is that wonderful arrangement for quintet, that is the same as in Pierrot lunaire – flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano – which lends the work even more intimacy, transparency, while somewhat softening the rough corners and edges which of course the first version has, with all the winds and horn passages making the whole piece harsher. The Webern version is very beautiful, it is played very often.

Does the 1914 version lie between a condensation and a broader orchestration?

Jordan: The great thing for me is that I always wanted to do this chamber symphony and I was looking for a version, an orchestration not too distant from the initial sound, I mean the chamber-musical one. There is always the big question how to make a version for orchestra of such a contrapuntally complex work – and there is a lot of counterpoint in this piece. There are two options: either you do what was usual at that time, you double or triple some of the most audible motifs using particular instruments, the brass, for instance, to make them clearer, come through more sharply – make it more massive, so to speak. But you can take the alternate route: this means not more instruments, not more delineation, but slimming, so that the sound becomes clearer because of the transparency.

Basically, what I had always sought was actually a version that maintained the original chamber-symphony sound but which made it possible for a larger orchestra to play, without additional doubling, adding brass: simply maintaining the sound. Of course there is always the hazard that some of the main voices and secondary ones will perhaps be lost. In the beginning, Schönberg took the easy way out, telling the conductor to do as he desired. Yet he very quickly noticed that that did not work. And then, when I found this 1914 version, which Schönberg orchestrated himself, I was incredibly thankful that I had finally found a version precisely corresponding to what I had been seeking.

Where do you see the difference between the two large versions of 1914 and 1934/35?

Jordan: I think that the main difference of the two versions for large orchestra is that the 1934/35 one is orchestrated much more massively. It is for very large orchestra, tending to the Mahlerian. In that sense, it has nothing to do with chamber music anymore, including the incisive use of brass, trumpets and trombones. But there they are, making the piece extremely symphonic and massive.

In more intimate and rather trickier passages, he often leaves the solo string quartet to play, so it does have truly chamber-musical contrasts, which is very beautiful.

He did not need to do that in the 1914 version, although it is still basically a very orchestral sound – it is for large orchestra, even the 1914 version is not chamber music – however its sound is simply less aggressive. It is more limpid, lucid, less incisive, and that allows the voices to emerge more clearly. And that means it is not absolutely necessary to make large contrasts, or have some passage suddenly played solo, as in the chamber version, which of course also makes greater demands on the string players.

Munich, 1 November 2012

Interview by Eric Marinitsch

Translation: Grant Chorley

UE Composer's Game
• in 2 Versions: Quartet Game & Quiz
• including 36 Cards in 9 Categories

Quartet Game:
The object of the game is to collect the most sets of four cards (four cards belonging in the same category). The winner is the player who, at the end of the game, has the most sets of cards.

Quiz:
The procedure is the same except that the requested card will only be given to the player who asks for it and if they can answer a question correctly about the composer featured on the card.
UE 80313

UE Composer Pairs
- Card Game for the Whole Family
Get to know, face to face, 33 of the greatest composers. This popular card game, together with an enclosed booklet on all the composers, provides lots of anecdotes and information about their lives and their works. Enjoy the game and discover the world of music!
UE 45052

THE FLUTE COLLECTION
Emmanuel Pahud presents

Giuseppe Verdi
Fantasy on "La Traviata"
for flute and piano
UE 35314

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky
Lensky Aria
for flute and piano
UE 35313

already available:

Claude-Paul Taffanel
Fantasy on "Der Freischütz"
for flute and piano
UE 35316

Claude Debussy
Clair de Lune (from: Suite bergamasque)
for piano
UT 50291

27 May 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of Luciano Berio’s death. His friend Umberto Eco remembers him: “I would have liked to reminisce about many episodes in those days that now seem heroic, when in 1956 Schönberg was jeered at La Scala and when in 1963, at the Piccola Scala, certain gentlemen in dinner jackets, outraged by Passaggio by Berio and Sanguineti, stood up indignantly shouting ‘centre-left!’ Instead I will speak in particular about Berio during his years at the RAI’s Musical Phonology Studio.”

According to Eco, Berio was interested in “the poetics of an open work of art extending beyond the historically somewhat provisional framework of artwork in motion” – that also contributed to his ranking.

31 March 2013: the 100th anniversary of the so-called “scandal concert” conducted by Arnold Schönberg and which, for many reasons, amounted to a caesura in European concert life. It was not merely a question of how an audience treated the performers – it was about partisanship at a crossroads of musical history.

In an interview for this issue, Nuria Schönberg Nono bemoans the fact that aesthetic confrontations have become “vapid” today; she is also keeping in mind that her father is a match for the contextual dimension of the confrontations. Only the polemic underhandedness was dispensable; the latent anti-Semitism, openly articulated at a later date, was scandalous. Musicologist Christoph Becher examines the “scandal concert” from the perspective of historical context.

Alex Ross is the music critic for the New Yorker and the author of the highly regarded book The Rest Is Noise; he takes a look at Morton Feldman in an extensive article. Ross quotes Feldman: “What are our morals in music? Our moral in music is 19th-century German music, isn’t it? I do think about that, and I do think about the fact that I want to be the first great composer who is Jewish.”

We also present another composer, Jay Schwartz, whose roots are likewise in the USA. As he says in the interview, “I believe that the listener is rewarded for enduring the metamorphosis of sound and thematic material he has helped to consummate.” In the second part of the large-scale Mahagonny interview, Kim Kowalke, president of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, refers to the question of different versions: “There is no definitive version of Mahagonny and there will probably never be two productions which will be identical in terms of the musical text. Choices must be made too often; there are too many options.”

The Musikblätter no longer contain a full concert calendar. Find a complete up-to-date list of all performances online.

We hope you will enjoy this issue.
Your UE Promotion Team
promotion@universaledition.com

Download a PDF file

• More modern studies for soprano, alto, tenor or baritone saxophone complementing the established favourite: 20 Modern Studies
• Musical styles vary from modern Classical through to Jazz and Rock
• For elementary to more advanced levels (1 - 8*)
• Ideal for developing musicianship and technique by way of accessible but challenging material
• These studies make attractive performance pieces and are suitable for examination purposes

36 More Modern Studies
James Rae
for saxophone solo (S/A/T/Bar)
UE 21613

already available:

20 Modern Studies
James Rae
for saxophone solo (S/A/T/Bar)
UE 18820

MIXED ENSEMBLE OPTION
Whilst written specifically for the instrument and addressing the challenges beginner flautists would encounter, a special section is included of four pieces which are “key friendly” for beginners on most instruments and are therefore ideal pieces for mixed instrumental groups. These same four pieces will appear in subsequent books for other instruments in the Debut series.

For the Pupil …

• Instrumental parts with fun cartoons for inspiration
• A CD providing stimulating demonstration performances to listen to as well as “minus-one” accompaniments for playing along at home
• Cartoons can be downloaded for free for colouring in

For the Teacher …

• Sheet music for selected piano accompaniments can be downloaded for free – just follow the web link provided in the pupil’s book!
• If preferred, the accompaniments of all of the 12 pieces can be purchased in one printed and bound volume

James Rae
Cello Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21534
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21535

already available:

James Rae
Violin Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21532
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21533

James Rae
Clarinet Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21526
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21527

James Rae
Flute Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21528
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21529

James Rae
Saxophone Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21530
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21531

Over the last years, Johannes Maria Staud received various prizes, such as the special music prize from the Austrian Republic (2001) and the composition award from the Salzburger Osterfestspiele (2002). He was the grant winner of the Ernst-von-Siemens-Musikstiftung (2004) and won the Paul Hindemith-Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Emil Berlanda-Prize of the state Tyrol in 2009. Congratulations!

Staud is not the first UE-composer to receive the prize, the following UE-composers have been awarded in the past: Joseph Marx, Egon Wellesz, Ernst Krenek, Gottfried von Einem, Friedrich Cerha, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Francis Burt, György Ligeti, Georg Friedrich Haas und Beat Furrer.

In October and November 2012, Wien Modern is celebrating its 25th season. The opening of the festival for contemporary music, dance, performance, theatre, visual arts, film and video took place on 22 October.

Universal Edition is strongly represented at the festival, the works performed include two world premières by Friedrich Cerha, 9 Präludien and 9 Inventionen, Georg Friedrich Haas’ String Quartet No. 2 and Music for Orchestra II by Jay Schwartz.

UE-Interview

Jay Schwartz on Music for Orchestra II

See below for a detailed programme:

Jay Schwartz: Music for Orchestra II
for orchestra | 25’
28/10/2012, Musikverein, Vienna; Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, cond. Bradley Lubman

Georg Friedrich Haas: String Quartet No. 2
for string quartet | 18’
2/11/2012, Konzerthaus, Vienna; Arditti String Quartet

Beat Furrer: Aer
for piano, clarinet and violoncello | 13’
3/11/2012, Konzerthaus, Vienna; Klangforum Wien

György Ligeti: Atmosphères
for orchestra | 9’
5/11/2012, Konzerthaus, Vienna; RSO Wien, cond. Susanna Mälkki

Mauricio Kagel: Acustica
for instruments
6/11/2012, Konzerthaus, Vienna; Ensemble l‘art pour l’art

Anton Webern: 2 Lieder op. 8
for voice and 8 instruments | 5’

Symphonie op. 21
for  chamber ensemble | 10’
13/11/2012, Musikverein, Vienna; Alda Caiello, ms; Ensemble Kontrapunkte, cond. Peter Keuschnig

Friedrich Cerha: 9 Präludien
for organ | 15’
9 Inventionen
for organ | 17’
15/11/2012, St. Ursula, Vienna; Martin Haselböck, org

Pierre Boulez: Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna
for orchestra in 8 groups | 27’
16/11/2012, Musikverein, Wien; Iceland SO, cond. François-Xavier Roth

The official première took place on 16 October 1912 in the Choralion Hall in Berlin, Eduard Steuermann wrote of that occasion: “The instrumentalists and the conductor, Schönberg, were behind a rather complicated screen – complicated because on a small stage it was not quite simple to build the screen so that the speaker should see the conductor but the audience not. […] And the success? There was, of course, a ‘scandal’ […], but also an intense ovation.” (Juilliard News Bulletin)

Pierrot lunaire marks the high point of Schönberg’s expressionistic period, the essence of which he described as renouncing tonal centers and systematic relationships, replacing them with the twelve-tone method he was later to develop, with its dodecaphonic principles. In March 1912 Schönberg wrote in his diary: “And I am unconditionally approaching a new kind of expression – I can sense it. The sounds now are virtually becoming a bestially direct expression of sensual and intellectual feelings – almost as if everything had been directly propagated.”

Excerpt from the study score Arnold Schönberg: Pierrot lunaire from our new study score series

The Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Schönberg’s legendary melodrama cycle Pierrot lunaire with exhibitions in Vienna, Berlin and Banff, and also an anniversary concert.

The exhibition – with facsimile duplicates of the originals on display in Vienna – will be held almost concurrently in the Berlin Philharmonie and at the Banff Centre in Canada.

On Wednesday, 17 October 2012 – 100 years and 1 day after the first public performance of Pierrot lunaire in Berlin – members of the Berlin Philharmonic and the legendary Barbara Sukowa will perform Pierrot on stage in Vienna’s Konzerthaus.

Here you can find further information regarding performances of Pierrot lunaire.

A stay in Nigeria in 1946/47, where he made himself familiar with the music of African tribes, left a strong impression on the Englishman and had a lasting effect on the way he later would compose.

After his studies at the Royal Academy of Music (1948–1951) he continued to study composition under Boris Blacher in Berlin, where he became acquainted with Gottfried von Einem. In 1956, he came to Vienna to “live there temporarily”. Between 1973 and 1992 he taught composition at the Musikhochschule Wien (MHS), organized the first “Lange Nacht der neuen Klänge” [“Long Night of New Tones”] at the Wiener Konzerthaus as vice president of the IGNM (Austrian section) and was head of the Institute for Electroacoustics at the MHS. In 1995, Francis Burt was the featured composer of Wien Modern.

Burt’s catalogue of works consists of only 30 works, however many of them are known by name to adepts, such as the opera Volpone, the ballet Der Golem, the orchestral works Fantasmagoria and Morgana, the works Unter der blanken Hacke des Monds and Und GOtt der HErr sprach for voices and orchestra, Echoes for nine players and his String Quartet. No. 2.

In 2011 the world première of Mohn und Gedächtnis (for Paul Celan) took place, in March 2012 his Variationen eines alten Liedes were performed for the first time. His Mariens Wiegenlied for choir a cappella has yet to be premiered, as does his opera Mahan, which was finished in 2007. The opera tells the story of a spoiled young man from a good family who meets Death.

Burt said about his music:

“I am writing, now, in a style which is influenced in certain ways by electronic music: floating, with a barely discernible pulse, but incorporating layered sonorities, and a gradual building-up of lines and sound fields into a polylinear structure. Nevertheless, the gesture remains the starting point for all my work. In a certain meaning of the word, my music has always been 'tonal'. Over the years, the last remnants of classical functional harmony, frequently used to ironic effect in Volpone, have become unraveled; but in the sense of tonality as a source of tension – and not just as a synonym for functional tonal harmony – its focal points can almost always be detected.”

Read the obituaries by ORF and mica.

Pierre Boulez is a living classic. Ever since the 1950’s, composers around the world have followed with curiosity what he was writing, to see if they could adapt his ideas in their own music or to reject them in their search for an idiom they could call their own. The music the French composer has written ever since the late 1940’s was a conscious act of rebellion against tradition as represented by Schönberg or Stravinsky but also his teacher, Messiaen, whose influence has nevertheless left its mark on Boulez’s music.

After the award ceremony, a performance of Incises and sur Incises will take place, Susanna Mälkki conducts the Ensemble Intercontemporain.

Incises
for piano Klavier | 3'
sur Incises
for 3 pianos, 3 harps and 3 percussionists | 40'
06/08/2012 Venice

"This second volume gives me the great chance to show you more beautiful music from Argentina, including masterpieces from composers such as Agustín Bardi (¡Qué noche!), Ernesto Ponzio (Don Juan), Francisco De Caro (Flores negras) and the immortal Carlos
Gardel (Melodía de arrabal and Por una cabeza)."
Gustavo Beytelmann

Gustavo Beytelmann
Solo Tango Solo Piano
Volume 2
UE 35029

Get further information about Gustavo Beytelmann.

already available:

Gustavo Beytelmann
Solo Tango Solo Piano
Volume 1
UE 34679

Haas, newly crowned winner of the 2013 Salzburg Composition Prize, continues his explorations of ways to broaden orchestral sound using microtonal structures in the world première of Tetraedrite for orchestra.

By contrast, Staud’s Maniai (Austrian première) invokes the Erinyes, the Greek spirits of revenge – and the piece commences accordingly: wild, virtuosic and impulsive. Later it moves into calmer waters and ends in unadorned beauty.

Tetraedrite (2011–2012)
for orchestra | 14’
3 3 3 3 - 5 4 3 1 - timp, perc(2), str (10 10 8 6 4)
prem. 13/09/2012 Klangspuren Schwaz; Tyrolean Symphonic Orchestra Innsbruck, cond. Wen-Pin Chien

Maniai (2012)
for large orchestra | 10’
3 3 3 3 - 4 3 3 1 - perc(4), str
Austrian prem. 13/09/2012 Klangspuren Schwaz; Tyrolean Symphonic Orchestra Innsbruck, cond. Wen-Pin Chien

Music for Voice and Piano (2012)
for soprano and piano | 17’
World première: 08/09/2012 Frankfurt; Marisol Montalvo, s; Emanuele Torquati, pno

“If the indications are not deceptive, then the opera literature is richer by another work, marked by great superficial success and its considerable determination of the future of the genre itself.

The way from the cultish concept of music drama in the Wagnerian sense, back to opera with its intoxicating music and sunlight, with all its illogical irreality, its lambent fantasticality, the joy of colourful changes of scenes, the transitions to purely emotionally musical ground – the path which the Italians, the recent French, d’Albert, and most recently Richard Strauss have tried to break through – Schreker has found it.” (Trans: Grant Chorley)

The Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam, is giving a new production of this opera, directed by Ivo van Hove; Marc Albrecht is the musical director. The première is on 1 September 2012, followed by seven further performances.

”At the beginning of the concerto movement, Mozart places the D major chord exactly in the position of the overtone chord,“ Haas says. ”This overtone chord is the centre of my short piece, out of which the beginning of the movement unfolds, as written by Mozart – in four different temporal elongations and contractions simultaneously.“

“… e finisci già?” (2012)
for orchestra | 9’
2 2 2 2 - 2 2 2 0 - timp, str (8 6 4 3 2)
prem. 25/08/2012 Salzburg, Salzburg Festival, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, cond. Titus Engel

Now the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, which commissioned the work, will be playing all four pieces in one concert, including the world première of Rihm’s Dämmrung senkte sich von oben for baritone and orchestra, the poem also expressed in words.

Dämmrung senkte sich von oben (2004-2012)
for baritone and orchestra | 4’
2 2 2 2 - 4 0 0 0, str
prem. 20/08/2012 Lucerne Festival; Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, cond. James Gaffigan; Hans Christoph Begemann, bar

The concert for the prizewinner and the official presentation will again take place during the Salzburg Biennale on 3 March 2013, at 6:00 p.m. in the Mozarteum’s Large Hall.

The jury substantiated its decision thus: “Today, at age 59, Georg Friedrich Haas counts as one of the unique personae among contemporary composers. During his decades of work, he has developed an outstanding artistic autonomy, independent of all compositional fashions – humanly quiet and artistically unswerving on his way.

At an early stage, he felt the well-tempered scale was a restriction of his sonic imagination, so he turned to the open ranges of microtonality, experimenting with overtones and partials and accentuating the significance of Klangfarbe vis-à-vis pitch.

Since then, his music has been moving off the beaten compositional path; highly laboured, yet remaining immediately accessible to listeners.”

List of works and audio samples

Nicolai Podgornov's
The Seasons
12 easy to intermediate pieces for piano
UE 35557

Further titles by Nicolai Podgornov

Michael Lösch has made a selection from the enormous repertoire of traditional pieces and has also included four of his own compositions inspired by these stirring, sometimes catchy, sometimes melancholic, pieces of music. 

Inspiring concert pieces for intermediate to more advanced players.

Klezmer Saxophone Duets
Michael Lösch
for 2 alto saxophones (Eb) or alto (Eb) and tenor saxophone (Bb)
UE 33062

Alexander Krampe

While adults are repeatedly enthralled by the diversity of the singspiel, children are particularly fascinated by the fairy-tale elements of the work.

Krampe has shortened the Magic Flute to approx. 70 minutes and prepared a suitable arrangement for children aged 5 and above.

The Magic Flute
version for children for chamber ensemble arranged by Alexander Krampe (2007)
Austrian prem. 28/07/2012 Salzburg Festival; soloists of the Young Singers Project, Ensemble der Philharmonie Salzburg, cond. Elisabeth Fuchs, stage direction: Ulrich Peter

Austrian Radio Ö1 broadcasts the world première on 30 July at 10:05 (Central European Time).

Infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso (2012)
for choir, three trombones, percussion and string quartet | 7’
prem. 23/07/2012 Salzburg Festival; accentus chamber choir, Camerata Salzburg, cond. Laurence Equilbey.

His latest work 5 Hofer Photographs reflects Fennessy’s bond with the Concorde Ensemble. It will be premiered at the Dublin Gallery of Photography.

5 Hofer Photographs (2011–2012)
for violoncello solo | 7’
prem. 22/07/2012 Dublin; Martin Johnson, vc (Concorde Ensemble)

One of the new features of the festival is the “Ouverture spirituelle” series, as part of which Johannes Maria Staud’s Infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso will be given its world première. The new work, a commission by the festival, will be performed by the Camerata Salzburg and the accentus chamber choir.

On 25 August Georg Friedrich Haas’ new orchestral work “… e finisci già?” will be premièred by the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg conducted by Michael Gielen.

UE highlights at this year’s Salzburg Festival include:

Johannes Maria Staud: Infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso
for choir, three trombones, percussion and string quartet
prem. 23/07/2012, Kirche St. Peter; accentus chamber choir, Camerata Salzburg, cond. Laurence Equilbey

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Magic Flute
version for children for chamber ensemble arranged by Alexander Krampe
Austrian prem. 28/07/2012 Great Hall of the University; soloists of the Young Singers Project, Philharmonie Salzburg Ensemble, cond. Elisabeth Fuchs, stage direction: Ulrich Peter

Luciano Berio: Folk Songs
for mezzo-soprano and 7 instruments
31/07/2012, Kollegienkirche; Klangforum Wien, cond. Pablo Heras-Casado, Elina Garanca, ms

Pierre Boulez: Dérive 1
for 6 instruments
31/07/2012, Kollegienkirche; Klangforum Wien, cond. Pablo Heras-Casado

Friedrich Cerha: 1. Keintate
for medium voice (chansonnier) and instruments
15/08/2012, Great Hall of the University; Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, cond. Johannes Kalitzke, Horst Maria Merz, chansonnier

Georg Friedrich Haas: “... e finisci già?”
for orchestra
prem. 25/08/2012, Mozarteum; Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, cond. Michael Gielen

A legend in his own lifetime he wrote numerous tangos and through his singing, film appearances and recordings became one of the most significant and popular figures in the tango's history.

Diego Collatti's arrangements retain all the captivating and magnetic charms we associate only with the tango.

Suitable for cellists of middle-grade standard and beyond.

Pieces include: Melodia de arraval, Mi Buenos Aires querido, Volver,
Por Una Cabeza and El dia que me quieras

Carlos Gardel
Tango - Violoncello & Piano
arranged by Diego Collatti
UE 35261

already available:

Carlos Gardel
Tango - Cello Duets
arranged by Diego Collatti
UE 34681

As our biography states, Vykintas Baltakas is a “composer, conductor, programmer and curator”, and yet you sometimes have the feeling that these descriptions are insufficient to describe the man and his music.

Writing in the Neue Musikzeitung, Reinhard Schulz put it this way: “Baltakas is an enormous talent; he knows exactly what he wants and what he can justify musically – and he doesn't succumb to convention.”

Baltakas is in every sense a musician and an artist. It is his creativity that impresses you in a very direct way. As with many composers, it’s difficult to portray his works in words; they fail to convey the magical worlds conjured up by such works as Lift to Dubai – written for the Ensemble Modern’s into … project – or the mesmerising and fantastically-named Instruktionen zur Durchführung einer alten Liebesbeschwörung, die Ihre/Ihren Geliebte(n) auf einmal und für immer an Sie binden wird (translation here) for choir. Only listening to them (there are excerpts below) does the works justice.

Josef Woodward wrote in the Los Angeles Times that his “(co)ro(na) is a picturesque study in tensions and texture, with instruments producing high, antic fluttering sounds about the grounding force of piano, percussion and long tones on horn. Some strange and sonic tone poetry is at hand, with the bracing sounds balanced by suspended clouds of harmony." (co)ro(na) can be heard on MusikFabrik’s CD Coronation, available on the Wergo label.

The recent Commentum for cello and piano, which was premièred by David Geringas and Ian Fountain, displayed his concentration of ideas and development into a chamber music environment, also audible in his string quartet b(ell tree), which was premièred by the Arditti Quartet.

The year ahead promises new opportunities to experience Baltakas’ music, including a new production of his music theatre work Cantio (see our related blog post); the world première of Accordiophone, a double concerto for saxophone and accordion, which will be premièred in Witten with Marcus Weiss and Teodoro Anzellotti; a new ensemble work for the Salzburg Festival; a chance to hear Redditio performed by Klangforum Wien, and Lift to Dubai performed by Ensemble 2e2m in Paris.

Happy Birthday Vykintas!

Vykintas Baltakas also has a website and a blog, and is on Twitter.

Here is a PDF file of our composer catalogue.

Listen to excerpts on SoundCloud.

Wolfgang Rihm’s

In the work, Rihm found a very particular voice for Friedrich Nietzsche. Musical quotes pointing to the past are used with deliberate nuance, but always enriched by interruptions before they are allowed to lull us.

Near the end, a threatening percussion sound reminds us of the Rihm who wrote Hamletmaschine in 1986, and who now interjects a moment of threatening Dionysian impetus into the almost Apollonian tranquility.

Dionysos (German première)
operatic phantasia based on texts by Friedrich Nietzsche, libretto by the composer
Staatskapelle Berlin, Staatsopernchor, cond. Ingo Metzmacher
Georg Nigl, Dionysos; Mojca Erdmann, 1st high soprano/Ariadne; Elin Rombo, 2nd high soprano; Virpi Räisänen/Julia Faylenbogen, mezzo-soprano;Matthias Klink, A Guest/Apollon;
dir. Pierre Audi
set: Jonathan Meese
08–15.07.2012 Berlin, Staatsoper im Schiller Theater

Mr. Boulez, I believe you first heard From the House of the Dead under Sir Charles Mackerras – is that how you came to know it?

Boulez: Yes, it was at the Opéra Comique in Paris, certainly more than 20 years ago. I knew some of Janáček’s works – especially the symphonic pieces – from my time in New York. Many people think I’ve only just discovered Janáček – but that’s not quite right. I conducted the Sinfonietta in New York, for example; that was around 1975. I’ve known his music for a long time, although I had never conducted the operas. I’ve explained many times that I am not an opera conductor who conducts a different opera every two or three days at one theatre. I do special projects, ones that intrigue me … House of the Dead was one of them; not only because it is Janáček’s last opera; Dostoyevsky’s postmortem collaboration interested me, too. Dostoyevsky was a wonderful writer. The plot has something truly literary about it, more so than in other operas. That’s also the case with Wozzeck. You have Büchner and Berg, but there is Büchner and here we have Janáček, but we also have Dostoyevsky.

You mention Berg and Wozzeck; Janáček liked Wozzeck very much.

Boulez: He heard it in Prague. He was very angry and annoyed because the piece was booed and they didn’t want to keep hearing it. But he wrote that it was more for nationalistic reasons than musical ones.

Because Berg was Austrian.

Boulez: Yes, that’s right.

Janáček wrote the following about Wozzeck: “Every note is dipped in blood.” He also wrote of himself that mere notes did not interest him per se. Every note had to be rooted in life, blood and the environment. His approaches to Wozzeck and his own work were similar, yet in terms of compositional realisation they were as different as day and night.

Boulez: “Like day and night,” indeed. Berg is truly a wonderful representative of development and transition. All the motifs are thoroughly worked through; they transform. There is life in that motivic writing which does not exist in Janáček at all. I’ve been asked about influences of folk music. There are some, but not at all as one imagines. There is no development in folk music – it repeats itself; perhaps in variations, but it repeats itself. Development is not the point in folk music.

Of course there are motifs in Janáček, more or less associated with a situation or a character. There’s an idea, then another one, then yet another one. It is almost like the principle of collage in visual art, although Janáček did not conceive [his music] that way; you have one texture, then another, and you paste them together. Feeling is the basis of such a collage – and that is how Janáček composed. Look at the Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass: one idea after another, alternating.

Here we’ve already broached the topic and the problem facing a director and a conductor to the same extent. It is a question of finding a continuative form, an arch, in the work. What difficulties did this type of composition pose for you as a conductor? For instance, notational changes in the score are often flagrant, simply because Janáček worked on it intermittently.

Boulez: Well, I talked with Mr. Stolba (Universal Edition’s senior editor) about the score for a very long time. It is written inconsistently. It is not without logic, but it is inconsistent. For instance: three minims, identical rhythm, the same motif, and suddenly there are six semiquavers. Why those short notes all of a sudden? There is no comprehensible reason. You find this inconsistency in House of the Dead and all of Janáček’s other works. He imagined some of his ideas in small note-values and then he wrote other ideas or only a variation of one idea in minims – and no one knows why.

Studying the score and having to decide on the relation between this and that tempo, one should never think of how a motif is notated, but of how it is structured. For instance, the tempi are also differently interrelated in Stravinsky’s Les Noces; but there you can tell blindfolded that the 25 minutes are so consistently written that you always know where you are. The same applies to the Symphony of Psalms, etc.

But with Janáček one never knows for sure; does he really want the same tempo or does he want the tempi to be proportional – 2:3, for instance. You have to make such decisions very often. I think that is very difficult for a publisher to recognise. For me, it is unsatisfactory when a musicologist says, “That’s the way it is in the manuscript – no other way.” I would like to know whether a reason can be found for the way Janáček sometimes writes one way and then sometimes another. And that is why the answer is coming from me now.

Of course I’ve listened to recordings to find out how Mackerras does it and what Václav Neumann’s decisions are. But ultimately I found that such-and-such a series or proportion of tempi was more logical for me. Once I made my decision, I didn‘t change my mind; that is, that is how I see the tempo relationships. That was the big problem when I was studying the score.

Now there is not only the musical difficulty of finding the big arch in the piece; surely the director must do likewise, staging the opera so that a storyline is perceptible.

Chéreau: I believe I can go along with Pierre in saying that the issues of the transitions and the arches were the most problematic ones for me. Pierre just stole the word “collage” from me – in fact, I can say exactly the same thing about the text. Reading the text, called the libretto in this case, it turns out that not a single word is by Dostoyevsky. (Many of the words are left in Russian or Ukrainian) – that is, we have a collage. I believe Janáček took a pencil and marked what he liked on the pages of the book and then “organised” it …

For instance, last week I was trying to find out why Skuratov sings, “A general is coming who will inspect all of Siberia.” It’s difficult, but using a computer it is easier, to find the place in Dostoyevsky. Two lines earlier, someone says, “Food? – for how much? – for a penny or for tuppence?” That is precisely the transition of those lines and he left it just as it was. The cook says, “Tuppence,” and then Skuratov arrives. Sometimes if the cuts he made were too large or too rough, maybe he would write a line for the transition – but otherwise he trusted quite naively – and at the same time, movingly – in collage – for example, “I’d like to put this bit right here, then I’ll take something of Dostoyevsky from before, and I’ll use that for Act III,” and so on …

The director has no choice but to begin by looking very deeply into Dostoyevsky. I believe it was Max Brod who said, when he was making the German translation, that Janáček’s libretto was not fully comprehensible without the help of Dostoyevsky’s text. Brod also thought that the libretto was like a quick commentary on a large book, because the text seemed so condensed.

It was my job to find an arch in that collage and – especially important for me – to locate the transitions. When a scene suddenly begins without a proper connection to the tissue, I must somehow construct that connection, or else make the right decision if a connection is absent. Many of the difficulties need to be addressed as early as in Act I – and then an arch needs to be built from all of it. Even with fractures and with full respect for the music, transitions for a story with almost 100 people on the stage simply have to be built. Yet I found it very intriguing because there is always a lot of freedom when working in such constraint. The greater the constraint, the more freedom I have … complete freedom does not interest me at all.

When directing an opera, you always have the music as the continuum, just as you always have the continuum of time in a film. Did you discuss certain difficulties with Boulez to see whether the music could help out?

Chéreau: Yes; actually, the music always helps – I would have been completely lost with just the text.

Yes – but with especially difficult passages?

Chéreau: I think that all passages are difficult, from my standpoint. From the standpoint of directing, there has always been a certain solution … for example, I’m always hearing people who say that “there are no main roles” – and that is wrong. “There is no story;” I think that is entirely wrong. We shouldn’t be misled by the title “House of the Dead;” in fact, we do not know for sure whether the meaning of the title “From the House of the Dead” is Dostoyevsky’s. There is a new French translation simply called La maison morte – “the dead house” – instead of La maison des morts. But the most intriguing thing, which we shouldn’t forget, is that the work abounds, overflows with life and activity, despite being called “House of the Dead.” We must never forget that a jail or prison camp is not only a place of utter, profound despair; it is also a place containing another type of living, ordered society.

An alternate, co-existent society?

Chéreau: Yes, yes, of course. As far as I know, that’s the case in every prison. I’ve seen some prison theatrical productions; it was very intriguing. Then we have the incredible notion that 10 minutes of the actual Act II are a single theatrical performance. 10 minutes out of 30 – that is a piece within a piece. The principle accounts about Skuratov, Luca and particularly Shishkov are also stand alone theatre pieces. Shishkov in 20 minutes – that is almost the story of Wozzeck. Aculina and Shishkov – that’s like Marie and Wozzeck; there you have two or three main characters already.

You talk of Luca, who dies in Act III – but in act I you already show how ill he actually is. Those are very deliberate techniques …

Chéreau: It’s like in a film. If you want to wreck the fun and enjoyment, you recount the ending [first] – although that wouldn’t make much difference with Janáček. He is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. We are in a prison; prison is always prison, even if one of the prisoners is ultimately freed – one person, while the others remain. That has nothing to do with optimism or pessimism; there they are – that is the place where they live and struggle. It’s astonishing what I’ve learned from this music; it is always so lively and active. Just like Wozzeck, the music forces me to keep pushing onwards, in a certain sense – that doesn’t happen very often.

Mr. Boulez, the orchestra is often very dense, and yet the voices are supposed to stay audible. How did you solve that problem of balance?

Boulez: I try to make the singers as audible as possible. Of course, the music mustn’t sound feeble, and sometimes its character is brutal, and one has to accept this brutality. The singers have to accept that, too, which means that they must occasionally sing brutally, not beautifully. That is important for me.

The orchestra is seldom very loud, although there are of course some loud moments. Dense polyphony is generally absent in Janáček and especially in this opera. Yesterday I was rehearsing Schönberg’s Pelleas und Melisande with the Webern Symphony Orchestra students. Now, that is heavy, densely polyphonic music! Generally speaking, Janáček’s polyphony is only in two voices – instead, his language is harmonic – conceived much more in terms of harmony than counterpoint.

For example: if you want to make things easier for a singer, you ask the orchestra to play piano or mezzo forte. With Janáček, it’s easier to attain this dynamic contrast than with Schönberg or with Wozzeck. There are scenes in Wozzeck which are very, very difficult to balance, because the music is written in a dense and rhythmically complex way. Janáček’s rhythms are simpler – the influence of folk music. The rhythms may seem quite straightforward, but the difficulty is in forming a string of pearls. There is this bit and that bit and another one – and without that string you can’t make an objet d’art – and by that I do not mean something abstract; I mean something real.

How did Janáček approach the material, as opposed to Dostoyevsky?

Boulez: I think Janáček was much more optimistic than Dostoyevsky, because he transformed everything. It really struck me that the eagle doesn’t play a part in Dostoyevsky. The poor animal is there and everyone forgets it. With Janáček, it is a gigantic symbol. A symbol of what? Freedom. And at the same time we know that it is a false hope. The people know it is a false hope. Perhaps Janáček was influenced by Dostoyevsky’s life. The only prisoner who is freed is a politician – he is not to be confused with a criminal. The only role he plays is giving Aleya the possibility of freedom through education. That was typical of the French Council Republic – education could gain you freedom. But we see that it did not have any great consequences …

I believe – as you show so well, Mr. Chéreau – the men in that narrow space are exposed to the psycho-social and group-dynamic process. Dostoyevsky wrote: “If those prisoners had not had any work, they would have devoured each other like spiders in a jar.” How did you deal with that dynamic? What are the survival techniques you show? Retelling seems very important …

Chéreau: A prisoner’s greatest task is to survive. That is his main profession, I would say: how does one survive the day? And they can survive the day quite well if they are not always deeply depressed. They invent a different life, with its own rules, economy, groups, families. Every prison is like that and ends that way – with theatre-making and work alike.

But they also survive by remembering, and sometimes by projecting a different life.

Chéreau: It is interesting because at least three people in the opera recount why they have killed, and that has to do with more than just remembering. I simply tried to shape their stories as if it were the first time they were finally talking about them. I must be honest and say that it is not written that way – it doesn’t appear in the music like that – but that is what I wanted.

You can’t simply tell a story, especially if it takes 20 minutes and it is about someone who tells that story all the time every day. That’s why I always tried to see it as an event. Musically, it is written very precisely for Luca, Skuratov and Shishkov. On that day, he suddenly talks about something that could never emerge from him before. We must never forget that they are criminals.

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler

This article was published in Musikblätter 3.

One might have expected the same to be true of Janáček’s final opera, From the House of the Dead, written in the same streamlined way, and going through almost all the same processes: three autograph versions by the composer (in Act 1 even a further partial version), a careful copy by Janáček’s two most trusted copyists Václav Sedláček and Jaroslav Kulhánek (Sedláček copied Act 1, Kulhánek Act 3, with Act 2 split between them). For three months the copyists came each day to Janáček’s house and worked with him, more or less acting as amanuenses. This enabled the composer to clarify problematic passages and dictate new ideas, so their copies often go further than what is in the final autograph score. Janáček checked the first two acts, adding doublings and minor revisions and, in the case of Act 1, even provided metronome marks (he carefully planned these first in pencil and then inked them in). Janáček took Kulhánek’s score of Act 3 with him on holiday in August 1928, but died before revising this act in the same way.

Extensive reorchestration

In other words all that needed to happen for this opera to proceed to publication in the way that its three predecessors had done was for Janáček to look through Act 3 and to participate in rehearsals. A few discreet, practical additions were all that was necessary.

But this was not the case. Janáček’s death in August 1928 was followed shortly afterwards by that of his experienced associate, the conductor František Neumann, and instead the production was entrusted to the stage director Ota Zítek, who revised the verbal text, and to two of Janáček’s pupils. While Břetislav Bakala made the piano-vocal score (as he had done for Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen) and conducted the première, a revision of the score was made by another pupil, the composer Osvald Chlubna, whom Janáček had chosen to orchestrate the third act of his first opera Šárka. What this team came up with, and what was subsequently printed in both full score and piano score by Universal Edition, was an act of extraordinary temerity, involving extensive reorchestration, extra bars, some retexting and a new set of stage directions, added vocal lines, and even a would be “uplifting” ending grafted on.

In an article published in 1958, Chlubna attempted to justify this version by emphasising how very different the autograph looked from Janáček’s usual final score, suggesting that the composer, knowing his end was approaching, was working furiously against time to get his thoughts down, and thus left a skeleton waiting for orchestral flesh to be added to it. This is of course nonsense. It is true that the autograph score looks different to Janáček’s previous operas, written on sheets of plain paper with hand-ruled staves (whereas all operas up to Makropulos were written on printed score paper), but Janáček’s hand-ruled sheets were the way things had been going for a while: even large-scale works such as the Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass were written in this way the year before. Furthermore, the overture based on Janáček’s unfinished Violin Concerto, was written in the same way, and it seems that he simply continued with the same method. Janáček had time to make three versions of the opera – if he really intended to go back and fill in many more instruments he would have done so in the course of the revisions or on the copyists’ score. Furthermore, far from working against time, he found time to write his wonderful Second String Quartet (JW VII/13), an occasion-piece for the laying of the foundation stone of Brno’s new university (JW IV/45) and to begin incidental music for a play (JW IX/11). Once the spotlight fell on Chlubna’s additions and conductors began to omit them, it was found that the lean score that Janáček left worked perfectly well in the theatre. As for the revised ending, this seems to have been added on the assumption that Janáček believed in uplifting cathartic endings (as in The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropulos Affair) and would wish to do so in his final opera. It is clear, however, that this opera was a very different one from its predecessors: the bleak ending with the Prisoners’ march is in keeping with the work’s subject matter and shows how much in tune Janáček was with the pessimism of the time.

Black ink

As in Jenůfa, the editorial problems facing an editor here are not ones that Janáček created but those created by those who came after him: the Prague conductor Karel Kovařovic, who remodelled Jenůfa for its Prague première in 1916, and the Brno team who remodelled From the House of the Dead in 1930. While extracting the final “Janáček” layer from the palimpsest score of some six layers in Jenůfa was often tricky, editing From the House of the Dead seemed at first more straightforward. Sedláček, Kulhánek and Janáček left a score written in black ink; Chlubna wrote his additions in pencil. All I needed to do, I thought, was to ignore the pencil and concentrate on the ink. But this is easier said than done. Particularly in the rewriting of the horn and trombone parts, where the ink surface has been scratched out, it was difficult to see what was there before. I needed to work from the original since a pencil staccato mark or even a hairpin crescendo mark can be indistinguishable in a copy from an ink one. So the process of checking and rechecking has been long and laborious. And there is also the question of what Janáček might have added himself (for instance to Act 3) when seeing the work in rehearsal. While it is easy enough to discard all the extra instrumentation that Chlubna added (harps, thick wind etc.), should one thin down the climaxes of the work to their original, surprisingly chamber-like proportions?

Authentic notation

As for the verbal text of the opera, Janáček wrote his own libretto straight from the Dostoyevsky novel in the original Russian, translating as he went along and some of his libretto is a scarcely intelligible mishmash of transliterated Russian or even misunderstood Russian. It is understandable that Zítek attempted to provide an “intelligible” Czech text to be sung in the theatre. These days, however, with almost every theatre providing subtitled translations, it seems reasonable to leave Janáček’s sung text in its original state, emphasising its distinctive sonic qualities, while allowing the theatre to provide an easily graspable text in the language of the country, be it Czech, German, English or any other. And just as Pierre Boulez, in his interview with Wolfgang Schaufler, laments Janáček’s quirky methods of notation, which are not as “logical” as those of Stravinsky, this editor feels that the score should remain as Janáček left it without the wholesale rewriting of metre and time-values that a Stravinsky-like renotation might involve, with the view that the authentic Notationsbild is itself eloquent about how Janáček imagined his music should sound.

John Tyrrell

This article was published in Musikblätter 3.

Although the ballade by Gabriela Preissová, on which the libretto is based, interlaces elements of “the abandoned maid,” fraternal hatred and infanticide, controlled via the oppressive moral standards of a peasant village community, they were not seminal to the plot until they came to the fore through Janáček’s unshakeable belief in the power of music. It even seems that it was Janáček’s musical genuineness which elevated the folk story altogether to the level of a gripping tragedy.

Distinctive musical style

Leoš Janáček’s opera Jenůfa is among the most popular and widely performed of his works, and it laid the foundations of his compositional breakthrough and long-term success. Nowadays it is most frequently heard in the “Brno 1908” version, the result of a series of revisions to the opera made by Janáček himself between 1906 and 1913.

A number of reminiscences, reviews and anecdotes survive from the time of the work’s earlier première in 1904, and these accounts helped to establish many of the topics – including Janáček’s use of folk-music and “speech melodies” – that continue to fascinate us about the composer to this day. However, the precise form in which Jenůfa was first performed, and which first set out his distinctive musical style and artistic agenda, has long remained a mystery. Now at last, after unpicking the many layers of revisions made by both Janáček and others, we can experience something of the impact which this perennially popular work made on audiences in the early years of its stage life.

Originally performed by the tiny forces of the Brno National Theatre, the 1904 version of Jenůfa is ideal for productions in small and medium-sized theatres as well as larger opera houses.

Filling a crucial gap

Although the opera’s basic narrative remains the same, and most of the music is clearly recognisable, many fascinating differences are revealed. There are increased vocal demands on the four major roles, and the orchestration is more redolent of the late nineteenth century. Several passages were extensively cut, including the Act 1 ensembles, which in the 1904 version approach something like the traditional pezzo concertato of Italian opera. And Laca’s declaration of love for Jenůfa near the end of Act 2 was originally an extended set-piece, subsequently cut by Janáček to just a handful of bars in later revisions. These are just two of the more obvious examples from a version full of surprises: Janáček’s own revisions to the opera left no page of the score – from the opening xylophone solo to the glorious closing bars – untouched.

Jenůfa in its 1904 version formed the basis for all performances of the work in its first two years of stage history. As such, it fills a crucial gap in our understanding of the emergence of one of twentieth-century opera’s greatest figures. But it is of much more than purely musicological interest. It allows audiences once again to experience the thrill of the new, the rawness of emotion that places this work much more closely in the context of turn-of-the-century verismo. And it permits us a glimpse, for the first time, of the youthful face of a much-loved friend.

Mark Audus

This article was published in Musikblätter 3.

These experiences continue to permeate his work, right up to pieces like ET LUX (2009) or Vigilia (2006).

Pater noster from 1968 is a work that gives us a glance at the developing master.

Pater noster (1968)
for mixed choir a cappella | 3’
prem. 30.06.2012 Passau, RIAS Chamber Choir, cond. Hans-Christoph Rademann

Zwielicht,

What is sacred music? This question hangs in the room, and Marco Santi uses the movement of the dancers in an attempt to answer it.

Zwielicht (2012)
for 3 trombones, chorus and organ, with choreography by Marco Santi | 60’
prem. 27/06/2012 St. Gallen Festival; Willibald Guggenmos, org; dancers and musicians from the St. Gallen Theatre, cond. Jay Schwartz

Would it be true to say that the idea of freedom is central to your life?

Friedrich Cerha: That is a difficult question. In my youth I was confronted with political systems that placed restrictions and very little value on the freedom of the individual. In this context I always mention a dramatic childhood incident: in 1934, when I was seven years old, just after the bloody conflicts of the quasi civil war in Vienna, my father took me to the battle sites, where I saw the bullet-riddled houses and the bloody asphalt, and where my childish sense of safety and security was confronted with death and conflict. This experience made me very alert to actions that restrict liberty, all the way to national-socialist dictates.

Like my parents, I did not participate in the general celebrations in 1938, a fact that got me into trouble afterwards. I also deserted twice when I was a soldier in the German Wehrmacht.

There is a touching scene in a film about you. In the mountains, you look after a bird as it flies away and say: “I wish I could fly like that.”

Friedrich Cerha: That was on Lamsenjoch, I was there after the war. I walked from Göttingen to Tyrol by way of the Thuringian Forest, suffering great hardship and danger on the way. I had left all my papers in the Thuringian Forest and wanted to escape all captivity. That only left escape into the mountains. During my wanderings I came upon this hut at Lamsenjoch. I was given the task of guarding it and doing a little farming. This summer and autumn of 1945 in the mountains was a very important time for me, because it allowed me to rediscover myself, so to speak, in the solitude of the mountains, after the terrible experiences of war that of course left me utterly distraught and traumatised. I am very fond of that time.

Deserting from the Wehrmacht meant risking your life. You were prepared to pay with your life for the idea of being free. Would it be right to put it like that?

Friedrich Cerha: Yes, I did not want to serve this system, for which I had the deepest contempt and hatred, I wanted to avoid serving it as far as possible. And of course deserting was a good way of doing this, although there was a personal interest as well, which was to play for time and not be deployed on the front line where I would have been blown to smithereens.

It appears that you have had since childhood a sense of what is and is not morally right.

Friedrich Cerha: Yes, certainly. My childhood violin teacher also contributed to it. He was Czech, and he pointed out to me many things that were wrong – in political terms. One example: as a child, I had unbelievable trust in the printed word, and was simply unable to imagine that anyone would print something untrue on purpose, or that many of the reports on the radio were untrue. This fact, that people lie systematically was so foreign to me, I was unable to believe it for a long time.

The new German President Joachim Gauck has said: “The Germans are capable of freedom.” That is an interesting turn of phrase: is freedom something one can be capable of?

Friedrich Cerha: I don’t think so. Freedom is something that is connected not just to the head, but to the whole human vegetative system. Freedom is not just an attitude, something you arrive at. Freedom is a state of being, it is linked to existence.

I am talking about the issue of freedom so exhaustively because Wolfgang Rihm wrote, in a letter he wrote for your 85th birthday, that he greatly prizes your “free music, which in turn makes freedom possible”. Is that a conscious matter, to enable access to freedom as a composer?

Friedrich Cerha: Being free means being at one with yourself and finding peace within yourself, so to speak. And this sentence from Rihm naturally pleased me, because when it came to debates about new music and dodecaphony and serialism and various dictates or prohibitions that came up in that context, I always retained my inner freedom and never fell prey to such dictates.

Are your experiences in the war also responsible for your being unreceptive to the musical dogmas of the past-war era?

Friedrich Cerha: Without a doubt, yes. Because my experiences in the war, and above all this solitude in which I lived in the mountains and which forced me to rely on my own resources, were important to me in finding my identity. I have never fanatically advocated artistic goals, I always acted from an inner conviction. But I never fully rejected the priorities set by serialism, even if I very soon kept clear of them.

Nor are you necessarily associated with the Darmstadt or Donaueschingen circles, of which you had to be a member in some way if you wanted to be successful.

Friedrich Cerha: From 1956 to 1958 I was to a certain degree part of the Darmstadt circle, that was a very important time. Composers from all over the world went there, there were heated discussions about New Music, and I performed my own pieces there as well, the first Spiegel piece, for instance, in 1964. When I felt I had finished with “Klangflächenkomposition” (the composition of sound textures) and was looking for a new clarity of drawing, I returned to traditional elements and consciously grappled with them.

So I was never that remote – except for one piece, Sinfonie, where I went straight back to Webern, and which I performed in Royan in 1976. Royan was the centre of the avant-garde at the time, and this symphony was the reason I was subject to contempt from the German avant-garde for 10 years, but I suffered this with calm and dignity. I am still pleased that I actually shocked the avant-garde of the day with that piece. Alfred Schlee incidentally was particularly fond of this piece, surprisingly.

You have often been declared a successor to Berg for your occasional use of the espressivo, something you were not too pleased with.

Friedrich Cerha: Yes, that was very strange. Before the third act of Lulu had its world première, nobody ever connected me to Berg, but in the years after, this suddenly happened all the time. People detected a connection to Berg, which is of course nonsense.

Gertraud Cerha: When Rihm was very young he was also described as the new Mahler. Espressivo is espressivo – what is Mahler about Jakob Lenz? Nothing! For Cerha, people say Berg. Any type of espressivo is interpreted as being like Mahler/Berg.

Recently you said you had actually written the Spiegel pieces to put them in the drawer.

Friedrich Cerha: Young composers in the 50s and early 60s did not have the opportunity to be performed. It was difficult for writers and painters as well. We performed small concerts together in coffee houses, carpet stores and at women’s clubs.

I wrote my first orchestra piece in the mid-50s. Espressioni fundamentali. Ernst Krenek visited me at that time and saw the score. He performed it in Berlin. In the Spiegel pieces, I continued several thoughts from the Espressioni, and then Movements I–III emerged, studies of a completely different type. The second is already a type of carpet of sound perforated with brief notes from the brass section, a theme I developed further in the fourth part of the Spiegel.

The third Movement is a constantly changing cloud of sound, which also became important later for the Spiegel. But before that, there was another piece: Fasce. For me, that was a blow that freed me from everything conventional, written for a gigantic orchestra, far removed from the hope for any performance. Fasce was immediately followed by this concept of the Spiegel Cycle. This happened very quickly. The composition then took 10 years. I never expected to hear the Spiegel. But the advantage was that I did not need to consider any practicalities – whether an orchestra has such and such an instrumentation, whether it is capable of this, or whether the suggested line-up will be tolerated or not. I was surprised when people did turn up to the individual performances and then to the full performance.

Klangflächenkomposition” was clearly in the air; György Ligeti composed Atmosphères at the same time as the first Spiegel pieces.

Friedrich Cerha: Yes, the well-known story of how Ligeti came to me, found the Spiegel on my desk and said excitedly: “You are composing my piece!” Ligeti’s Atmosphères and the Apparitions composed earlier are something fundamentally different. These pieces are first and foremost determined by a static character, while the Spiegel and Fasce are full of fluid processes. One thing develops and leads to another, processes influence each other, interfere with and displace each other. But Ligeti had the advantage with Atmosphères that they were performed in Cologne immediately, because he was there. During that time I was sat here in Vienna, with the Spiegel pieces in my drawer. People only hesitantly became aware of them.

It was interesting for me when the Spiegel were published by Kairos: Peter Oswald sent different recordings of the cycle to different renowned composers without my knowledge and asked them to comment. It turned out that the majority did not know the Spiegel at all. People suddenly reacted with fervent praise, people I would not have expected to react like this at all. Johann Nestroy said: “Time changes many things”.

At the last Wien Modern festival, I read that the Spiegel are a classic piece, however I was attacked so viciously there when the Spiegel were performed for the first time. Thank goodness, the way that the Spiegel were received changed completely after the first performance, they were described as an intellectual experiment, as music for the head. It was nothing like that for me, it came from an elementary need to express myself; it was not until the 80s that I discovered to how great an extent I freed myself from my experiences of war with this music.

In what way?

Friedrich Cerha: In my tonal imaginings, many of these experiences of war were flushed to the top again.

Can you explain how traumatic experiences in war materialise in music?

Friedrich Cerha: There are very dark and oppressive events in the Spiegel.

Gertraud Cerha: I think that might just be your interpretation.

Friedrich Cerha: Hm, I don’t think so.

You know the music business as a teacher, conductor, composer and instrumentalist – are you amused by these phenomena of rejection and late redress?

Friedrich Cerha: Well, I did read the reviews of the Spiegel with a certain amusement. Of course I am glad, but I am not that surprised, because we do know this process of immediate rejection and subsequent entry into the canon of music repertoire from history, from late Beethoven to Wagner, Bruckner, and even Schönberg and Webern to a certain degree.

This inner calm that I gained around 1945 actually made me untouchable, so there was no effect on my attitude at all. I never reacted to it inwardly.

The discovery that even great masters like Mozart reused their work again and again was like a release for you recently.

Friedrich Cerha: Fed by the developing tonal imagination, a repertoire of gestures and ideas develops in which you live. Of course this memory changes continuously. Some things are deleted by and by, in the way these things happen in the brain. But of course there is the occasional temptation to take up certain gestures again, and I resisted for a long time – whenever I noticed this was happening – because I perceived this to be repetition.

It is well-known in the fine arts for painters to use a shtick, a gesture, for a period of time, and to repeat themselves. As a result, everyone can recognise from afar who the painter is. And of course that raises the prices as well. Things are different in music, thank goodness, even though these repetitions do of course exist. So I have become more tolerant towards myself, challenging myself to think more variably and greatly enriching the possibilities open to me. You can see this in the pieces of the last five or six years.

Your descriptions of your work clearly mirror this. On Instants, you wrote: “A rigorous reductionism produced exceedingly interesting works in the last century, but when adhered to rigidly it often resulted in an impression of poverty and monotony, and I became ever more aware that richness and variety are, or can be, a quality of art.” To whom were you referring with the phrase “rigorous reductionism”?

Friedrich Cerha: I was referring directly to minimalism, that was definitely not aimed at Webern. Maybe I was also referring to a decision to surrender to a method that then becomes routine.

Gertraud Cerha: Actually also against your own purism from around 1960 – in the Exercises you were beginning to liberate yourself from it.

Friedrich Cerha: Yes.

We keep coming back to this topic: You sense that something is constricting you, and then you resolve it. In Momente, for example: “I am tired of the monomaniac spinning-out of musical ideas, of expansion by means of ‘working-out’, and I have often caught myself being bored when listening to such contemporary music.”

Friedrich Cerha: Yes, that is one of the reasons why I have preferred shorter forms in recent years, or rather for my cyclical thinking. Webern always returned to this subject, he worked on his cycles of songs or orchestral pieces for a very long time before finding the final sequence. The Momente have been around since 2004, but of course the sequence of such shorter pieces is not a random one, the individual elements have an inner connection, there are relationships. In the full cycle you can even detect an overall process. These small units are also to be found in the organ pieces and most recent orchestra pieces.

You have also repeatedly packaged quotes from the old masters in your works.

Friedrich Cerha: It has always fascinated me that personalities of composers appear behind my music in my musical dreams – completely blurred in a grey lack of knowledge. Every now and then I wanted to let the audience become aware of the proximity of these composers. This was the case with Stravinsky; in Sinfonie, it was quite clearly Webern, and in Doppelkonzert, it was Satie. I have always enjoyed hiding quotes in my music, mostly so well that nobody ever finds them, but sometimes also quite consciously: in Doppelkonzert, for instance. Is there such a thing as a personal style of Friedrich Cerha?

Friedrich Cerha: I have read that there is such a thing. And there is certainly a very specific way of thinking and imagining music and composition that is repeatedly viewed in the context of the Viennese School. There may be some truth in it, because my long-term involvement has certainly had a strong influence on me, but the stereotypical way of putting it today is rather exaggerated.

In reference to Spiegel, it is interesting that the compositional processes in the formal sequence there can be applied to the Baal-Gesänge almost one to one. These are parallels that nobody would ever notice at first glance. Are these conscious parallels?

Friedrich Cerha: The process is that things come, and that you only become aware of them once they have arrived. The end of Baal is a “Klangflächen” music that arrived in this way. Of course I very quickly became aware that it is related to the Spiegel pieces. And of course other sections in Baal are also connected to the Spiegel.

Gertraud Cerha: Next to these direct influences and parallels, there are also indirect ones that are not as obvious. I believe it is this developmental thinking that people refer to as your personal style.

Friedrich Cerha: Developmental thinking on one hand, but also a very precisely controlled harmony that is deployed quite consciously as a progression of tension.

Gertraud Cerha: I don’t necessarily mean it in the traditional sense. In Bruchstück, for example, which nobody would ever associate with terms such as “traditional” or “conventional”, there is this very controlled harmony that is subject to a very slowly changing tension.

Friedrich Cerha: One needs to be careful with that term. In the last ten years or so, a certain collage-way of thinking has been appearing in harmonious terms, for instance in the most recent string quartet or the three orchestral pieces that I have just written.

What compositional challenges do you want to set yourself in future? Where is the journey going?

Friedrich Cerha: I don’t really have a long journey ahead of me anymore [laughs]. The best journeys are always those where you do not know where they will take you. At work you are naturally always encountering unexplored territories, places where you are insecure, so to speak. I always like to say: when you get lost in the woods, you retrace your steps for a bit to find a new path where you are once again on reasonably secure ground. Thank goodness there is a certain degree of insecurity in any artistic work.

You are a very regular attendee of concerts, particularly those of young composers. Few others have such a clear view of what is happening amongst the younger generation in international terms. As a teacher and a listener, what message would you give to these composers?

Friedrich Cerha: Christian Ofenbauer was asked what he learnt from me. He said he learnt to ask questions all the time. Questioning yourself and asking questions about everything you do is a very important activity on the way to finding yourself. Teaching, insofar as it relates to composition, should consist of helping people to find themselves, to develop an identity. And that does seem very important to me, also because of the freedom that you can then take advantage of in your artistic work.

And we are back to freedom again ...

Cerha laughs.

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler

This article was published in Musikblätter 3.

The Ensemble Modern will perform Cerha’s work Bruchstück, geträumt under the composer’s direction.

Also on the programme will be a world première by the prize winner of the Composers’ Prize Luke Bedford: Wonderful No-Headed Nightingale for ensemble.

Wonderful No-Headed Nightingale (2012)
for 10 players | 8’
flute, oboe, clarinet in Bb, horn in F, trombone, 1st violin, 2nd violin, viola, cello, double bass
prem. 22.06.2012 Munich, Cuvilliés-Theater; Ensemble Modern

The title, taken from the Song of Songs, would imply that this is a vocal composition – “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not.” – but Haas’ composition is purely instrumental.

The work is a commission by the musikFabrik ensemble and the Arts Foundation NRW, and is for 18 instruments (including a contraforte and a harmonium).

And those who know Haas know that he will conduct his search in an extremely ingenious manner.

“Ich suchte, aber ich fand ihn nicht” (2011–2012)
for ensemble | 25’
1 1 2 0 - 1 1 2 1 - contraforte, perc(2), harm, vln(2), vla, vc, cb
prem. 15.06.2012 Munich, musica viva,
St. Michaelskirche, musikFabrik, cond. Emilio Pomàrico

The intriguing question here is: How near to Brahms can or may one come while still retaining distinct individuality? Four new orchestral works provide an answer.

Nähe fern
for orchestra
2 2 2 3 – 4 2 3 1
(“Lucerne Brahms/Rihm Cycle”)
Lucerne Symphony Orchestra
cond. James Gaffigan

Nähe fern 1 (2011) – 10’
prem. 22/06/2011

Nähe fern 2 (2011) – 14’
prem. 19/10/2011

Nähe fern 3 (2011–2012) – 14’
prem. 29/02/2012

Nähe fern 4 (2011–2012)
prem. 13/06/2012

With multiple players to a part, they are also perfectly suited to chamber orchestras.

Franz Schubert: Three Pieces (D 946 I/II, D 625 IV)
for ensemble (chamber orchestra) | 29’
arranged by Richard Dünser (2011)
flute; oboe; clarinet in A; bassoon; horn in F; violin I; violin II; viola; violoncello; double bass
prem. 13/06/2012 Vienna, Theophil Ensemble Vienna, cond. Matthias Schorn

“Several years ago, my friend Mauro Ceccanti prompted me to write a homage to Manuel de Falla. This work is dedicated to Ceccanti and his family, also marking the 20th anniversary of the Contempoartensemble.

It is written for instruments grouped in three “choruses” (I: flute, harp, bass clarinet – II: violin, viola, cello, guitar – III: percussion, piano, contrabass and electronics).” Mauricio Sotelo

Cripta – Música para Manuel de Falla (2010/2012)
for ensemble and electronics | 15’
prem. 07/06/2012 @ Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro Goldoni; Contempoartensemble, cond. Mauro Ceccanti; Mauricio Sotelo, electronics

Janáček is dead. The great composer was 74, yet he was at the height of his creative powers; he had just finished the string quartet “Intimate Letters” and the opera From the House of the Dead (for which he had written the libretto based on Dostoyevsky’s novel).

He was astonishingly prolific in those very last years, and his health was good; acquaintances had recently seen him in Brno, striding about, cheery and sturdy in a white summer suit. The illness which seized him in Hochwald (Hukvaldy), his home town, must have struck him suddenly and insidiously. His vitality, his lust for life – which had recently increased (with all the gentleness of his soul, he was always a full-blooded man) yielded up a remark he made a short while ago which shook me. I was showing him some suggestions for alterations to his Markopoulos Case; in my opinion, the heroine should say, “Now I have felt Death – and it was not at all terrible.” Janáček snapped at me in disgust, “Impossible – I can’t compose that. Death – and not at all terrible?” After much roundabout talk, we agreed on this: “And it was not so terrible.”

The Master’s enormous productivity began late; this was due to his difficult youth, the unparalleled inhibitions which stood in the way of his budding artistic worth. Sárka, his first opera, was never performed because Zeyer, the book’s author, refused to give his authorisation. Janáček’s second opera Jenůfa, that incomparably great effort of the most passionate and gracious melody – a true, uncontrived, direct and thoroughly unconventional melody – was a rarity for which opera houses should have clamoured; but Janáček had to wait until he was 62 before it was performed at Czechoslovakia’s principal opera venue, Prague’s National Theatre. Until then, he had lived in Brno, his work to practically no avail other than the first performance there of Jenůfa 12 years earlier. Only his pieces for male chorus, composed using a completely novel technique, to words by Bezruč, caused somewhat of a sensation; these choruses are still a sensation awaiting discovery today in German-speaking countries. Janáček’s worldwide fame emerged from Berlin, when Schillings inaugurated a memorable production of Jenůfa, conducted by Kleiber.

By Janáček’s 70th birthday, which followed that triumphant performance abroad, the many critical opinions within the country were either to the contrary or completely absent. Their views had soured Janáček’s life for decades and turned recognition by a small circle into a bitter struggle. The first German-language performance of Jenůfa in Vienna (during the war) had little profound effect, several years before the victory in Berlin; but from there, Jenůfa became a repertory opera in 50 large and midsized theatres – it even played in New York, and there was a Janáček festival in London (without opera), international music festivals programmed his music and preparations are now being made to play one of his last orchestra pieces, the Sinfonietta, on its second global journey after Klemperer’s breakthrough success with Janáček’s music in Berlin.

I met Janáček a few months after I had published a jubilant report in the Weltbühne (at that time still called Schaubühne) on the Czech performance in Prague of Jenůfa (mentioning him for the first time in the German press). The handsome elderly man arrived at my flat in the early morning. I had never seen him before; his features – noble, mild, strong, distinguished – affected me deeply. He said: “Now that you’ve made me famous abroad, you’ll have to translate my work, too.”

We became friends, and not just in artistic matters; working together with Janáček, shaping the text with that diehard composer was not always effortlessly easy, but it was always an experience to fire the imagination.

When I last visited him in Brno, he showed me the score of House of the Dead that he was working on at the time. No other score looks like one of Janáček’s – he doesn’t use staff paper. “All those empty lines cause me to write too many notes,” he explained. He draws staves on normal blank white paper, and if for example a bassoon only has a single figure to play, he writes it on a staff one centimetre long, and on the rest of the sheet there is not a single line left for the bassoon. There are only lines for the instruments which are actually playing, thus eliminating the mechanics of “filler voices” and entailing extraordinarily economical and transparent orchestration by notating it that way. A page of Janáček’s music paper resembles elaborate mosaic work.

That cannot be imitated any more than anything else in his life and art. When Janáček died, that rarest of men departed: one who trusted in a demon. What he did, what he did not do – no law governed him except his persona. His music, his ideology – both are completely inaccessible if one does not find them spellbinding. Of course they enrapture the spellbound by luring them into an ocean of beauty with its own laws, where a slow, cautious approach is absolutely forbidden and impossible.

The same applies to The Cunning Little Vixen – Janáček’s second most beautiful creation after the incomparable Jenůfa. I often hear that the libretto is bizarre, difficult to stage because the animal figures must be played like animals, the music is not exactly accessible and it is tricky to perform, very difficult – Oh, these senseless objections! It is the forest itself onstage; here, a drama has been created with only one main character: panicky nature itself – and yet the response is all finicky critical points based on conventional experience.

Take this enormously daring venture as it is, give in to the intoxication rushing forth from the leafy undergrowth and buzzing insect swarm, the sun and the croaking frogs and the mad orgy of nocturnal animals, the great Knud Hamsun-like wedding under the open sky. Then, with a single tug, the entire plot is laid open clearly; the woodsman (a constant in the piece) is the eternally longing man, yearning for Nature – he has a home, a family, but the forest beckons to him. There, he finds freedom to fall in love with a wild gypsy girl and catches himself an adorable little vixen.

Both these forays are one and the same to his hunter’s heart; there is not much needing interpretation – and it ends badly for him, as with all yearning. The gypsy girl decamps and disappears with a vagabond. The vixen runs away and is shot dead – but not by the woodsman; she is killed by the same vagabond who had taken the girl from him. But the eternally yearning human heart is unharmed, finding peace in the infinity of forest life.

[Vaclav] Neumann, the director of the Brno Theatre, had the brilliant idea – and a truly sympathetic one it was, too – to perform the final chorus from Vixen at the obsequies. What a requiem – the mortal man’s ascension into Infinity, composed with an inimitable surge as an eternal paean of life – the sound rang through the theatre foyer, applause broke out, washing over the bronze coffin where the dead man lay – it was impossible to grasp the fact that such music would never again be heard by the man who created it (at least in his corporeal form) – that music, so truthful and colossal in its truth, intimate yet sublime as it sprang directly from that intimacy.

No one will ever forget that moment, when life and death seemed to coincide, with wreaths and ribbons, catafalque, guards of honour, mourners and glowing candlelight, as the orchestra and soloist sounded with “And yet it is beautiful, how the forest nourishes this swarm – that is eternal youth! Again and again, life begins anew in the forest, and the nightingales return in the spring – and they find nests, they find love. Goodbyes turn into welcomes; the leaves and blossoms come back, and all the flowers, cowslips, violets, dandelions have never been so happy. People pass by and bow their heads if they understand – and they know what Eternity is.”

That is the eulogy the genius had composed for himself: requiem aeternam – and aeternam vitam, as well.

This article first appeared in the Musikblätter des Anbruch in 1928 and was reprinted in Musikblätter No. 3 in May 2012.

The new Vienna Urtext edition is based on all extant sources, with the first edition from London being of particular significance.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Rondo capriccioso Op. 14
for piano
UT 50215

With his Variations sérieuses, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy contributed
to the anthology Album-Beethoven which had been initiated by the Viennese publisher Pietro Mechetti and whose proceeds were to be donated for the funding of the Beethoven monument in Bonn.

In order to do justice to the high standards of the composer to be honoured, Mendelssohn decided in favour of a cycle of variations which clearly stands out from the superficially virtuoso variation style of that time. The new Wiener Urtext edition is based on the autograph engraver’s copy and the first prints.

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Variations sérieuses Op. 54
for piano
UT 50278

On the CD each piece is presented in three versions: two full recordings at differing tempi for playing-along and a version providing the accompaniment only for playing-along with full confidence. Notes and explanations are provided on swing rhythm, off-beat articulation and other conventions encountered in the playing of jazz.

Tilmann Dehnhard
Easy Jazz Studies
for alto saxophone with CD
UE 35262

Le Voyage (2012)
after Charles Baudelaire
for actor, vocal ensemble (6 voices), 4 instruments and live electronics | 25’
prem. 02.06.2012 @ Paris, Festival ManiFeste, Centre Pompidou, Ensemble intercontemporain, Les Cris de Paris, IRCAM/Robin Meier, Marcel Bozonnet, actor, cond. Geoffroy Jourdain

here is the third issue of Musikblätter, our commitment to continuing the tradition of Musikblätter des Anbruch; this edition reflects this heritage in many ways.

This time, we are publishing several texts from historical music journals in our Penned in the Past column. These are articles which particularly demonstrate the great, idealistic dedication our predecessors brought to the music of their time. Although it is scarcely imaginable today, the fact is that there was a time when works by the likes of Leoš Janáček actually had to be advertised; Max Brod recalls in his obituary that he was the first person to mention the name Janáček in a German-language publication.

Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau both refer to Brod’s work in the double interview with them on their phenomenal interpretation of Janáček’s From the House of the Dead. Boulez reminds us that Janáček was a great fan of Alban Berg, particularly his Wozzeck, and that the latter was opposed in Czechoslovakia for nationalistic reasons.

We are also publishing an essay by Paul Stefan, written for Berg’s 50th birthday, along with information on the question of the different versions of his two operas Wozzeck and Lulu.

Friedrich Cerha reconstructed Act III of Lulu; he will be awarded the renowned Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in June. In our interview with him, he recounts his experiences of the war in a very personal way, revealing how they still influence him today.

Luke Bedford (b. 1978 in Great Britain) will be receiving the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Composer’s Prize; we introduce his work along with that of his countryman David Sawer, as well as with a closer look at this issue’s featured piece, Georges Lentz’ viola concerto Monh.

Last but not least, Kim Kowalke, president of the Kurt Weill Foundation in New York, provides insight into the creation and reception of Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.

You can find information on our current premières and first performances in the comprehensive Listings section.

Again, we welcome your comments and suggestions.

We hope that you enjoy this issue,
Your UE Promotion Team

Download a PDF file

It could not have been any different with Klang-Muro … II. I have a very close relationship to the Grup Instrumental de València and have participated in various educational projects with them.

Whereas Klang-Muro … I had two solo instruments (flute and contrabass), the emphasis in this new work lies in highlighting the lines of the two violins, especially the first part, which is intended for Maria Carmen Antequera.”

Klang-Muro ... II (2012)
for ensemble | 15’
2 0 2 0 - 0 0 1 0 - perc(2), pno, t.sax(Bb), vln(2), vla, vc(2), cb
prem. 29/05/2012 Valencia, Grup Instrumental
de València, cond. Jordi Bernàcer

One sister drowns the other to take her lover. The murdered sister’s body is discovered and her bones and hair are used to build a harp which is played at her sister’s wedding. The harp denounces the murderess, who is put to death.

The Opera Group is joined by the London Sinfonietta this May for performances at the Brighton Festival, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, the Spitalfields Music Summer Festival in London, and the Latitude Festival.

The Opera Group’s Frederic Wake-Walker directs.

Harrison Birtwistle: Bow Down
music theatre for 5 actors and 4 musicians
bamboo flutes and -pipes, oboes, penny-whistles and percussion
first performance: 17.05.2012 @ Brighton Festival, The Opera Group, London Sinfonietta
new production: Frederic Wake-Walker

Eberhard Kloke

The world première of the new version takes place this May at the City Theatre in Gießen.

Alban Berg: Lulu
opera in 3 acts
for soli and chamber orchestra
arranged by Eberhard Kloke (2008/2009)
1 1 2 1 - 1 1 1 0 - perc, acc, pno, str(2 2 2 2 1), Jazz band
prem. 12/05/2012 @ Gießen, Gießen Theatre, cond. Carlos Spierer
stage-director: Thomas Niehaus

further performances: 20/05, 27/05, 14/06, 24/06 and 30/06

Alban Berg: Wozzeck
opera in 3 acts
revised version for 21 instruments
arranged by John Rea (1995)
1 2 3 2 - 2 1 1 0 - perc(2), hp, pno, str
P: 11/05/2012 @ Salzburg Theatre, Aspekte Festival
Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, cond. Leo Hussain
Production: Amélie Niermeyer

further performances: 13/05, 19/05, 22/05, 24/05 and 01/06

A central theme of this year’s programme is the music of Anton Webern, who is accompanied by Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

The festival also shines a spotlight on Friedrich Cerha’s chamber music, including the world première of his new string trio Zebra-Trio, which takes place on 13 May.

Friedrich Cerha: Zebra Trio (2010)
for violin, viola and cello | 18’
prem. 13/05/2012 @ Salzburg, Aspekte Festival, Zebra Trio

Colin Matthews

Gustav Mahler/Colin Matthews: Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde
(No. 1 from Das Lied von der Erde)
for tenor und orchestra (1908) | 8’
arranged by Colin Matthews (2012)
prem. 10/05/2012 @ Manchester, Bridgewater Hall, Lars Cleveman, t
Hallé Orchestra, cond. Sir Mark Elder

This selection of arrangements provides the opportunity for clarinettists to become acquainted with well-known traditional songs and dances from Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia. The piece Memoires is composed by Hidan Mamudov himself.

Presented in an order that reflects their increasing level of difficulty, these pieces provide new experiences for intermediate to advanced players.

Hidan Mamudov
Balkan Clarinet Duets
for 2 clarinets
UE 34533

Kurt Weill
Songs
for flute with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34323

already available:

Songs
for trumpet with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34327

Songs
for violoncello with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34682

Songs
for violin with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34324

Songs
for clarinet with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34326

Songs
for alto or tenor saxophone with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34328

Highlights include a choral concert in the atmospheric setting of St Giles Cripplegate and an evening concert featuring Tabula Rasa, the First and Third Symphonies and the Berliner Messe.

The many works performed during the day include:

Magnificat
Für Alina
Spiegel im Spiegel
Stabat Mater
The Deer’s Cry
Trivium
Seven Magnificat Antiphons
The Beatitudes
Summa
Missa syllabica
Which Was the Son of …
Symphony No. 1
Tabula rasa
Silhouette
Berliner Messe
Symphony No. 3

At the orchestral concert in the evening, Tõnu Kaljuste conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Chorus.

Here’s a short BBC video giving an introduction to the day:

This April, Foyle Future Firsts participants conducted by Thomas Blunt will give the British première of Luke Bedford’s By the Screen in the Sun at the Hill on the Gold for ensemble (28 April, Royal Festival Hall).

The work was written for Ensemble Modern’s “into …” project, as part of which Bedford spent several weeks in Johannesburg. Its title derives from a visit to a drive-in cinema built on top of a 50-metre mine dump on the outskirts of the city. “The mixture of the stunning panorama across the city – showing all its wealth and poverty, viewed from a run-down car park where people lived in little houses behind the cinema screen, with traces of gold literally beneath their feet – seemed to me to sum up so much about the city.”

Luke Bedford: By the Screen in the Sun at the Hill on the Gold
for 18 players
UK première: 28/4/2012, London
Foyle Future First Orchestral Apprentices, cond. Thomas Blunt

Alexander Zemlinsky’s

Two members of the production team have aroused international interest: the American opera star Catherine Malfitano is directing and Sir Andrew Davis conducts. The three lead roles are sung by Alan Held (Simone), Gun-Brit Barkmin (Bianca) and Michael König (Guido Bardi).

A Florentine Tragedy will be performed as a double bill with Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. 

Alexander Zemlinsky: A Florentine Tragedy
New production: Catherine Malfitano
Première: 26/04/2012, Toronto
further performances: 2, 5, 12, 15, 18, 20 and 25/05/2012
Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, cond. Andrew Davis
Simone, Alan Held; Bianca, Gun-Brit Barkmin; Guido Bardi, Michael König

The 1992 stage work deals with the confrontation between the Conquistador Cortez and the Aztec ruler Montezuma, which becomes an allegory for a relationship full of attraction, misunderstanding, fear and dependence. The first night is on 21 April.

Wolfgang Rihm: Die Eroberung von Mexico (The Conquest of Mexico)
New production: Inga Levant
Saarland State Theatre Orchestra, cond. Thomas Peuschel
Cortez: James Bobby, Montezuma: Birgit Beckherrn
Première: 21 April 2012, Saarbrücken
Further performances: 21/04, 05/05, 10/05, 13/05, 19/05 und 22/05

The composition prize was founded in 2011 by Austrian Radio Ö1 and the Austrian National Bank and is awarded annually.

Submissions for the 2012/13 season open on 16 April 2012. 

Our picture shows the 2011 prize winner Yukiko Watanabe (© Hummel/ORF).

The English National Opera is now giving the world première of a new English translation of Jakob Lenz.

Wolfgang Rihm: Jakob Lenz
chamber opera for soloists and chamber ensemble
performances: 17, 19, 21, 24, 26 and 27/4/2012
English translation: Richard Stokes
Director: Sam Brown
Conductor: Alexander Ingram
Lenz: Andrew Shore
Pastor Oberlin: Jonathan Best
Kaufmann: Richard Roberts

A wide range of music is presented – new discoveries, rarities and new pieces – all with aim of extending the flute repertoire.

This first edition is based upon a paraphrase of Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz by Claude-Paul Taffanel (1844–1908), one of the greatest 19th century French flautists.

This is one the works that have accompanied and influenced Emmanuel Pahud’s career and he presents it in the firm belief that other flautists will share his enthusiasm and admiration for the piece.

THE FLUTE COLLECTION
Emmanuel Pahud presents

Claude-Paul Taffanel
Fantasy on “Der Freischütz”
for flute and piano
UE 35316

MIXED ENSEMBLE OPTION
Whilst written specifically for the instrument and addressing the challenges beginner flautists would encounter, a special section is included of four pieces which are “key friendly” for beginners on most instruments and are therefore ideal pieces for mixed instrumental groups. These same four pieces will appear in subsequent books for other instruments in the Debut series.

For the Pupil …

• Instrumental parts with fun cartoons for inspiration
• A CD providing stimulating demonstration performances to listen to as well as “minus-one” accompaniments for playing along at home
• Cartoons can be downloaded for free for colouring in

For the Teacher …

• Sheet music for selected piano accompaniments can be downloaded for free – just follow the web link provided in the pupil’s book!
• If preferred, the accompaniments of all of the 12 pieces can be purchased in one printed and bound volume

James Rae
Violin Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21532
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21533

already available:

James Rae
Clarinet Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21526
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21527

James Rae
Flute Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21528
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21529

James Rae
Saxophone Debut Pupil’s book with CD
UE 21530
Piano Accompaniments
UE 21531

Karol Szymanowski

He made orchestral versions of three of them in 1933; Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo has now orchestrated the other three, completing the cycle. First performance: 15 April.

Instrumentation: 2 1 2 1 - 2 2 0 0 - perc, pno, str

Karol Szymanowski/Sakari Oramo: Sechs Lieder op. 31
for high voice and orchestra
World première: 15/4/2012, Berlin
Anu Komsi, soprano
Deutsches SO Berlin, cond. Sakari Oramo

Francis Burt: Variations on an old song
for clarinet, viola, accordion and double bass
World première: 28/03/2012, Vienna
Ensemble Wiener Collage

Instrumentation: 1 1 2 1 - 2 1 0 0 - perc, harm, pno, str (1 1 1 1 1, max. 6 5 4 3 2)

Gustav Mahler/Klaus Simon: Symphony No. 9
for ensemble or chamber orchestra
ensemble mini, cond. Joolz Gale
28/03/2012 Berlin

“It was not going to be a concert recital functioning according to musical criteria only and in which the sum of the components was more important than its individual parts.” Johannes Maria Staud

Johannes Maria Staud: Tableaux Vivants
for ensemble and tape
French première: 21 + 22/03/2012 Paris
concept: Roland Rauschmeier and Anne Juren
Modul-dance

The world première is on 17 March in Munich. Rupert Huber conducts the Bavarian Radio Chorus. The concert will be broadcast live on BR Klassik.

Choir: 13S 11A 10T 10B

Duchcov
for mixed choir a cappella (44 voices)
Bavarian Radio Chorus, cond. Rupert Huber
World première: 17/03/2012 Munich

Rihm is now celebrating his 60th birthday (13 March), and it has become apparent that he has developed in various directions. His extensive catalogue of works resembles a huge, craggy landscape which offers a wide perspective for those that take the trouble to explore it.

The breadth of his output can be experienced at no less than three world premières this March:

In Vers une symphonie fleuve VI Rihm expands on his ideal of flowing music. Samothrake is a further virtuoso work for high soprano and orchestra. The Fragmenta passionis is a work from Rihm’s youth, and leads us back to his roots, which were strongly influenced by his experiences singing in a choir.

Happy Birthday Wolfgang!

Vers une symphonie fleuve VI
for orchestra
Badische Staatskapelle, cond. Justin Brown
13/03/2012 Karlsruhe

Samothrake
for high soprano and orchestra
Gewandhausorchester, cond. Ulf Schirmer
Anna Prohaska, soprano
15/03/2012 Leipzig

Fragmenta passionis
for mixed choir a cappella
Rias Chamber Choir, cond. Hans-Christoph Rademann
24/03/2012 MaerzMusik Festival Berlin

UNIVERSAL EDITION and WIENER URTEXT EDITION in Hall 3.1, Stand C42

The Frankfurt Music Fair is the world's leading trade fair for the world of music. You’ll a complete range of products with everything required for making music, not to mention innumerable workshops, concerts, demonstrations and discussion events.

21–24 March 2012
open from 9am to 6pm

Trade visitors: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Public day: Saturday

We look forward to seeing you at our stand!

These late 18th and early 19th century duet arrangements of Mozart's operatic highlights have served as a basis for modern-day editors.

Whilst retaining many aspects of the original flute arrangements, Mozart's own intentions with regard to the relevant orchestral settings have been considered and respected.

Suitable for intermediate-level flautists, these duets may well introduce players to the music of Mozart.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Così fan Tutte
for 2 flutes
UE 35245

“… these beautiful editions from Universal Edition are highly recommended."
Peter Lukas Graf

other titles in the series for intermediate-level players:

The Magic Flute
Original edition – from a 1792 edition
(G. Braun)
UE 15966

The Abduction from the Seraglio
Original edition – from a 1799 edition
(G. Braun)
UE 16737

The Marriage of Figaro
Original edition – from a 1799 edition
(G. Braun)
UE 16773

Don Giovanni
Original edition – from an 1809  edition
(G. Braun/ K. H. Füssl)
UE 17284

The CD includes the complete performance of each duet and, if a duet partner is unavailable, you can play along with the separately recorded primo and secondo tracks .

Pink Panther for Two with CD
Mike Cornick
UE 21579

further titles from the “... for Two” series:

Tea for Two with CD
UE 21299

Charleston for Two with CD
UE 21368

Love Songs for Two with CD
UE 21485

Sleigh Ride for Two with CD
UE 21454

The composer wrote:

“The Three Pieces for piano op. 11 weren’t my first step towards a new form of musical expression. Ahead of them were parts of my Second String Quartet and several of my Fifteen Songs after Stefan George op. 15. But they were the first published music of their kind and as such generated quite a sensation.”

Richard Dünser arranged the Drei Klavierstücke op. 11 for ensemble in 2008 for the Arnold Schönberg Center. Yoel Gamzou conducts the first performance of the version for chamber orchestra on 5 March in Berlin with the Vienna Concert-Verein.

Instrumentation: 1 1 1 1 - 1 0 0 0 - pno, str

Arnold Schönberg/Richard Dünser: Drei Klavierstücke op. 11
arranged for chamber orchestra
World première: 05/03/2012
Wiener Concert-Verein, cond. Yoel Gamzou

Luke Bedford: Three Intermezzi
for piano and string quartet
World première: 03/03/2012, Brighton
Britten Sinfonia

Rihm is writing a kind of symphonic echo to each of the four Brahms symphonies, and Nähe fern 3 accordingly reflects on Brahms’ Symphony No. 3.

The title Nähe fern comes from a late poem by Goethe, which has been set to music both by Rihm and Brahms: “Dämmrung senkte sich von oben / Schon ist alle Nähe fern” (“Twilight sank from high above / All that was near already is far”). The question is: how close can one get to Brahms whilst still remaining true to oneself?

Wolfgang Rihm: Nähe fern 3
for orchestra
World première: 29/02/2012, Lucerne
Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, cond. James Gaffigan

Furrer’s Narcissus-Fragment for 2 narrators and 26 instruments, which is an extraction from the opera Narcissus, receives its US première. Also on the programme is Nuun, for 2 pianos and ensemble.

Transformation is the theme of both works. In the Narcissus-Fragment, the two voices are embedded in the instrumental music, with the natural speech rhythm destroyed – mostly broken into syllables or isolated sounds. The instruments take over where the voices leave off with sounds often transformed into several layers before collapsing. Combination and separation permeate the work.

In his introduction to Nuun (read the full version here), Bernhard Günther writes, “The central principle is transformation, specifically on the rhythmic, harmonic and tonal planes, as a continuous process from the beginning to the end. Nuun is an almost unparalleled example of Furrer’s breadth of expression. The work goes from a thoroughly concise beginning to the final, lonely sound of the piano that eventually fades away into silence.”

Paavali Jumpannen and Yoko Hagino are the piano soloists and Brian Church and Douglas Williams the narrators. Jeffrey Means conducts Sound Icon.

This was how the Wonderful Two-Headed Nightingale was presented in posters advertising the skills of the conjoined twins Millie and Christine McCoy in the 1870s. It is also the title of  Luke Bedford's latest work for ensemble, which receives its world première in Inverness on 17 February by the Scottish Ensemble, before travelling to Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee, Perth, Glasgow and finally London.

Instrumentation: 0 2 0 0 - 2 0 0 0, vln(6), va(2), vc(2), kb

Luke Bedford: Wonderful Two-Headed Nightingale
for violin solo, viola solo and 15 players
Jonathan Morton, violin; Lawrence Power, viola
Scottish Ensemble
17/02/2012 Inverness

Cerha writes:

“The composition started with two numbers from my theatre-piece Netzwerk (Network), for which I invented a construed, artificial language, notated in the International Phonetic Alphabet. ‘Prosperity Conversation’ suggests the image of an infinitely bored society, in which only occasional, short discoveries suddenly excite resistance, which then quickly sinks back into lethargy, monotony and ultimately complete torpor.

By contrast, ‘Execution’ initially features the vain, self-aggrandising figure of the countertenor, juxtaposed with six people, dominating them; their increasingly aggressive behaviour unnerves him more and more, despite his pathetic attempts at self-defence, until he is finally forced to his knees to beg for discernment until only the sound of his groaning is left, before it dwindles to nothingness.”

Friedrich Cerha: 2 Szenen
for seven voices
world première: 11/2/2012, ECLAT Festival Stuttgart
Neue Vocalsolisten

Goldiepegs and the Three Cellos is the second work for children and adults alike by Anne Dudley, following a text by the cellist Steven Isserlis.

Loosely based on the fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Isserlis’ story takes us on a magical and humorous journey into the world of musical fairy tales, a strict mother, and a family of cellos.

The original version is for narrator, violin, three cellos and piano. The expanded version for narrator, violin, three violoncellos and string orchestra is now receiving its first performance in Padova. Steven Isserlis leads the Orchestra de Padova e del Veneto.

Anne Dudley/Steven Isserlis: Goldiepegs and the Three Cellos
for narrator, violin, three violoncellos and string orchestra
world première of the string orchestra version: 11/02/2012
Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, Steven Isserlis

On 9 Feb this year the series continues with Johannes Maria Staud’s new work Maniai (ancient Greek goddesses of revenge), which is performed in a concert together with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1.

Regarding the title, Staud writes:

“I was looking for a title to match the character of my composition. It was already certain that it would last about 10 minutes. I had already written several works for orchestra, but I’d never held the tempo pedal down for so long – almost seven minutes, about 2/3 of the piece. The music never allows you any calm – it pursues you relentlessly, like the Erinnyes.” 

Johannes Maria Staud: Maniai
for orchestra
World première: 9/02/2012, Munich
2nd performance on 10/02/2012 broadcast live on Radio BR-KLASSIK
RSO Munich, c. Mariss Jansons

Weiss Silvius Leopold
Overture and Capriccio
UE 34487

already available:

Robert de Visée
Suite en ré mineur
UE 34480

Santiago de Murcia
Suite en ré mineur
UE 34481

Mauro Giuliani
Sonata in C Major op. 15
UE 34482

Mauro Giuliani
La Gloire et l'Amour op. 105
UE 34483

John Dowland
A Dream – Melancholy Galliard – Sir John Smith His Almaine
– A Fancy
UE 34484

Silvius Leopold Weiss
Tombeau and Fantasie
UE 34485

Gaspar Sanz
Preludio – Fuga – Jácaras – Pavanas – Canarios
UE 34486

Santiago de Murcia
Villanos – Fandango – Gallardas – Cumbees
– Marizapálos – La Jotta
UE 34488

"Although very elementary, the pieces are substantial enough to be presented as ensemble performance material for music festivals or examinations.  Having successfully mastered these pieces, players can then progress to the Centre Stage series which offers slightly more
challenging material in the same instrumental format with the added
bonus of featuring a soloist!"  James Rae

All Together – Easy Ensemble!
(James Rae)
UE 21580

Pärt wrote Lamentate in 2002 as a reflection on the huge enigmatic sculpture “Marsyas” by Anish Kapoor, which he created in the turbine hall of the Tate Modern in London.

Dennis Russell Davies conducts the American Composers Orchestra with Maki Namekawa on piano.

Arvo Pärt: Lamentate
for piano and orchestra
NYC première: 31.01.2012, Carnegie Hall New York
Maki Namekawa, piano
American Composers Orchestra, cond. Dennis Russell Davies

Beaumont based his analysis on various sources, including the orchestral score in Zemlinsky’s own handwriting, the orchestral material prepared by the composer himself, the composer’s own piano reduction, various copyists’ reproductions with Zemlinsky’s corrections etc. The first performance using the new critical edition took place in April 2010 in Rome.

The Opéra de Lyon is now performing the opera in a new production by Georges Lavaudant. Bernhard Kontarsky conducts. The première was on 29 Jan.

Alexander Zemlinsky: A Florentine Tragedy
Opera in one act
Première: 29.01.2012, Opéra de Lyon (Festival Puccini plus)
Further performances: 29 and 30 Jan, 6 and 8 Feb
Stage director: Georges Lavaudant
Martin Winkler, Simone; Gun-Brit Barkmin, Bianca; Thomas Piffka, Guido Bardi
Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon, cond. Bernhard Kontarsky

Hans Sommer’s Lieder

Hans Sommer/Clytus Gottwald: Drei Lieder
for choir, arranged by Clytus Gottwald
World première: 29/01/2012, Saarbrücken
KammerChor Saarbrücken, cond. Georg Grün

Friedrich Cerha

Most recently, the complete performances of his Spiegel cycle - one of the milestones of postwar music history - were powerful reminders of the freshness of his music and its almost physical, aural and emotional attraction. The creative force and inventive curiosity of this master of impressive sonic landscapes are unbridled, as the many world premières of recent years strongly show. 

The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize will be awarded to Cerha by the president of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts at a ceremony at Munich’s Cuvilliés Theatre on 22 June 2012. 

We are especially delighted that a Composer’s Prize will be awarded to fellow UE-composer Luke Bedford.

UE congratulates its two composers!

Wolfgang Rihm’s

The Biennale presents all of Rihm’s works for string quartet with performances by the world’s leading quartets (Kronos, Zemlinsky, Hagen, Modigliani, Tokyo, Casals, Arditti etc. etc.).

The highlight of the Biennale is the world première of Rihm’s String Quartet No. 13 by the Arditti Quartet.

See the full programme at the Cité de la Musique website.

To celebrate this extraordinary presentation of Rihm’s music, we are publishing the scores of all the string quartets (where available) online. Follow the UE blog during the coming week for details.

Read our article on Rihm’s interpreters from the latest issue of the Musikblätter.

Although one of the most important operas of the 20th century, it has curiously had to wait until now to be performed at the Vienna State Opera (première: 24 Jan). Before then, a new production by Omri Nitzan opens at the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv (première: 12 Jan).

Kurt Weill: Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Israel Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, cond. David Stern
Tara Venditti, Leokadja Begbick; Alan Woodrow, Fatty;
Julien Tovey, Dreieinigkeitsmoses; Noemi Nadelmann,
Jenny Hill; John Uhlenhopp, Jimmy Mahoney
Stage direction: Omri Nitzan, Stage design: Michael Kremenko
12–29.01.2012 Tel Aviv, Israeli Opera

Vienna State Opera Orchestra, cond. Ingo Metzmacher
Elisabeth Kulman, Leokadja Begbick; Tomasz Konieczny,
Dreieinigkeitsmoses; Angelika Kirchschlager, Jenny Hill;
Christopher Ventris, Jim Mahoney
Stage direction: Jérôme Deschamps, Stage design: Olivia Fersioni
24.01–05.02.2012 Vienna State Opera

Franz Liszt

The Deutsche Radio Philharmonie and Martin Haselböck will record Ad nos, ad salutarem undam for a forthcoming cpo CD. In addition, a film of the concert is being made for the German/French culture TV station ARTE.

Franz Liszt/Marcel Dupré:
Ad nos, ad salutarem undam
fantasia and fugue on the Anabaptist’s chorale from Giacomo Meyerbeers opera Le Prophète
for organ and orchestra
Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, cond.
Martin Haselböck, Christian Schmitt, org
09/01/2012 Luxemburg, Philharmonie
13/01/2012 Saarbrücken, Philharmonie

No matter which genre of music Aleksey draws us into, he always manages to capture the essence of the musical language and does so in his uniquely clever and joyful way ... ‘Asia & More’ will surely hold a regular spot on my music stand.
Joshua Bell

Asia & More
Violin Duets
UE 33654

Here's a full list of editions by Aleksey Igudesman

The pieces will suit middle-grade players and all three parts are well balanced. The original compositions and the arrangements of popular melodies bring a whole variety of new tonal and rhythmic elements into play, improving technique and the necessary skills for ensemble playing. Above all else however, this lively and stylistically varied music will be enjoyed by all.

Florian Bramböck
Saxophone Trios from around the world
for three saxophones AAT(A)
UE 35030

Mlake / Laaken

Olaf Nicolai’s conception has turned the main steps of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich into a stage, on which the visitors find themselves transformed into part of the display.

Vocal compositions by internationally renowned composers, all written in 2011, reflect on the current political and cultural climate, creating together a kind of “review” of the year.

The a cappella works have been performed on the main steps over 12 Sundays during the year.

SCHWEIGEN

I. Fukushima
for soprano and lyric soprano
world première: 31/07/2011

II. Lampedusa
for soprano and mezzo-soprano
world première: 30/10/2011

III. Mlake / Laaken
for lyric soprano and countertenor
world première: 18/12/2011

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Neue Vocalsolisten

Jay Schwartz'

Jay Schwartz: Music for Three Stringed Instruments
for violin, viola and violoncello
World première: 14/12/2011
University of Cologne
e-mex ensemble (Christine Rox, vln; Konrad von Coelln, vla; Burkhart Zeller, vc)

This is how the Vienna State Opera announces the contents of Janáček’s opera From the House of the Dead, which premières on 11 December 2011.

The State Opera is showing the controversial production by Peter Konwitschny from the Zurich Opera house. Franz Welser-Möst conducts.

UE is currently working on a new edition of the score of the opera under the careful eye of John Tyrell. His work is based on the provisional edition he created together with Sir Charles Mackerras in 1990. The new version attempts to get closer to Janacek’s artistic vision than the existing editions, including various radical elements that have never before been heard.

Leos Janácek: From the House of the Dead
Première: 11.12.2011
Vienna State Opera
Director: Peter Konwitschny
Vienna State Opera Orchestra, cond. Franz Welser-Möst

Rihm creates a finely woven atmosphere rich in desire with outbursts of intense energy. This “Nocturnal scene for soprano and orchestra” was premièred in 2006 in Munich and can now be heard for the first time in the Netherlands – as part of the Rihm series at the ZaterdagMatinee.

Listen live at 1pm (Amsterdam time) on Dutch Radio4

Wolfgang Rihm: Das Gehege
Dutch première: 10.12.2011
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
Part of the Rihm series at the ZaterdagMatinee
Radio Filharmonisch Orkest
Conductor: Edo de Waart
Hellen Kwon, soprano

We were very happy about the positive reaction to the first edition of Musikblätter (read it here); we saw it as a sign that there is a great need for thorough and more substantial information, and in the future we will be following this newfound path by providing you with material to help you plan the events you wish to attend. As usual, the service section contains comprehensive summaries of our publishing activities: new editions, scheduled première performances, discoveries, new additions to our catalogue, CDs and DVDs, as well as a selection of important concerts.

The editorial section includes interviews in which no fewer than four of our composers speak their minds:

Arvo Pärt candidly recounts the difficulties and harassment he had to put up with in his homeland Estonia at the outset of his career before he became a success in the West. He also explains why he developed the Tintinnabuli style and the artistic crises he had to overcome: “The truth is that I matured very late.”

Wolfgang Rihm (who turns 60 on 13 March) provides information on the conditions affecting the composing process: “Art is a radically individual affair which always harbours human freedom as its starting point and its objective.” Celebrated Rihm interpreters have supplied us with very personal birthday wishes.

As for the countries topic, Spain is the focus in this issue. Cristóbal Halffter, doyen of Spanish composers, recalls the times when he suffered under the Franco dictatorship in his homeland and muses on the regime’s effects on the artistic scene. He also speaks about his newest opera project Schachnovelle, based on the novel by Stefan Zweig.

Mauricio Sotelo, who celebrated his 50th birthday on 2 October, allows us a look into his workshop. It is utterly fascinating to learn how he discovered a new aesthetic through his friendship with great flamenco performers. His latest opera project is devoted to the novel El público by Federico García Lorca.

We also include a closer look at Zemlinsky, featuring contributions from James Conlon and Antony Beaumont, who regard Zemlinsky as a confidante they never knew. A work analysis is devoted to Luciano Berio’s Sequenze; we present the new critical edition of Kurt Weill’s cantata Der neue Orpheus, while Eberhard Kloke reports on his reduced version of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, and with David Fennessy we present the newest UE arrival from Ireland.

Enjoy this issue of Musikblätter!

The UE Promotion Team

Download a PDF file

Mapas Celestes… I

Luz sobre lienzo (Light on Canvas) was commissioned by Acción Cultural Española for the 200th anniversary of the 1812 Spanish Constitution. Lasting 40 minutes, the piece is based on an allegorical painting by Francisco de Goya, La Verdad, el Tiempo y la Historia (oil on canvas). These three figures are represented by violin (la Verdad), dance (la Historia) and percussion (el Tiempo), and projected via a live electronic system as vibrant light in a new, spatial-temporal dimension.

Mauricio Sotelo: Luz sobre lienzo
for violin, flamenco dancer, percussion and live-electronics
World première: 3/12/2011, Madrid
Patricia Kopatchinskaja, vln; Fuensanta “La Moneta”, flamenco dance;
Agustín Diassera, flamenco percussion;
Fernando Villanueva, live-electronics; cond. Mauricio Sotelo

Following a first contract with UE for his orchestral work This is How it Feels (Another Bolero), David Fennessy has now signed a major agreement for a list of works going back to 2004, covering the broad variety of his works.

Included are works for mixed ensembles such as PPP for seven instruments and electronics (2004), The sound inside a sea-shell is not really the sea for six instruments and electronics (2007) as well as solo works like The first thing, the last thing and everything in-between for piano (2009) and rosewood for guitar (2010).

A fruitful collaboration with Ensemble Modern led to his composing 13 Factories for large ensemble as part of the into ... project, and continued in 2011 with the world premiere of La Rejouissance. La Paix, conducted by Frank Ollu. His music-theatre work Pass the Spoon, a collaboration with the visual artist David Shrigley, has just been premiered in Glasgow.

On his own music, he says:

“I think each piece has its own individual technique but what people hear is something much deeper and profound and long lasting. It’s the thing they recognise as a composer’s voice. Of course it does manifest itself in technical things like intervals, but there’s some kind of bedrock on which your voice is built.”

David Fennessy was born in Ireland in 1976. He studied music in Dublin and then composition with James MacMillan at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, where he lives today.

"For me music has a unique ability to follow a kind of emotional narrative that finds a tiny crack; a split second in time; an instant, and sinks further and further into itself – where time seems to seep out from the centre in all directions.

In this way, the shape of the music acts as a kind of ‘freeze frame’, looking continuously at the same moment but always zooming in to higher degrees of magnification so that what can appear to be, for instance, a smooth edge can also be revealed to have the most intricate topography."

See this page for a list of works, audio excerpts and programme notes.

We are excited and proud to have David Fennessy's works in the UE catalogue.

Welcome David!

The 18-minute work is dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter, who gave the world première in New York in 2010.

“In a certain sense you could say that Lichtes Spiel is a continued development of Gesungene Zeit, as he obviously sounds out the violin with regard to the colours it can produce and what other advanced techniques can be expanded upon, like trills, harmonics, double stops.” (Anne-Sophie Mutter)

Wolfgang Rihm: Lichtes Spiel
for violin and orchestra (commissioned by the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation)
French première: 29.11.2011
Salle Pleyel, Paris
Anne-Sophie Mutter, vln
London Symphony Orchestra, c. Valery Gergiev

Borisova-Ollas received the prize for her clarinet concerto Golden Dances of the Pharaohs, which was premièred in 2010 by Martin Fröst and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. The judges recognised a “richly varied, rhythmically vital work with an exquisite timbre”.

Borisova-Ollas is the first woman to receive the award, which was founded in 1948 and carries a prize sum of 180 000 Swedish kroner.

Francis Burt: Mohn und Gedächtnis
for ensemble
World première: 23/11/2011
Wien Modern Festival
Klangforum Wien, c. Emilio Pomàrico

The term “tragicomedy” in the title refers to the way in which all our conflicts, all our contradictions, all the drama and meaning in our lives become almost comic when observed from a distance. As Thomas Berhard put it, “when one thinks of death, everything becomes absurd”.

I was inspired to the use of the [German] word “Wie” [“as/like”] in the title by the work of my friend, the painter Max Weiler, who often gives his pictures titles beginning with "Wie ...", as for example in his work “Wie eine Landschaft" [Like a Landscape]. It is an indication that the work is symbolic and not programmatic.

Friedrich Cerha: Like a Tragicomedy
for large orchestra
Austrian première: 20.11.2011
Wien Modern Festival, Konzerthaus Vienna
RSO Vienna, c. James MacMillan

Leos Janácek: Jenufa (Brno version)
Premiere: 19/11/2011
Further performances: 23 and 27/11; 1, 4, 6, 9, 14 and 27/12
Production: Orpha Phelan
Stage design: Leslie Travers
Malmö Operakör, Malmö Operaorkester, c. Marko Ivanovic/Stefan Solyom
Erika Sunnegardh, Jenufa

Each piece is presented in three versions: two full recordings at differing tempi for playing-along and a version providing the accompaniment only for playing-along with full confidence.

Notes and explanations are provided on swing rhythm, off-beat articulation and other conventions encountered in the playing of jazz. 

Tilmann Dehnhard
Easy Jazz Studies
for flute with CD
UE 35028

already available:

Tilmann Dehnhard
Jazz Studies
for flute with CD
UE 33703

Johannes Maria Staud

It has already become strikingly apparent that Staud’s complex structures are not an end in themselves, but also contain a great amount of movement impulses in their rhythmic variety. One result of this was the combination of single works which, once choreographed, were then joined together as a sort of spatial assembly. The dancer and choreographer Anne Juren and the artist Roland Rauschmeier have now created an evening’s work which transgresses all genres: Tableaux Vivants – living images.

Tableaux Vivants includes music from Staud’s Berenice. Suite I, Berenice. Suite II, Lagrein, Studie für Tonband solo and recorded material from the opera Berenice.

World première: 9 November 2011
further performances: 11 + 12 November
Festival Wien Modern, Tanzquartier Vienna
PHACE | contemporary music, cond. Simeon Pironkoff
concept: Roland Rauschmeier and Anne Juren

Many of the characteristics that make Janácek’s music so unique are already recognisable; the composer seems to be literally in the process of development towards his own unmistakable style. On 4 November Opéra de Rennes shows this version in a new production by Pierre Constant. Ondrej Olos conducts the Orchestre de Bretagne.

Premiere: 4/11/2011
further performances: 6, 8 and 10/11
Original version of 1904, reconstructed by Mark Audus
Production: Pierre Constant
Pavla Vykopalová, Jenufa
Choeur de l’Opéra de Rennes
Orchestre de Bretagne, c. Ondrej Olos
Coproduction Opéra de Limoges, Opéra de Reims
En collaboration avec le Théâtre National de Brno

Pärt was in Paris for the “Estonie tonique” festival. On the same day, Paul Hillier conducted a concert given by the Tallinn Philharmonic Chamber Choir, including Veni creator, Anthem of St John the Baptist, The Deer’s Cry, Annum per annum, Magnificat, Trivium, Morning Star, Nunc dimittis and Salve Regina.

On 4 November, the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris was joined by conductor Olari Elts for a concert in the impressive surroundings of the Centquatre complex. The programme includes Ein Wallfahrtslied, Summa, the French première of Adam's Lament and Da Pacem Domine, as well as works by Thierry Escaich.

“I definitely feel an extremely close kinship to him in his artistic type,” says Rihm, adding, “that includes his position in time, his attitude, that he never deviated from the figurative – his strongly rooted, yet powerfully extending tendencies – I feel at home there, as an artistic figure; there, I sense a strong identification.”

world première: 29/10/2011
ZaterdagMatinee
Concertgebouw Amsterdam
Christian Miedl, baritone
Asko|Schönberg, c. Reinbert de Leeuw

The world it depicts – introverted, sensitive and focused on itself alone – is disrupted again and again by hectic, brutal events; this reflects the need I have to avoid absolutising that world and to refrain from celebrating mere submersion.”
(Friedrich Cerha)

World première For Marino: 29.10.2011
Konzerthaus Vienna
Marino Formenti, piano

Austria and Britain are the focus of this year’s festival, which will explore not only the differences, but also the similarities in the musical developments of both countries and their composers.

Austria's grand seigneur Friedrich Cerha and his magnum opus Spiegel I–VII open the festival on 28 October in a performance by the RSO Vienna under Cornelius Meister.

UE highlights at Wien Modern:

• Luke Bedford: Man Shoots Strangers from Skyscraper (31/10), Slow Music (18/11)

• Harrison Birtwistle: Cortege (4/11), An Imaginary Landscape (20/11), Silbury Air (31/10), The Triumph of Time (3/11)

• Francis Burt: Mohn und Gedächtnis (23/11 world première), Morgana (3/11)

• Friedrich Cerha: Les Adieux (23/11), Bruchstück geträumt (23/11), Curriculum (21/11), Divertimento (21/11), Für Marino (29/10, 31/10, 14/11 world première), Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (25/11), Like a Tragicomedy (20/11), Momente (3/11), Spiegel I–VII (28/10)

• Johannes Maria Staud: Tableaux Vivants (09/11–12/11 world première), Eine Ecke aus dem Polygon (3/11 world première)

• Georg Friedrich Haas: Monodie (23/11), Poème (23/11)

See the full programme at the Wien Modern Website

World première: 25/10/2011
Casa da Música, Porto
Remix Ensemble, c. Emilio Pomàrico

“We live in an age of a new historism, also in a musical sense. Contemporary composers often refer to old masters, who they quickly huddle up to and then just as quickly distance themselves from. In this context, the composer Wolfgang Rihm is writing four orchestral works parallel to the four symphonies by Johannes Brahms. By 2012 they will themselves have grown into a four-part symphony.”

World première Nähe fern 2: 19.10.2011
KKL Lucerne
Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, cond. James Gaffigan

Bedford studied with Lennox Berkeley in London and later with Luigi Nono in Venice. For over 40 years he was one of the most prominent figures in the British music scene, and was also active as a composer of music for TV and film. His name became even more popular in connection with his arrangement of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells for orchestra in 1975. Bedford also composed educational works and was participated in creative workshops at home and abroad.

Read the obituaries by the Guardian and the Telegraph:

Keith Potter, 4 October 2011

6 October 2011

“I did not want to write music about someone else’s music. Against my will, however, the opening movement of the symphony haunted me in the days following the request and I was unable to banish it from my mind. Ever since I first heard the piece as a child, it has held a particular fascination for me – with its mysterious fifths and descending fourths, the tremolo and the powerful resolution of the final cadence. The material began reshaping itself and blossoming rapidly in my mind.”

In the end, Cerha did accept the commission, and the results, Paraphrase über den Anfang der 9. Symphonie von Beethoven [Paraphrase on the beginning of Beethoven’s 9th] will be given its world première on 6 Oct. Riccardo Chailly conducts the Gewandhausorchester.

Walter Kobéra conducts the Amadeus Ensemble in a production directed by Leo Krischke. Further performances are on 2, 7 and 8 October.

This multilayered work will receive its Austrian première on 21 Sept at the Klangspuren Festival in Tirol. Ensemble Residencias is joined by the Arbos piano trio and soloists. The composer conducts.

Mauricio Sotelo celebrates his 50th birthday on 2 October.

Jürg Henneberger conducts the chamber opera on 16 Sep with the Ensemble DIAGONAL at the Lucerne Festival. Stage direction is by Desirée Meiser.

Haas has now expanded his technique even further and uses electronics for the first time in a string quartet. His String Quartet No. 7 will be given its world première at the Lucerne Festival by the Arditti Quartet (10 Sept).

The new version of Salve Regina for choir and orchestra moves the original organ part to the string orchestra. The only additional instrument is the celesta, which brings a bell-like tone.

All three new orchestral versions will be given their world première on 9 and 10 Sept at the MITO SettembreMusica Festival (in Turin and Milan respectively). The Torino Vocalensemble and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nacionale della RAI are conducted by Tito Ceccherini.

On 11 Sept the same three works are on the programme of the Nargen Festival in Tallinn, as well as Pärt’s Adam’s Lament. Tõnu Kaljuste conducts the Latvian Radio Choir, Vox Clamantis and the Sinfonietta Riga.

“The rhythmic structure is very complex,” says Sotelo. “It is based on a Spanish dance-rhythm – the bulera, an ostinato. I composed this voice part as if I were writing for an Indian tabla.”

The world première is on 8 Sept during the Klangspuren Festival in Schwaz, performed by the Tyrol Symphony Orchestra Innsbruck, conducted by Franck Ollu, with soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaya.

In Pelleas Schönberg still used an orchestra so enormous (e.g. 8 horns, 4 trumpets, 5 trombones) that further expansion for the future became impossible. Thus it was only a small step forward along his path when he scored the individually shaped motivic voices in his Chamber Symphony for 15 solo instruments instead of using large-scale doublings, etc.

Apart from Schönberg’s original orchestration, Universal Edition also publishes a somewhat reduced version by Erwin Stein. We have also recently published a version for chamber orchestra by Cliff Colnot (2008), which will receive its world première on 8 Sept by the Pori Sinfonietta under Jukka Iisakkila in Finland.

4 4 5 4 –  8 4 5 1 –  timp(2), perc(3), hp(2 od. 4), str(16 16 12 12 8)
(original instrumentation)
3 3 3 3 –  4 3 3 1 –  timp(2), perc(3), hp(2 od. 4), str
(Erwin Stein)
2 2 3 2 –  3 2 2 1 –  perc(2), hp, str
(Cliff Colnot)

Lichtes Spiel, Rihm’s new work for violin and small orchestra, was given its world première in 2010 in New York. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is joined by soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter and conductor Manfred Honeck for two further performances at the festivals in Grafenegg (1 Sept) and Lucerne (3 Sept).

The title of Lichtes Spiel might be translated as “Light Game“ or “Light Play“, and may be taken as a pun on the German expression “leichtes Spiel“, meaning “an easy job“; or what we might call “Child’s Play“. The work was commissioned by the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation.

On 25 August the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra will give the work première of Yu’s new work Symphonic Suite for Our Natural World. Kazuki Yamada conducts. Also on the programme is Yu’s Wu-Yu for orchestra, which will receive its Japanese première.

The ancient Chinese word Wu-Yu refers to rain-making ceremonies performed in times of drought. This composition is conceptual rather than programmatic: it does not seek to describe the outer details of such a ceremony, but rather to capture its essence.

Further works by Yu will be performed on 30 August, as part of the Summer Festival 2011, including Scintillation 2 for piano, 2 vibraphones and glockenspiel, and Philopentatonia for chamber orchestra. Yasuaki Itakura conducts the Tokyo Sinfonietta.

MIXED ENSEMBLE OPTION
Whilst written specifically for the instrument and addressing the challenges beginner flautists would encounter, a special section is included of four pieces which are "key friendly" for beginners on most instruments and are therefore ideal pieces for mixed instrumental groups. These same four pieces will appear in subsequent books for other instruments in the Debut series.

For the Pupil …
- Instrumental parts with fun cartoons for inspiration
- A CD providing stimulating demonstration performances for listening as well as "minus-one" accompaniments for playing along at home
- Cartoons can be DOWNLOADED FOR FREE for colouring in

For the Teacher …
- Sheet music for selected piano accompaniments can be DOWNLOADED FOR FREE - just follow the web link provided in the pupil's book!
- If preferred, the accompaniments of all of the 12 pieces can be purchased in one printed and bound volume

James Rae
Saxophone Debut Pupil's book with CD
UE 21530

Order here

Saxophone Debut - Piano Accompaniments
UE 21531

Order here

already available:

James Rae
Clarinet Debut Pupil's book with CD
UE 21526

Clarinet Debut - Piano Accompaniments
UE 21527

James Rae
Flute Debut Pupil's book with CD
UE 21528

Flute Debut - Piano Accompaniments
UE 21529

The result is a feast of beautiful music and the continued guidance from Mike Cornick will help the player develop the technical skills and confidence to interact with the rewarding musical experiences provided by the CDs. Again, at each stage, more pieces may be downloaded FOR FREE from this page.

• Step-by-step learning in playing and reading, starting from absolute scratch, presented in clearly structured stages
• Also suitable for the 'returning beginner'
• Performance pieces in a range of styles from classical and folk through to jazz
• Helpful and stimulating CDs with aural development exercises and recordings of the pieces, many with 'play-along' tracks
• Warm-up exercises
• Even more performance pieces which, together with more supporting material for each stage, are available as FREE DOWNLOADS from this page

Play the Piano
Level 2
UE 21562

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already available:

Play the Piano
Level 1
UE 21561

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Mike Cornick is an established composer, arranger and teacher with over fifty publications available from Universal Edition: recreational pieces, tutors, examination pieces, piano material for all ages and levels, solos, duets and even six hands at one piano. In his thoughtful attention to the educational aspects of his composing, Mike always provides material that appeals and inspires. Mike is best known for his jazz piano publications from which many selections have been made for graded piano examinations.

Other highlights include:

Harrison Birtwistle’s Narration: A Description of the Passing of a Year
Wolfgang Rihm’s Gesungene Zeit
Alban Berg’s Der Wein
Richard Rodney Bennett’s Jazz Calendar with the London Sinfonietta

Don’t miss also the Steve Reich concert on 10 August, featuring his Clapping Music.

All concerts are broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. See the BBC Proms website for the full programme.

The main point of reference remains of course Alban Berg; the Mahler-Scenes begin with his cantata Der Wein and end with his Violin Concerto.

Other UE highlights at this year’s Salzburg Festival include:

10/08–30/08: Leoš Janácek’s The Makropulos Affair
11/08: Morton Feldman’s Neither
13/08: Georg Friedrich Haas’ in vain for 24 instruments
23/08: Friedrich Cerha’s Concerto for percussion and orchestra

On 24 July Krenek’s one act opera will receive its Italian première at the Festival della Valle d’Itria. Roman Brogli-Sacher conducts the Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia in a production by Franco Ripa di Meana.

An optional second flute part has been composed for each étude providing opportunities for the teacher or another player to support and reinforce phrasing, rhythm, tone quality, intonation and style. These parts are available to download free from our website. The second flute parts have been recorded on the CD to provide supportive accompaniments for playing along - an invaluable aid in daily practice.

Classic Études for Flute
from Mary Karen Clardy
UE 70363

Also available from Mary Karen Clardy for intermediate players and beyond:

Classic Solos for Flute
Volume 1   UE 70079
Volume 2   UE 70322

Classic Duets for Flute
Volume 1   UE 70005
Volume 2   UE 70078

Silvius Leopold Weiss
Tombeau und Fantasie
UE 34485

already available:

Robert de Visée
Suite en ré mineur
UE 34480

Santiago de Murcia
Suiteen ré mineur
UE 34481

Mauro Giuliani
Sonate C Major op. 15
UE 34482

Mauro Giuliani
La Gloire et l'Amour op. 105
UE 34483

John Dowland
A Dream – Melancholy Galliard – Sir John Smith His Almaine
– A Fancy
UE 34484

Gaspar Sanz
Preludio – Fuga – Jácaras – Pavanas – Canarios
UE 34486

Santiago de Murcia
Villanos – Fandango – Gallardas – Cumbees
– Marizapálos – La Jotta
UE 34488

On 9 July the reduced version will be given its French première as part of the Festival D’aujourd’hui à demain in Cluny. Ensemble 18 performs, conducted by Michel Pozmanter. The soloist is Noëmi Schindler.

In 1939, at the age of 21, Gottfried von Einem came across the first play written by Georg Büchner (the work of a 22-year-old) – and was overwhelmed. The result of this encounter, Dantons Tod, was the first opera by a living composer to be premiered at the Salzburg Festival (1947). Unlike in Büchner’s play, the people – the revolution – play one of the leading roles and the chorus scenes are among the most effective that were composed by von Einem in his basically tonal score. The work has maintained its important role in the opera repertoire to this day.

Jochen Hochstenbach conducts the Badische Staatskapelle at the Opera House in Rihm’s home town, Karlsruhe.

On 4 July Arvo Pärt performed his Vater unser (Our Father) for Pope Benedict XVI at a ceremony in the Vatican celebrating the 60th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood. Pärt also presented the Pope with a copy of the manuscript, which is dedicated to him.

To honour the anniversary, over 60 artists from around the world have been invited to contribute to a new exhibition of artworks. Amongst the artists are the composers Arvo Pärt, Ennio Morricone and James MacMillan.

To commemorate this historical occasion, Universal Edition has released a new edition of Pärt’s Vater unser including a CD recording of the composer performing the work together with the boy soprano Heldur Harry Põlda, who performed with Pärt at the Vatican.

Update: Our new edition is now available. Order here

For more information about Pärt’s previous audiences in the Vatican, visit the Arvo Pärt website.

First page of the manuscript

Mauricio Sotelo’s latest composition, Muerte sin fin for narrator, flamenco-dancer, cantaor, instrumental ensemble and electronics, will receive its world première in Spain on 29 June as part of the renowned Suma Flamenca Festival. The title of the work is inspired by the poem of the same name by the Mexican writer José Gorostiza, which talks of time without an end.

In Muerte sin fin, Sotelo combines extracts from the poem with flamenco elements. The work is dedicated to the great flamenco singer Enrique Morente, who died in 2010 following an operation.

One of her most powerful first impressions was encountering the sound of the bells announcing the Angelus service at the Frauenkirche. This service has also given its name to her orchestral work, which was premièred on 8 June 2008 under Sylvain Cambreling.

On 24 June Angelus will recieve its UK première in Glasgow with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Manze.

The four-part Brahms/Rihm cycle in Lucerne is an initiative of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and was developed in close cooperation with the Lucerne Festival. Rihm is writing a new orchestral work to accompany each of Brahms' four symphonies.

Brahms' 1st Symphony, the world première of which took place in Rihm's home town of Karlsruhe, starts the series.

James Gaffigan conducts the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra.

Have a look at photos from the world première in Salzburg last year, listen to excerpts, and read the vocal score online.

The first performance of the whole opera took place in Paris in 1979. That version, created by Friedrich Cerha, offers performers the choice of two or three acts.

Another version joined the repertoire in Copenhagen in October 2010. Eberhard Kloke has developed a type of ‘modular system’ for Act 3, allowing performers to structure the scenes and dramatic flow more freely, with the aim of streamlining the act.

The German première of Kloke's version will be given at the Erfurt Theatre on 13 June in a production by Saskia Kuhlmann.

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.”

Johannes Maria Staud

Secondly, I was also inspired by a poem by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, which speaks of the “endless expansion of celluloid”. Ultimately, the solo pieces in my career to date have always been focused pieces in which I could examine and realign things. That’s why I am particularly grateful to the Staatskapelle for this commission.” (Staud)

Read Tobias Niederschlag's interview with Johannes Maria Staud in the first edition of our new Musikblätter.

On 4 June Georg Friedrich Haas’ new work for chamber orchestra will be given its world première by the Munich Chamber Orchestra conducted by Alexander Liebreich.

“Chants oubliés is written for a chamber orchestra separated into two groups. One group consists of 8 violins, 4 violas and 4 celli (i.e. 4 string quartets making up one ensemble); the other group consists of two of each of the following: clarinets, horns, trumpets, trombones and double basses.

The title refers to late works by Franz Liszt (Valses oubliés, Romance oubliée) – Liszt’s technique of presenting one-part melodies in a different sound environment (often that of the piano) is applied here to the possibilities of the chamber orchestra.” (Haas)

Baltakas writes the following about the new work:

“commentum: ‘comment, interpretation, invention, fabrication, fiction’, in classical Latin; neut. pp. of comminisci ‘to contrive, devise’, from com-, intensive prefix + base of meminisse (to remember).

Commentum is a free rendition of Chopin’s Introduction after listening to it again. Without any alterations, predilections or attempts at ‘modernisation’, but rather like a spontaneous expression of one’s personal opinion.

The piece was written for David Geringas and Ian Fountain as a commission from the Vilnius Festival.”(Vykintas Baltakas)

View the full score of the Commentum here:

The UNESCO writes in their press release:

“Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), composer, painter, teacher, theoretician, and innovator is ranked amongst the prominent artistic figures in the history of western culture. His writings, apart from his compositions, are valuable documents for the musical, intellectual, and cultural history of the first half of the 20th century, as well as for exile studies, and thus for contemporary history. They are evidence of the multifaceted interests of an eminent artistic personality, and also address questions of aesthetics, Jewish affairs, politics, and religion.”

The Schönberg documentation is archived at the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna.

It is a joy for UE to see such an important composer of the 20th century recognised in this prestigious manner.

Kurt Weill
Songs
for violoncello with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34682

Already available:

Songs
for violin with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34324

Songs
for clarinet with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34326

Songs
for alto or tenor saxophone with CD and piano accompaniment
UE 34328

It contains works by Liszt which, starting from an easy to intermediate technical level, encourage performance rather by expressiveness than by virtuoso demands, and still allow progress in the performance technique which eventually is of benefit not only to playing Liszt.

The selection, ranging from easy pieces such as La cloche sonne or the Consolations Nos. 1 and 2 to more advanced works such as Au lac de Wallenstadt from Années de Pèlerinage, also takes the aspect of popularity within the framework of Liszt’s piano literature into account.

Pathways to Franz Liszt
A selection of easy to intermediate level piano pieces by Liszt
UT 50282

Further new publications:

The epoch-making works from the beginning of the Weimar years

Consolations and Liebesträume (Dreams of Love)

• Urtext – based on the original sources
• Clear engraving with convenient page turns
• With notes on interpretation to the
  Consolations by Liszt’s pupil Lina Ramann

Franz Liszt
Liebesträume (Dreams of Love)
UT 50164

Consolations
UT 50165

Here is the first edition of the Musikblätter, which is to be published bi-annually. With this, we hope to pursue an ambitious goal: to continue the tradition of the Musikblätter des Anbruch, founded by Universal Edition in the early 20th century.

The first edition turns the spotlight on Gustav Mahler – 18 May was the 100th anniversary of his death. The musicologist Renate Stark-Voit reports here on her work on the collected critical edition of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, while 25 renowned Mahler conductors talk about what the “contemporary composer of the future” means to them. We also present reduced versions of Mahler’s symphonies by Klaus Simon and let Mahler’s contemporaries have their say. Markus Hinterhäuser reports on the “Mahler scenes” at the Salzburg Festival.

Pierre Boulez offers an insight into his workshop in an interview in this edition, while Wolfgang Rihm analyses Arnold Schönberg’s Orchestral Variations op. 31. We provide details of the latest works by Friedrich Cerha. The focus is also on Franz Schreker, with articles by Christopher Hailey and Ingo Metzmacher. Mark Sattler writes about Georg Friedrich Haas, composer-in-residence at the Lucerne Festival, while Tobias Niederschlag interviews Johannes Maria Staud, the Capell- Compositeur (composer-in-residence) in Dresden. In an interview with rising star Pablo Heras-Casado, the conductor reveals his approach to Kurt Weill. And last but not least, we report on our discovery of Hans Sommer, who shared in the creation of the romantic orchestral song.

Download a PDF file

“Laser-sharp rhythms”

Gerard Mortier started off his tenure as director at Madrid’s Teatro Real in October 2010 with Kurt Weill’s opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny (text: Bertolt Brecht). The work attracted great attention – not only because of the oppressively topical staging by La Fura dels Baus, but also because of the unanimously critically acclaimed conductorship of Pablo Heras-Casado.

First of all: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is an opera with all the right ingredients.

Pablo Heras-Casado: It was the first time I had conducted a piece by Kurt Weill and I realised that his style of writing is really demanding for the singers. You need big voices and almost Wagnerian qualities in every singer. In this sense, we were very happy to have a cast that had this dramatic strength. Another remarkable aspect was the scenic and musical presence of the choir. And the dramatic role of the orchestra, which is psychologically very complex, was outstanding. All this made it very challenging to find the right balance between all the styles that Weill uses.

Weill’s music is very accessible. At the same time, it also plays with the genre ...

Pablo Heras-Casado: The dramatic scenes in Mahagonny refer to some key works in the history of opera, such as those by Verdi, Janáček, Monteverdi or Mozart. Verdi achieves great effects with very simple things. The use of lighter moments is also very well calculated in Mahoganny – for example, how to approach the Alabama Song. The key is not only to focus on the joyful character, but also to work on the bitterness of the music by offering the right space, tempo and colour.

It seemed you were not afraid to conduct this music with as much power and sharpness as possible.

Pablo Heras-Casado: Absolutely. This music needs a constant renewal of energy. In almost every big scene, you have an ostinato rhythm. Before Jimmy Mahoney is condemned, for example, it is very difficult to keep up the rhythms for a long period. It is really demanding. But if you can sustain this energy, the result is really stunning.

At the same time, you also showed the melancholic side of Mahagonny.

Pablo Heras-Casado: It is simply part of the opera. This music always wants to show a different perspective from the seemingly pleasant reality. Wherever there is a melody that is very easy to listen to, there are “wrong” notes in the harmony or the bass line is misplaced, provoking tension. It is never just nice, there is always some bitterness. The music speaks for itself.

What was the biggest challenge in performing Mahagonny?

Pablo Heras-Casado: There were many – even just the coordination. If you lose the shape and the angle, everything fails and becomes a shapeless movement. Sometimes you need to have a laser-sharp rhythm. Another challenge is to make the orchestra produce a variety of styles. Sometimes they even have to play roughly.

The day before the première, there was a general strike in Madrid. Mahagonny ends with a strike. How did you experience this?

Pablo Heras-Casado: After more than a month of rehearsing, that was really remarkable. It was as though a journalist had written the libretto the day before the première. The social atmosphere in Spain was very turbulent at the time – and still is. The workers in the theatre discussed going out on the streets too and demonstrating. We were very aware of the situation and everybody on stage felt that the situation was part of his own life.

Every single word of the libretto is relevant to our times. The problems are still the same. Our society is ruled by money. The more you have, the more you want. The less you have, the less you are.

Could the desert in Mahagonny be a metaphor for our emotional desert?

Pablo Heras-Casado: I think so. Mahagonny is a piece about our values.

When God appears, there is no redemption …

Pablo Heras-Casado: I think that is a very modern approach. Religion has been used to tell people that there is always someone to save you: a last hope. And I think perhaps it is difficult to speak about it: this is also wrong. First of all, you need your human and intimate values to be built not only on an intellectual education, but on human relations. It is a real coup de théâtre that even God cannot save you. You are alone. There is no hope in money or God.

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler

Video language: German

Freedom, passion, sensuality

The conductor Ingo Metzmacher is regarded as a renowned authority on operas by Franz Schreker. Die Gezeichneten in Amsterdam and Der ferne Klang in Zurich were successful and highly respected productions. Metzmacher believes that the renewed interest in Schreker’s operas persists partially because his sound is vibrant and his spatial concept was far ahead of its time.

Mr. Metzmacher, When did you first discover Schreker?

Metzmacher: During my first position as kapellmeister in Gelsenkirchen, I was asked whether I would like to assist Christoph von Dohnányi in the production of Der ferne Klang by Schreker. In those days, as far as I can remember, I had never heard any of Schreker’s music, although I was familiar with his name. But when Dohnányi walked out two weeks before the première in Hamburg owing to disagreements with the director, I stepped in, and so the work is extremely important to me; it was really the beginning of my career.

You performed the opera almost 20 years later in Zurich.

Metzmacher: Sometimes when you return to a piece like that, you say to yourself: “You were so euphoric back then and that feeling cannot be recreated.” However, Der ferne Klang actually interested me even more the second time around than when I first conducted it.

Schreker’s operas have an almost multimedia approach. In the second act of Der ferne Klang, you experience the incredible feeling that you are in the middle of a film. There are four or five different sources of sound on stage, positioned all over the place, at the top, in the orchestra pit, at the back – you can put them wherever you choose. The listeners should feel as though they are in the midst of the action.

Somebody told me later that Schreker’s father was one of the very first photographers. This means that Schreker had always come into contact with visual concepts; for example, zoom, wide angle, various perspectives and wandering camera. And the longer I think about Schreker, the more I believe that this is the essential element of his modernity: as an opera composer he widened the horizon to such an extent that there is no longer the situation in which everything comes from the front; it comes from different sides – listeners are drawn into the performance, as if they are in a cinema.

Schreker’s reception is unfortunately typical of many composers of his day. On the one hand, his music was conceived from a modern perspective, but he was the most frequently performed opera composer of his generation. So he was caught between two stools.

Metzmacher: Schreker represents a development that was cut short after the war. I would even say that this kind of music went directly to Hollywood – which in the case of Korngold is clearly recognisable. However, it also has to do with the fact that this kind of opera, together with the relevant music, increasingly moved in the direction of film. But of course, film was more suited to this territory than opera. Many of the functions that had been the responsibility of opera for many centuries were taken over by film: dealing with current issues, listening and seeing concurrently, the all-embracing effect on observer and listener.

Schreker was undoubtedly one of the last composers of this generation. A new aesthetic developed after the war. His personal fate as a “degenerate” artist in Berlin, who was driven out of office in 1933, attempted to emigrate and then died in 1934, is an additional factor. Like many others, he was simply forgotten – passed over. The Nazis did a good job on him.

Schreker was very frequently defined via his sound – what is so special about his sound?

Metzmacher: Schreker composes distant, siren-like sounds which can be heard in almost every one of his works. They are sounds that are still new and unknown. Der ferne Klang is so special because we are confronted with an opera about music. Somebody is looking for a “new sound”, although I think that this sound is symbolic of many things. It can be interpreted in various ways: it was once said that “der Ferne” – the distance – can be read in the genitive; in other words, it is the sound of the distance, and not the sound that is distant. And so, a sound that is far away, hardly audible and very quiet – I think that always really fascinated him. Even though Schreker’s music is of an entirely tonal conception, the base note no longer provides as much stability as before. You could compare Schreker with Richard Strauss, for example with his Elektra, which is wildly atonal in some places. But during the opera, the bass always remains rock solid and provides stability. It is different in Schreker’s harmonic language: the bass provides little stability. Furthermore, Schreker’s work is not necessarily bitonal, but he does place two functional chords on top of each other within one key. He therefore creates a harmonic situation in which it is extremely difficult to recognise what exactly is intended. Everything is in limbo – there are signs of disintegration. Although Schreker does not go quite as far as other composers, he heads in a similar direction.

Schreker is comparable to Gustav Mahler in that he also used “lower” and “higher” music in one work. Although there is a certain amount of nostalgia which constantly accompanies Mahler and plays no part in Schreker’s music.

Metzmacher: With Schreker, the focus is on longing and not nostalgia. In Der ferne Klang we also encounter an elegant Venetian brothel. In Die Gezeichneten it is the “isle of passion” off the coast of Genoa. Schreker describes this place of longing, a place that has nothing dirty about it, but is fascinating because things are permitted there that are usually not permitted. It is all about freedom, passion, sensuality, but not in connection with anything disreputable. Schreker describes places of longing that are visited by people because they wish to experience pleasure, in the best sense. In the second act of Christophorus, one of his last compositions, there is a similar scene. Here, the different sources of sound are not only distributed around the room, but the music adopts several layers – not only two, but up to five. If it were not performed in a place such as an opera house that is so static – I am referring to the stalls and fixed seating – then from a musical perspective, in the second act of Der ferne Klang the listeners should be at the centre, with the music played around them. That is the actual idea behind Schreker’s music. It is the very modern idea of spatial music, similar to today’s Dolby Surround.

Could it be said that Schreker approached the highest form of radicalism in his language, in the limits which he set himself?

Metzmacher: I’m not sure whether Schreker set himself limits.

For instance, the limit of tonality.

Metzmacher: That is true; he didn’t really go beyond that. It would have been interesting to see which path he would have pursued. But perhaps you are right, perhaps he entirely consciously only went as far as a certain limit, and no further. But which composer ever went beyond his limits? There are only very few.

Could it be said that Schreker paved the way for works such as Wozzeck and Lulu, purely thematically, by previously performing works on stage such as Die Gezeichneten, those who are branded by life?

Metzmacher: That is certainly one way of looking at it. I believe that there is greater similarity between Schreker and Lulu than between Schreker and Wozzeck. It is definitely true that Schreker was one of the first to put completely ordinary people in everyday life on stage.

And also deformed people …

Metzmacher: Yes, them as well. Although Zemlinsky did the same thing in Der Zwerg.

What are the pitfalls, hurdles and dangers when you conduct Schreker’s music?

Metzmacher: Well, you must definitely keep a clear head – although that isn’t a danger, it is an absolute necessity. I believe there is music that is disappointing if it is only played clearly.

It is different with Schreker. Apart from the fact that the complex layers must be held together, precision is a precondition of performing his music. The composition already has its own inherent freedom; it has been included by Schreker in the compositional process, in the same way as the rubato. And if you don’t achieve precision, then the music could almost seem arbitrary.

The vagueness, this indistinguishable quality of the composition, must be communicated as clearly as possible. This can create a floating sensation that is very important both for the harmony and the rhythm of the music. The sounds must be balanced. For example, in the morning after the Nachtstück in Der ferne Klang, when the birds begin to sing – he went even further than Messiaen there. The orchestral sounds are incredible.

Something that greatly fascinated Alban Berg …

Metzmacher: … who – unsurprisingly – prepared the piano reduction of Der ferne Klang. It is, however, not always possible to use words and explanations to define things that we find important in music. Many qualities simply lie much deeper. And that in turn would explain why this kind of music, with its unconscious nature, was treated with the utmost care after the war, as it was clearly suspicious. The composers did not want anything to escape them; they wanted to know exactly what they were writing. And that undoubtedly provoked the desire for a series of numbers which could be referred to. Everything had a proper order – and Schreker’s music is naturally completely incompatible with that concept.

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler

Wolfgang Rihm presented an introduction to Arnold Schönberg’s Variations op. 31 at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.

Listen to a recording of the talk here (in German). The music was performed by the Ensemble Modern Orchestra under Peter Eötvös.

Translated excerpts from the talk

 “Schönberg wrote these variations for orchestra in 1928. At that time, the art world was permeated by classicistic ideals. Some music represents historical models – ‘rehashes’ them, according to its opponents. Schönberg was not unaffected by this. He responded to the trends that were typical of the era in his characteristic, highly individual way.

Variations for orchestra do not actually have a long tradition. The prototype was probably Brahms’ Haydn Variations or perhaps the finale of Symphony No. 4, a chaconne. In Schönberg’s circle, there were very strong links to this late work by Brahms. Anton Webern’s opus 1, Passacaglia, reflects these styles of composition very precisely. But that came before these orchestral variations. Max Reger wrote great cycles of variations for orchestra, always with a fugue. And there is a very popular piece in the English-speaking world, which is a true masterpiece – namely Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations – which Schönberg also studied in depth. I recently discovered a notebook in which Schönberg had played around with Elgar’s theme. That must have been during his American period.

So he definitely had the piece in mind. But opus 31 is about variations – not on a theme supplied by someone else but, as in Elgar’s case, on a theme written by the composer himself.

It is a twelve-tone piece, something that can still make people shiver today. They envisage something that explodes immediately when it comes into contact with air or water …

What does ‘twelve-tone’ actually mean? To Schönberg, it never meant a list of tones that had to be counted off and added to the score. Instead, he saw them as themes, as structures, as musical forms.

Looking at this row now, with its transformations – retrograde, inversion, retrograde inversion – it sounds complicated, but it’s child’s play really. One simply keeps on rearranging elements on a flat surface. For Schönberg, however, it was never merely a game of abstract symbols – it always involved flesh and blood and nerves. Just the way in which he invented a row was true composition. I haven’t changed anything. I have only added fermatas. The structure is basically that of a song:

The second part answers the first. This makes it a little musical form. It is not just an idea; it is actually already like a little invention. These were thematic forms. When played from the end to the beginning – in other words in retrograde – the row sounds as follows:

It is almost Bach-like in style. And the inversion:

And from this inversion comes the retrograde inversion:

Something can be done with this. But, as always in art, it doesn’t mean anything yet. In the right hands, it can become art. It is the same with scales. Mozart made something of them. But Dittersdorf? In other words, a row can be transformed into music or into something dull. (…)

The theme is a structure with manifold substructures, a lovely piece of music which offers many options. It has a drive for change in it. It soon begins varying itself as the articulation becomes eloquent, then ever more eloquent and ever more expressive. This now serves as the basis for a sequence of nine variations.

Taking the work as a whole, with its introduction, theme, variations and finale, it also has twelve parts. It is therefore clearly a musical form based on numbers.

Any music can be expressed in numbers – even Mozart. It doesn’t mean that working with numbers automatically results in music. But Schönberg always proved the contrary, with everything he produced in such a seemingly intellectual way. In the 1920s and ’30s, discussions revolved around whether Schönberg was merely an ‘intellectual musician’ who only continued something that his emotional and artistic energy had set free in the first place.

Of course, inventing a system is ultimately a conservative act, psychologically speaking. One is trying to preserve something. By inventing a system, Schönberg firstly wanted to counter all the animosity that had accused him of caprice – wanted to reassure people that everything was being done correctly. It was the law that prevailed.

On the other hand, he wanted to further codify the state of freedom which he had achieved around 1909 or 1910 – in other words, working totally chromatically and freely without being bound by keys. He wanted to make it subject to a law, as a language, and thereby to save or preserve it. The fact that this can lead to problems is not our concern at present – but is something we should remember.

I am someone who doesn’t really think much of introductions to art, because I believe that art cannot ultimately be understood in the sense of a puzzle where the solution can suddenly be found. Art is not a crossword puzzle. Art is not suddenly revealed by adding or explaining something. The best approach is to play a piece twice and then it generally explains itself. (…)

Elegant waltz tone

Today, there is a lot of talk about networking. People say they can get from A to B at the speed of light. One only has to press a button and whole realms of opportunities open up. But what is the point of that? It is only relevant in any kind of way to someone who has an overview, who is able to organise things, who has an aesthetic overview with respect to art.”

Rihm then played the opening bars of the variations. He sees them as character variations, as shown by his comments. The start of the first variation demonstrates “nervous counterpoint”. The second variation has a canon form with a “very chamber music-like tone”, while the third variation, which responds, is “definitely to be understood as a derivation from a baroque suite, a variation with a dotted rhythm.”

The fourth variation, on the other hand, expresses the elegant tone of a waltz – “albeit with a broken tone, very Viennese, very ‘Schrammel’-like … with great elegance.”

The fifth variation has “a symphonic tone in a varying sense: the developed variation is an element that conveys something. Schönberg is thus familiar with these forms of development from tiny parts and the development of large structures.”

The sixth variation is classic chamber music: “The chamber music parts always stand in contrast to the orchestral developments. The seventh variation is dominated by a very elegant bassoon part, which plays around with the theme. The whole thing is playful, light and bright.”

In contrast to this lightness, the eighth variation consists of “rhythmic, hard, powerful music. Instrumented almost clashingly, as though armed.”

“Then comes the greatest possible contrast – the ninth variation consists of solos, and is very transparent. There is almost a shadow of a Mahler-style march. This variation builds up at the end and makes way for the finale. Why didn’t Schönberg write a fugue in the tradition of Reger? He didn’t write one because polyphony is in evidence from the beginning. An atmosphere of methodical polyphony pervades the entire piece. The polyphonic sound does not need to be highlighted again by a fugue. The whole piece is polyphonic and the finale references the ‘master of polyphony’ at the very beginning: Bach.

The Bach monogram originates in the row, but not directly. It is constantly present in the row through semitones – somehow it is always there, but never mentioned directly. And then suddenly it is mentioned directly. Just as the introduction gradually presents parts of the theme, the whole cycle of variations gradually moves towards this B-A-C-H (B flat-A-C-B in English notation) as though it has already been heard the whole time. But it is not heard before. There seem to be hints of it, but it first appears high up and flickering and then on all different levels.

Stretto-like finale

B-A-C-H (B flat-A-C-B) therefore appears in several places and is no longer contained within a cycle of variations. Instead, it introduces a symphonic movement which is structured with varying parts like a type of sequence. The principle, however, is that the fast element becomes ever faster and the slow chamber music element ever slower and ever rich. Throughout the whole of the finale, the fast element becomes stretto-like and the slow element increasingly polyphonic. Building up, releasing. Building up, releasing. A rippling motion, which pervades the whole movement.

After the motion, there is a sudden pause that builds up like a wall of sound. And, after this wall, comes the greatest contrast of all – the gentlest part of the whole piece: an adagio, which introduces the final stretto, in which the theme is present on many different levels, and which shows the whole piece in a different light, as though looking back.

There you find the twelve tones of the theme in inverse order. It is simply there, but is answered or rather accompanied: by the cor anglais, among other instruments, which plays with the theme in ever new forms. A wonderful creation.

In the harp part, we can hear the B-A-C-H theme again, but transposed. It is a moment of tranquillity before the final storm, a stretto, which seems to summarise everything. The final recapitulation is a chord, a closing chord formation, during which one has the feeling that all the energy that came before and the whole development of the theme seem to be bundled into the one chord, creating a symbolic moment.”

“Sometimes you discover yourself”

Mr. Boulez, for just a brief moment, at the beginning of the 1950s, it seemed that serial methods were asking to be extended across every element of composition. This represented the thrilling possibility that a new musical system might be found, but there was also the anxiety that music’s creation would become as automated as heavy industry – allowing masterpieces to be made without a master, merely by the hammer of technology. But this sort of total organisation proved to be impossible – luckily so, one might say. It was shortly after this discussion that you composed Le Marteau sans maître, which was premièred exactly 55 years ago here in Baden-Baden. Thinking back to when you began working on this composition: did you want to use Le Marteau to demonstrate that spontaneity and system can indeed coexist?

Boulez: The fact is that when I composed the structures beforehand, I was totally responsible for that – because I wanted the composer to be anonymous. The composer was just a transmitter and nothing else. But very early on, I became aware of the fact that this was entirely impossible. It is possible in some cases, only some extreme cases, but not always; you cannot base a composition on that idea. But I did not want to go back to the twelve-tone system, because I found the twelve-tone system impossible as a way of constraining the available possibilities. So therefore, I began to develop a system in which freedom was possible, and I conquered my own freedom not only regarding the twelve-tone system, but also with regard to the general possibility of composing purely with a system. And therefore, Le marteau – even from the vantage point of 50 years later – was for me a beginning of sorts … the beginning of a conquest, of freedom.

Le Marteau appeared to be a link between two seemingly incompatible experiences: the strictly constructivist musical thinking of the German and Viennese school as mediated by Webern, and what one might call the more ornamental elements of French music, especially of Debussy and Messiaen. Would you agree with this?

Boulez: Yes, I agree with the view that I attempted to unite two parts of the musical world which had previously been incompatible – and had even regarded each other with a sort of distance. I don’t think that Schönberg was very … not friendly to, but I mean: in agreement with Debussy’s point of view, which he certainly found to be too free. Nor do I think that Webern or even Berg were particular admirers of Debussy. They thought: too free, not constructive enough. And I suppose that for me, on the contrary, the constructivism of the three Viennese was occasionally a bit of a burden, and I thought that the inventiveness and ingenuity, the spontaneity of a Debussy were very necessary sometimes. You really cannot just be constructive all the time; you have to be descriptive, as well. And I suppose that’s the sort of combination between constructivism and spontaneity which I found to be very important.

Was this your approach from the beginning, attempting to strike a balance between these two?

Boulez: Well, I suppose if you look at my second piano sonata, certainly it was constructed, totally, but there was also this element of rapture …

Was it originally your intention to find a balance between these two schools?

Boulez: Yes, between the spontaneity of the one and the constructivity of the other. I really think that there was a balance to be established. And I was attracted to both sides. I must admit that sometimes, of course, the music of Debussy is very light. I won’t deny that. Sometimes, I say. In his major works, however, certainly not – these are as deep as can possibly be. And the constructivism of the Viennese School, on the other hand, can also sometimes be viewed as burdensome. Therefore, you have to work with this constructivism in such a way that you are also free from it – and I suppose that’s the liaison between constructivism on the one hand and spontaneity on the other. For me, these are the two elements of a musician.

Le Marteau was praised highly for a new sound appearing in new music. What sound did you have in mind when you started?

Boulez: Well, at the time I was very interested in other cultures and I listened to quite a lot of non-European music: Balinese music, African music, Japanese traditional music, Chinese opera and so on. I was similarly interested in the sounds contained in such music, and I do think that each civilization has its own sound. Bali, for instance, has a kind of metallic sonority. This sonority goes with their music, which is expressed not only by the pitches, but by the way the pitches are produced – and that’s via metal. And if you go to Africa, for instance, wood is one of the main sound-producing materials, and in that case the sound consists not only of the pitch but also of the sound of the wood. And so on and so forth. Therefore, yes: for me, remaining in the tradition of the Viennese School and the European school was too much, and I wanted to have another world. And I am generally very sensitive to sound. I think that sound should be a very important element of music, and not just something you “add” superficially afterwards. You therefore hear a different sound in my work – in the Improvisations sur Mallarmé, for instance. And in the works that followed, up to the most recent ones like sur Incises (which is unlike any other sound), you have forefathers. Let’s take Stravinsky’s Les noces, for instance: this is a forefather of the sound of sur Incises, but when I add the percussion, which is very important, and the harps, then the sound is totally different. And this sound harkens back to Bali and to the African sphere. And it is not at all of the European sphere. And that, for me, is very important, that we absorb other cultures: not only in terms of musical content, but also in terms of the way they are transmitted – and hence, in terms of sound.

This brings to mind Debussy, who was immensely influenced by the World Exhibition in Paris and the music which he discovered there.

Boulez: Certainly. But in his case, some of his work was influenced quite generally by the musical content, and some of these works were more superficial, with the pentatonic scale and so on. I like the world of Debussy when it’s his own world – influenced by the outside, but still his own world.

You mentioned sur Incises: you use steel drums there, but not for exotic reasons if I understand you correctly.

Boulez: No, I like the sound of steel drums because of their innate possibilities: first in terms of the sound itself, but also because when you do a crescendo, or a very strong sforzato, you have a resonance which is very interesting in and of itself, because the sound is so modified that it ends up being practically another sound. And I like this transformation. If you play a sforzato on a grand piano, there’s not that much change to the actual sound. But with the steel drums you have a modification of the sound which sometimes even approaches electronic sounds – putting it closer to an electronic sound than to the sound of a normal acoustic instrument.

Speaking of the use of the voice in Mallarmé, Salvatore Sciarrino has remarked that you’re one of the few composers to possess the key to music theatre – namely, a vocal style that is entirely your own. If you agree: is this style related to your understanding of how lyrics function in contemporary music?

Boulez: Well, that depends. Of course, with the voice, you have two possibilities. You express the text directly, or you take the text as it is but extract from it the possibilities you want to extract. And you can destroy the text, too – in a positive sense, if I may say so. And in Mallarmé, especially, more so than in Le marteau, I worked with what I’ll call the subtext. So, how many syllables? Eight. The number eight becomes very important, because the verse is composed of eight syllables. Rhyming is important, as well – whether you can transmit the rhymes via the structure. In the Second Improvisation on Mallarmé I do that very quickly. The first strophe is styled as a melodic line with a lot of ornaments. The second set of four verses I find to be syllabic, entirely syllabic. And then, when I come to the third set with its alternating rhymes, I constantly alternate the syllabic method of setting the text with the more melodic method. So in my musical structure I reflect the structure of Mallarmé’s verses. What’s interesting to me is not only the poetic aspect, but also the structural aspect of the poetry. And when some poet like Mallarmé is so interested in the structure of the verse and of the sonnet, which are quite strict, then it’s interesting to take that and to bring it into the musical content.

You are no longer interested in composing or orchestrating lyrics, this being merely “lyrics and music”?

Boulez: Well, if you take simply the meaning of the poem, you miss quite a lot of the relationship which you can establish with the text. For me, it’s important to establish not only a poetic relationship and a relationship of meaning, as I put it, but also a structural relationship.

Coming back to Le Marteau: apart from revising the instrumentation immediately after having composed it, you have left it alone – which is absolutely unusual for you. It is as if you recognize the special status of Le Marteau. Would you agree?

Boulez: Yes, certainly, it was a period where a long-held doubt had passed. Without doubt, you finish – and with doubt, you have a tendency never to finish. And that’s what moved me to refrain from touching certain works again. But there are some works which are unfinished not because I gave up, but because the reflection on the content of the work, on the structure of the work, was not very clear to me. Therefore I do return to works, but there are also some works which I don’t touch again – Derive II, for instance, I will not touch again. It’s finished because I worked on it for quite a few years, and then I discovered of way of structuring, of composing the work which was totally different than what I had done up to that point, a sort of narrative aspect of the work. It was then that I saw that this narration was finished, and that I could not add anything – the addition would have been totally artificial. There other works which I want to finish, and some other works which I don’t want to finish. You know, I have a relationship with my work which is very sentimental … yes, certainly.

Which work would you love to finish?

Boulez: Oh, I would especially like to finish Éclat/Multiples. That’s one of the works which is almost finished, and, you know, I have practically twice the length of the work as I play it now, and therefore I would like to finish because the concept of the end is already there. Similarly, the concept of the end of Derive II was also already there fifty years ago, but it was too soon: so I composed it, and knowing that I would compose a long development in between, well, I jumped to the end – certainly, because the end was already there. And sometimes you think of the end long before the rest of the piece. And therefore I keep it in reserve. 

Speaking of Derive II, it was preceded by Derive. And there, as in many works, you used the Sacher hexachord. Can you say something about how you found this chord and why it became so important for you?

Boulez: Well, I did not discover the chord myself – the series of six pitches. That was given to me for a homage to Paul Sacher for his 70^th birthday. For this I wrote Messagesquisse, which was very short, because it was meant to be played in a concert for which a great many composers had written very short works. So it was a short occasional piece. And it was while working on this piece that I finally discovered all of this chord’s possibilities. In my composing, process is an important aspect. So I look and have some quite spontaneous reactions. After that, I look at what I’ve done, and I say: but with this material, I could do far more. And so it went with the Sacher material. I noticed progressively, while I was working on it, that there were possibilities I’d never used before. And those are in sketches. Because when I have such ideas or make such deductions, I write them down immediately, or as immediately as I can. Doing so is difficult sometimes, so one often ends up doing so after a delay. But I mean, that's spontaneity, I would like to say. And that remains – hence the name Derive, because it remains there, unused, and it’s derived from things I have already written. And so Derive I, now – we’re still speaking of Derive I – is derived from the material I used for Répons, and I still have a lot of material I wrote for Répons which is unused. And if you go to the Sacher Foundation, you can see this material. It’s not kilos’ worth, but there are many pages containing material which was used quite a lot after having been determined and found. So that’s my way of composing.

So can we  say that you found out only coincidentally that the potential of the Sacher chord is that immense?

Boulez: That was not completely by chance, but I used this material like I would use any other material. I mean by this that the point was not to make reference to Paul Sacher each time – certainly not, although sur Incises is dedicated to him. But I did not really write sur Incises just to dedicate it to him – I wrote it because the material was there, and because I asked myself what I would do with this material. I am very practical, so I don’t like to invent something which gets lost. It’s simply that.

When we look at the characters of Derive I and Derive II: although they come from the same material, they are totally different…

Boulez: They do come from the same material, but they are totally different because the first – Derive I – was improvised, practically speaking. Sir William Glock, who was head of music at the BBC, engaged me for that broadcaster, and he was also head of a festival. And since he was about to leave this festival, the musicians – who knew that I was very close to him – requested an homage. It was just a short, last-minute piece. I remember being in Los Angeles, performing a series of concerts and working between the rehearsals so that I could send the score at the last minute. And I think that in another Derive, I will certainly use the scheme of Derive I, but in a more complex manner; I already have Derive III in my head, and I hope I will have the time to finish it.

There is a quotation of Gustav Mahler according to which he said: “the material composed him.” Would you agree with that regarding Derive II?

Boulez: Yes, definitely. I think that if you have an interesting and productive relationship with the material, the material certainly will compose for you. But you must know how it is composed. And I find it wonderful to think of it such that the material in fact composes with you, and you compose with the material. It’s an exchange. Because to me, this is just another way of expressing the idea of deduction. You have material. What do you do with it? It’s not just spontaneity that is important, but the question of what you do with this spontaneity! And you invent in a sort of hyper-spontaneity – that’s the real difficulty of composing. So if you look, for instance, at pieces which are in some way “derived” – such as Number Two of my Notations – and compare the length of the original piece and the final score then the work is ten times longer and the material is exposed much more forcefully than it was in the small piano piece. And thus you are confronted: I particularly like the experience of being confronted with material you invented sixty years ago, and you say: yes, I recognize this material, I composed it, that’s my material. But I did nothing with it at the time … so what can I do with it now? And I suppose that’s the question that Wagner also asked himself when he was composing Gotterdämmerung. He must’ve thought: what can I do with material I invented for Rheingold? Twenty years passed in between. So you’ll understand how I found that very striking when I conducted the Ring in Bayreuth. To see, to conduct the Ring from beginning to end – you finish with Götterdämmerung, and two days later you begin again with Rheingold. And you see the immense difference between two pieces – especially between Rheingold and Götterdämmerung … he could not possibly have composed that 20 years sooner! And the way he reflected on himself – it was something that really struck me when I conducted the Ring.

But the interesting thing about the Notations is that you had forgotten that these pieces existed.

Boulez: I had not really forgotten – it all comes back spontaneously, after all. So I remembered them, and the fact that I’d composed them, that’s for sure … you never completely forget things like that. But I didn’t really remember the text. And when I saw the text, I said: oh, that's interesting. And I generally didn’t want to have the earlier works I’d composed viewed as “my” works. But these I did. I thought to myself: they’re very simple, they’re naïve, but they involved a process which I do not find uninteresting. On the contrary, I do find such ideas interesting, and I desire to magnify them.

But is it true that they were somehow lost, and that someone found them?

Boulez: They were. The manuscript got lost, and then it got lost again. I studied together with a composer named Serge Nigg, and I had not seen him for quite a while. It was around the time when I returned from my six years in New York that I received a letter from him to the effect that the radio wanted to organise a broadcast on the early students of Messiaen. They wanted to use the pieces those students had composed while studying, and Nigg asked me if I would allow it. I said yes in principle, but I didn’t have a manuscript and wanted to see one – I told him that if he would send me a manuscript or a photocopy thereof, I would say yes or no. So he sent me a photocopy of the manuscript, and I said: yes, you can. I was a student of Messiaen when I wrote that, and it was perfectly justified to use it as an example. And later on he told me – or I learned, I don’t know through what source – that the manuscript got lost again after he sent it. I myself didn’t have to send it back, of course, because I didn’t see the manuscript, only the photocopy. And when they went to put it back in the library at the radio, they couldn’t find it. So it was lost and then lost again.

You once told me that with these Notations you wanted to make “fun” of twelve-tone composition.

Boulez: Yes, because with Leibowitz, the academism of his analysis and so on was unbearable to me, and in a funny way particularly unbearable after having experienced Messiaen. While I did not agree with all that Messiaen was doing, at least he was inventive. And he had his own world. But Leibowitz, that was just kind of salt on nothing; it was so dry and so unimaginative, only one-to-twelve, twelve-to-one, six-to-one, one-to-seven and so on … it was dreadful. And so I said to myself, well, I can do this too. So I did twelve pieces of twelve bars each, and each piece begins with one, with two, with three, with four and so on. I called that my system, but it doesn’t sound like it. It just didn’t. But the pieces were not fun. They were just spontaneous pieces, because I composed them within two or three days – I don't remember exactly. It was just before Christmas of ’45.

Do you remember where you composed them?

Boulez: Where? In Paris, yes … where I was living at the time.

And you never thought that their potential was so strong?

Boulez: No. No, because once I came upon some sketch or other, and I put it in the Improvisation sur Mallarmé, as a kind of remembrance. And that was it. And I didn’t have such luck with another piece which was likewise interesting to me. After my second piano sonata, I wrote a symphony concertante for piano and orchestra. I didn’t orchestrate it right away. And then I went to Cologne to see Stockhausen at the studio there, and there was this Putzfrau who cleaned the room … and the piece disappeared – totally. I hadn’t even sketched it, nothing, and I remember only one bar. That’s not enough, not even for Derive.

But to me, it seems that Notations demonstrates your distance from any kind of dogmatism. Would you agree?

Boulez: Yes. Yes, because it’s strongly organized, but it’s free. In none of the works that I compose do I actually look for it, but … if there is an accident – I mean, something which makes me take another route which I did not foresee – then I like it, and I just continue along this “byway”. There’s the Mahler quotation again, “the material composes for you.” And you have to react to what the material proposes to you, which you have not seen before. And therefore, as I said, this kind of exchange between the material and you is very important. And it’s in this sense that the Notations were important.

Could we say that Notations for orchestra is a kind of  sur Notations? 

Boulez: Yes, it’s exactly that. Exactly that, and I like these superior opportunities; it’s like you’re an archaeologist discovering a civilization – down, down and down. And then sometimes you discover yourself, progressively, just like archaeologists discover an old civilization.

Even if it’s not so common for a composer to speak about his own emotions while composing: are there moments of great refreshment when you discover a new dimension in your own work?

Boulez: Yes, certainly. I like this, because sometimes you are confronted with material, and you discover the solution very quickly. That can happen because you are oriented and have been working in that direction. But sometimes you are confronted with material where you just say “what can I do?” – and you sit there with it in front of you, finding absolutely no solutions that are interesting or worth it. And when you do discover a solution, you’re happy and you run with it, certainly. And there are some Notations where I have precise ideas about what I want to do, but have not yet found a way in which to do so, to work with the material in a way that is satisfying to me. But it remains in my head. And sometimes you’re not thinking about it, but rather about something else – perhaps you’re even studying another score, not your own – and suddenly you say “ah!” Now that’s the direction in which you have to go. You know, every moment in your life, if you are creative or in the creative process, can be fruitful. But you have to take the opportunity. And composing is also a matter of seeing the opportunity where other people see nothing. It’s exactly that.

How will you proceed with the Notations?

Boulez:  Well, I am finishing Number Eight for the moment – I have an order in mind. I have finished Number Five in short score, I have to finish Number Eight, I have Number Seven, which I want to modify (there are some questions of balance), and then I will do Six and then the next four pieces – which are longer than the other ones. Number Eight is quite long. And maybe after the last four, it will once again be shorter. I suppose so. That’s my idea for the time being, at least.

I’d like to come back to Derive II. Daniel Barenboim introduced the piece when he conducted it in Berlin, and in his introduction he used sonata-form terms such as “coda”, “reprise” and so on. What advice would you give a listener on how to approach this complex music?

Boulez: They have to make their own analysis, and that’s complex. I know I indicated the form which I had in mind. But, you know, I’m not fervent about the form I discovered or used there, because I think the form is stronger than you are – certainly in terms of what you can do until about halfway through the work. You have strict forms, strict rhythmical forms and canonic forms and so on – whatever you want to call them. They are strict forms, or obbligato forms, which are then interrupted more and more by free forms. And you feel that: “A-B-A-B-A-B-A” … it’s always the same alternation, with the interruptions at the beginning being extremely short. They’re barely to be noticed, and then the interruptions grow progressively longer and longer until they become more important than the text itself. After that, things get more complex. I can’t really explain it … again you have the rhythmical structures of the first half, which are very strict. But despite this strictness, they are freer than in the first half. So you have a kind of balance between both halves, and then there’s a long coda. That was how I operated there.

On Incises and sur Incises. You once said that you learned from Gustav Mahler how to construct long forms.

Boulez: Yes.

And especially in sur Incises. Could you explain it?

Boulez: Well, I was always struck by the fact that musicians in general, even including the twelve-tone composers, were tending to compose in smaller forms – even if they were writing things like a symphony, with four movements. The form was already there. But even with Debussy, with La mer, one could say that he only used three patterns – with the scherzo in the middle, and a finale, a rondeau more or less, at the end. And that I didn’t like. What I do like is narration: you tell a story – an abstract story, of course, I don’t use sur Incises to describe the sea or anything like that. But it’s still narration. And continuity means not consisting of small bits, but having the elements always there – albeit with variations, making them very differentiated. You cannot compose a long work if you don’t have material that is richer than the material you would use for a small piece. And therefore, in sur Incises, there is material – the first page provides half of the piece, as a matter of fact, because the material is very simple. You have resonant material and quick material. And the process is to mix both of them or not to mix them: at the beginning they are not mixed, and throughout the second half of the piece they are. And then the object is always finding a way to have the dialogue between quick and resonant, that being the material – it plays its novelty each time, and you recognise it, more or less. And that’s a way of composing for me, and I actually do that now – maybe with the orchestration, or notation. I mean, the next Notations. Therefore they are longer, because the story to be told is longer. It’s simply that.

How did you choose the instrumentation for sur Incises? Is it because Bartók had already written something for two pianos and percussion, and Stravinsky something for four pianos?

Boulez: So three pianos puts it in the middle, yes ... but seriously, I must say that I was always quite struck by both works. The Bartók was rarely performed back when I first heard it – I think that was in ’45 or so – very rarely performed. And I remember that it was two Hungarian pianists. The two percussionists were French; perhaps they couldn’t bring along their percussionists, I’m not sure exactly why. And then there was also a conductor for the piece. They had met something like one day before to rehearse, and it simply cannot be performed just like that. The world première, in Basel, was not conducted – that I know. So the performance that I heard was a rather haphazard one. But I also remember that the sonority was very, very surprising to me. Les Noces, on the other hand, I heard quite a lot and Messiaen was also very fond of it. He was also quite fond of Bartók’s music for two pianos, and thus I’ve known these two pieces for quite a long time. They were part of my culture, practically.

Therefore, when my desire arose to transform Incises into sur Incises – sur Incises was further the last minute. I did not begin with the title, believe me. There was a kind of foundation in Italy which was organising a competition, a piano competition. Pollini was in the jury, as was Berio. And I thought that I might compose a piece for Pollini, a concertante piece for piano and orchestra – or piano and group, I didn’t know exactly. And then when I began to really deal with the material – then I thought: no, that’s not really the way to do it. I would like a piano, a piano with a first shadow and a second shadow. With the piano in the middle, giving his material to both sides. Symmetrical, although this symmetry was more complex than I’m indicating now. At the beginning, however, it wasn’t complex at all. Now at the beginning I wanted to have a sonority to enrich the piano’s sonority, really also to treble the sonority of the piano or repeat the sonority of the piano. So I added the harps, three harps. And then I started on the marimba, because the marimba begins to introduce the quick thematic material. Finally I said to myself that if I have a marimba, I also need a vibraphone for the high register. And then the second vibraphone came at the last minute, because I could not find another instrument in the percussion section capable of matching the vibraphone and the marimba. So I had the vibraphone there, and then I went on to add steel drums, tympani, chimes … and that’s how the percussion is set up: one player on instruments which are totally chromatic, and one on instruments which are, let's say, specialized. So, it came progressively, while I was composing – that was necessary, that was necessary, that was necessary – and I ultimately ended up with three pianos, three harps and three percussionists.

But the pianos remained the principal instruments?

Boulez: The pianos remained the principal instruments, yes. But the other ones grow more and more important as the piece progresses – the sonority of the harp, especially. Not for the quicker movements, of course; there they simply underline the sorority. But in the resonant movements, the harps are certainly very important.

And the harps are extremely powerful, unexpectedly powerful in terms of sound, it seems to me.

Boulez: The harps are very powerful. I don’t like harps the way the French composers handle them – you know, always very gracefully. I remember being on tour with Jean-Louis Barrault and hearing music in the Andes – it was Quito, or somewhere in Colombia … I don’t remember, one of these. And we were listening to music played by peasants, on small Andean harps. And these peasants produced a kind of very strong sonority on their instruments; they were really eating into the strings. And this kind of sonority stuck with me, remaining in my ears, and I think it was then that I knew that that is the way I want harps to sound. Harps can be very delicate, but they can be also very strong. And we have a harpist in the Ensemble who is perfect for that, Frédérique Cambreling – she has a very strong approach to the harp. I like that.

Does the character of the instrument – such as the harp – influence your material, how you invent it?

Boulez: Yes, certainly, because I could not have the harps competing with the piano. They can do accents, they can do long tenuto, so they have their own possible material. But I know that they cannot, for instance, compete with the speed of the piano. So I use the various instruments to achieve specific goals, and I try to expand their raison d’être, but I know that it would be absurd to try hiding things where doing so would require constant damping of their sonorities – it’s just not possible to do that.

But the sound-world you created is absolutely unique. Did you have it exactly this way beforehand, in your ears?

Boulez: No … well, yes. I gradually knew more and more while I was composing, so even before I needed a performance, I knew better and better what I wanted. For sure. At the beginning it was simply a kind of echo of the piano, and by the end they were participating in the sonority. And at the very end they are every bit as important as the piano, because the chords they have are very strong in the middle, and then you hear that middle register more strongly than even the extreme power of the piano, for sure. So no, I became better and better informed by myself about the possibilities I had with this ensemble.

Incises is a very short piece, and sur Incises is one of your longest. Have you been surprised by yourself, by how long it became?

Boulez: Yes, I was surprised; although it really wasn’t surprising, since it was my tendency during that period to get rid of short forms and go for long forms. So I was ready to organise a long form, for sure. And it was the same for Derive II – I wanted to make a long statement.

Will you be proceeding in this direction in upcoming ensemble works?

Boulez: I suppose that now, for me, the ideal would be to compose a work with long moments and very short moments. And for a long time now, I have been thinking about trying to find contrast within a piece itself – to have strong moments, very long, and to have light, concentrated moments … I once said, when I was asked that question, that it was like marrying Bruckner with Webern.

How did your conducting of Bruckner influence your point of view on the long form?

Boulez: That was very important. I like his harmonic writing, which supports long development – at the end of the slow movement of the 9^th, for instance (when the melodic line repeats and it’s very large). But this is less important to me than the segments which are there, because for me, the segments are too visible. But that’s not only a point of view – it’s a difference of centuries, not a difference of personalities. And I find that if the segments are too visible, you miss the point. And that's what’s so interesting about the great moments in Mahler: I was very, very struck by the way he handles form – which is with movements, of course, but what I mean is how those movements are put together. I conducted the 7^th Symphony recently in Chicago, replacing Riccardo Muti. I had not performed it in five years, so while it was not new, it was once again striking to me. And the last movement is indicative for the cohesion of the whole. I find that if you take the right tempo and properly relate the tempi between the various movements, then it is indeed very coherent. You must really have a kind of coherency in the tempi, and then it goes right along. Otherwise it’s by bits and pieces, and that’s certainly not what you want – at least I wouldn’t imagine it is.

Mahler spoke about the flexibility of the tempi, and its importance in making a performance really vivid.

Boulez: Yes, the relations between the tempi really are important; that’s what I call narration. You tell the story. And to tell the story, you have to be very careful with moments of tension, as well as with moments where the tension is not that strong, and so on. That’s important. And even in the first movement, you have to be very careful with the relationships between tempi. But of course that’s my problem, at this point.

But Bruckner’s influence is surprising, since Bruckner wasn't part of French musical culture – at least not while you were growing up.

Boulez: Bruckner wasn’t even performed at all, and even as late as when Karajan brought along a symphony by Bruckner when he came on tour with the Berlin Philharmonic, the reaction in some of the papers was, “why did he bring this monster?” And even Messiaen – though you can imagine that there are some very strange ties between the universe of Messiaen and the universe of Bruckner – Messiaen said, “oh, Bruckner, that’s a lot of bridges.” Now in French, when you have a transition from one section to another one, you call that a bridge. And for Messiaen, Bruckner’s music was simply one of transition after transition after transition. And that’s very strange, and the French are indeed sometimes complete strangers to ways of musical thinking that are not native to their own practice. Even in the case of Mahler: now he’s very popular, but France was that last country to rediscover him. England and the States were much more open to the influence of Mahler that the French were.

Due to Barbirolli and to Bernstein, I would say …

Boulez: Yes, exactly … and Mitropolous before them. And Bruno Walter, because Walter was in exile beginning in 1936 or thereabouts. He didn’t perform everything – he especially preferred Nos. 1, 4, 9, although I really don’t remember this exactly. But he performed Mahler symphonies quite regularly. And they actually became popular with Bernstein. I was told by the manager of the New York Philharmonic that when Mitropolous played the Fifth or the Seventh, for example, the hall was half-empty by the end. And, Dimitri Mitropolous – that’s the 1950s … ’51, ’52.

Maybe that was the late Toscanini influence – because Toscanini was absolutely not a fan of Mahler’s success in New York, so he worked against him.

Boulez: Yes, well, yes, at the beginning, but you know, Toscanini was active until the ’60s … or the late ’50s, anyway. And he didn’t perform anything of this kind. But he also definitely had no relationship at all with the Austrian school. He played Brahms – I think that’s the latest Austrian music he played, the last step he took. Otherwise no, certainly not. But he did perform Debussy – who was born practically the same time, you know … he was always performing La mer. He didn’t perform the later works, such as Jeux. He performed La mer, and also the Nocturnes. And he performed Pelléas at first at La Scala – and at that time it was very new, especially compared with Puccini, or certainly with Leoncavallo … sure...

How would you describe how your approach to Mahler has changed over the years?

Boulez: Well, it didn’t really have to change because it didn’t even exist at first. And I remember, maybe the first – not only maybe! It was indeed the first symphony of Mahler I heard, the 4^th Symphony – performed by Paul Kletzki, because at that time French conductors never performed Mahler’s symphonies. And of course, the first time when I heard it, the sleigh bells – I said, "what’s that?” or something. And I remember still being … not in doubt, but not convinced, either, when I heard the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. I remember hearing that in Hamburg. I was there for a performance, for “Das neue Werk”, and there was a concert. I don’t remember exactly who conducted, but I was at first not at all impressed. I said to myself, oh, well that’s old ham or something. It’s quite strange because I simply didn’t know it, and my development really went backwards through time. I got to know Berg, I got to know Webern, I got to know Schönberg … and then I got to know Mahler. It was totally reversed – because there was no tradition whatsoever.

Since you have known Mahler, has his music influenced your understanding of the Second Viennese School?

Boulez: No, because I knew the Viennese School right from the very beginning; I really began to become acquainted with the Viennese School in ’45 – the spring of ’45, as I recall. And I certainly had my own reaction to it. But you also mustn’t forget that this music was performed horribly back then, horribly; I mean, it was either no tradition at all with people who knew how to conduct, or people who meant well but who were not good conductors, that’s how it was. I remember seeing performances by Leibowitz or by Max Deutsch which were absolutely terrible, where you were asking yourself “what were they doing?” I remember a performance of Opus 29 by Schönberg … a-di-ya-da-ta-ta, a-ya-ta-ta…. but it was: aaaa-daaa-daaaa-daaa-taaa-taaa – can you imagine? That sort of performance lasted three quarters of an hour … it was horrible. And I also remember a performance of the Symphony Op. 21; believe me, the beginning with the horns, it was … something! But you cannot blame them, because they were amateur conductors. But the problem was that they were saying, “we have the truth!”

And you saw the route they were taking, and you thought that the truth was something different?

Boulez: Yes! Well, because when you read a score, you know more or less how it should sound.

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler
Transcript: Christopher Roth
Baden-Baden; December 2010
© Universal Edition

In 1961, the New York Times wrote “above all, it is the music that makes this opera memorable.  ... although the harmonies, rhythms and melodies are ‘conventional’, the way Martinu employs them is often imaginative and creative.”

The Teatro Massimo in Palermo is showing a new production of the London version (29 Apr–8 May. Asher Fisch conducts.

Tondo for orchestra (world première 1 May 2011, cond. Christoph Eschenbach), Celluloid for solo bassoon (7 June), and Der Riß durch den Tag, a monodrama for narrator and ensemble, written to a text by Durs Grünbein. Actor Bruno Ganz joins the Staatskapelle as the narrator for the world première on 4 June.

• More modern studies for clarinet complementing the established favourite: 40 Modern Studies
• Musical styles vary from modern Classical through to Jazz and Rock
• For elementary to more advanced levels (1–8)
• Ideal for developing musicianship and technique by way of accessible but challenging material
• These studies make attractive performance pieces and are suitable for examination purposes

38 More Modern Studies for clarinet solo
by James Rae
UE 21554

Already available:

40 Modern Studies for clarinet solo
by James Rae
This well-known volume familiarises developing clarinettists with the various rhythms and phrasings encountered in modern music. Many of these pieces may be found on examination syllabuses worldwide.
UE 19735

The Norwegian premières of Adam’s Lament and the Stabat Mater take place on 19 April in Oslo. Tönu Kaljuste conducts the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir. Also on the programme is Pärt’s Mein Weg for 14 strings and percussion.

The new edition is published in four volumes, the content of each volume being compatible with the volumes of the previous edition.

Volume 3 of the new edition comprises the 17 sonatas Hob. XVI:21–32 and Hob. XVI:35–39 contained in Vol. 2 of the previous Wiener Urtext edition, including popular works for music lessons such as Hob. XVI:27, 35 and 37. In the Notes on Interpretation, Robert D. Levin explains important aspects of Haydn’s performance practice and, with the help of numerous examples, shows possibilities to embellish the pauses frequently used
by Haydn.

Joseph Haydn
The Complete Piano Sonatas
Edition: Christa Landon / Ulrich Leisinger
Notes on Interpretation: Robert D. Levin
Fingerings: Oswald Jonas
Grade 3–4

Volume 1 UT 50256 (previously Vol. 1a UT 50026)
Volume 2 UT 50257 (previously Vol. 1b UT 50027)
Volume 3 UT 50258 (previously Vol. 2 UT 50028)
Volume 4 UT 50259 (previously Vol. 3 UT 50029)

Have you already seen our brochure about Haydn’s Piano Sonatas?

In an interview with Jörg Königsdorf, Rihm said:

“The original idea, however, goes back a long way: Das Lesen der Schrift refers to the process of decoding, gradually becoming aware of textual relationships encapsulated in symbols. It can also be a metaphor of decoding a musical text.”

Come and see us in Hall 3.1, Stand C42.

Read more on our live blog.

Dyade

Coupling the violin with the double bass (Roman Patkoló) might seem surprising, but it was these two instruments, with their extreme contrasts, that challenged Rihm to bring them together on the same, stormy level. At times, Rihm swaps their roles, where the violin plays deeper than the double bass. He becomes her and she becomes him. Anything is possible …

An intensive experience for performers and audience alike. The world première is on 3 April at the Avery Fisher Hall in New York, as part of the New York Philharmonic’s Chamber Music series.

Librettist Stephen Pruslin describes Harrison Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy (1967) as a kind of prototype of the opera form:

“What we were not trying to do was to write a children’s opera that would faithfully represent the traditional Punch and Judy puppet-play. Anyone who has witnessed that entertainment in its usual fairground or seaside setting will know what there is very little an operatic version could add to the cogent and forceful original. No, what we wanted was something quite different: a stylized and ritualistic drama for adults that used all of the imaginary, the trappings and paraphernalia of the original as a departure-point.” (Pruslin)

The Grand Théâtre de Genève is now showing the joint production by the English National Opera and the Young Vic (première 1 April). Wen-Pin Chien conducts the Ensemble Contrechamps.

After the world première at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1968 Andrew Porter wrote in the Financial Times:

“Punch and Judy succeeds because Pruslin commands an effective theatre language and because Birtwistle’s concise, delicate ear has imagined beautiful and eloquent sounds and set them in strong meaningful forms. It becomes not just an opera of ideas – though of course it is that – but also an individual dramatic-musical poem, intricate and intellectual, rewarding the closest attention one can bring, yet at the same time simple and direct, strong as a nursery rhyme in its essential statements.”

“The most exiting part of the programme was the world première of Hamlet – a ‘drama for trombone and orchestra’ by Victoria Borisova-Ollas and Elias Faingersh, conducted by Lars Rudolfsson.

The orchestral part was tight and full of feeling, but at the same time perfect for Hamlet, played by Elias Faingersh, to take a central role.

The solo trombone part made a very strong impression. With the help of live electronics (loop-mashines) Faingersh recorded layer after layer of polyphonic structure, to which he then performed.

In the ghost scene he created a fascinating atmosphere with winding melodies, old-fashioned church bells and sounds of waves, culminating in a powerful explosion.”

(Pressespiegel, Tobias Lund, on the world première)

Five of the six late-romantic songs were then re-arranged in the early 20s by Hanns Eisler, Erwin Stein and Arnold Schönberg himself for the instrumentation of the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen.

The new version by Klaus Simon of the songs 3, 4 and 6 completes the cycle and expands the Schönbergian ensemble with the horn and bassoon.

The work can be heard in Zurich on 28 March with the Collegium Novum Zurich conducted by Daniel Klajner. The soloist is Olivia Stahn.

Neither is joined on the program by the world première of John Zorn’s La Machine de l’être and Schönberg’s Erwartung. Conducted by George Manahan, Monodramas debuts on 25 March with five additional performances until 8 April.

(Text courtesy of our US representative EAM)

Watch the New York City Opera's trailer here:

The New York City Opera has also published a fascinating Video Blog, with a psychoanalist's view of Erwartung, conductor George Manahan talking about Schönberg, Jim Jarmusch and Larry Pine reading Neither, and Christopher Rothko talking about his father and Feldman.

• Step-by-step learning in playing and reading, starting from absolute scratch, presented in clearly structured stages
• Also suitable for the 'returning beginner'
• Performance pieces in a range of styles from classical and folk through to jazz
• A helpful and stimulating CD with aural development exercises and recordings of the pieces, many with 'play-along' tracks
• Warm-up exercises
• Even more performance pieces for each stage which are available as FREE DOWNLOADS from the Universal Edition website together with further advice, information and music theory

Play the Piano
Level 1
UE 21561

Mike Cornick is an established composer, arranger and teacher with over fifty publications available from Universal Edition: recreational pieces, tutors, examination pieces, piano material for all ages and levels, solos, duets and even six hands at one piano. In his thoughtful attention to the educational aspects of his composing, Mike always provides material that appeals and inspires. Mike is best known for his jazz piano publications from which many selections have been made for graded piano examinations.

UNIVERSAL EDITION and WIENER URTEXT EDITION in Hall 3.1, Stand C42

April 6 to April 9, 2011
open from 9.00 am to 6.00 pm

Trade visitors: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Public day: Saturday

We look forward to welcoming you to our stand!

The story of the City of Mahagonny, in which a person with no money has no value and where only things that can be bought are seen as real, harks back to the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah from the Old Testament. However, in Mahagonny the all-destroying catastrophe and the fall of the city are not some kind of ‘punishment’ from outside, but rather an ‘error’ in the system itself. Mahagonny couldn’t be more topical in this day and age.

The new production by Katharina Thalbach at the City Opera in Cologne took to the stage on 23 March, conducted by Lothar Koenigs, for a run of 10 performances.

The Threepenny Opera in Paris

The Comédie-Française is without a doubt one of the most important theatre stages in the world. Theatre and opera director Laurent Pelly, who designs his productions as if they were themselves musical scores, mixing the tragic with the burlesque, has now turned his hand to one of the masterpieces of the 20th century. The Threepenny Opera runs from 2 April until 19 July 2011.

The musical realisation of Ovid's story is based on the mirroring between the two figures Narcissus and Echo. A sensitive play on very quite and delicate sounds as well as on the earthly organic timbres of the viola yields a chamber music setting of a very intimate kind.

One of the “most exciting and intelligent music theatre productions” of the last two years, is how the Salzburger Nachrichten described the performance, which “succeeds via an unorthodox instrumentation and spatial acoustic effects of magical forcefulness.”

The next performances are on 23 and 25 March at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid, as part of the Operadhoy 2011 festival.

Responding to a request by the violinist Elena Denisova, the composer Franz Hummel has now arranged the work for violin and orchestra: “Zemlinsky’s Serenade for violin and piano in five movements, a charming early work that may owe its existence to the recollection of an encounter with the bluntly critical Johannes Brahms, radiates so much youthful esprit that I had to agree with Elena Denisova when she told me it deserved to be orchestrated.”

The world première of Zemlinsky’s first “Violin Concerto” will take place on 20 March at the Musikverein in Vienna. Alexei Kornienko conducts the Vienna Concert-Verein with Elena Denisova as soloist.

The timbre of the violin is exceptionally well suited to evoking in sound the musical riches of Argentina's past, as well as to making the fascination and glamour of Gardel's tango music come alive again. Some of his most well-known pieces are featured in this volume and Diego Collatti's arrangements retain all the captivating, magnetic charms we associate with the Tango. Suitable for violinists of middle-grade standard and beyond.

Pieces include: Melodia de arraval, Mi Buenos Aires querido, Volver,
Por Una Cabeza and El dia que me quieras

Carlos Gardel
Tango - Violin & Piano
arranged by Diego Collatti
UE 35013

already available:

Carlos Gardel
Tango Violin Duets
arranged by Diego Collatti
UE 33651

Clytus Gottwald has now transcribed Alma Mahler’s 3 frühe Lieder for a cappella choir. The world première will be given on 26 Feb at Gaisburg church in Stuttgart at a special concert by the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart under Marcus Creed.

Our Mahler video interviews are now also going to be shown at various important concert halls. The Vienna Konzerthaus will be showing them from the 14th May until the 21st June as part of the International Musikfest, and the Gewandhaus in Leipzig as part of their international Mahler-Festival (17–29 May). The Munich Theatre Museum’s Mahler exhibition will also be showing the interviews.

Please contact us if you are interested in using the interviews at your institution.
promotion@universaledition.com

On 17 February 2011 Cerha celebrates his 85th birthday, and a number of events are paying tribute to a composer whose unfailing efforts have led to such a variety in the national music scene in Austria, not to mention his immeasurable influence as a teacher and a critical supporter of the arts.

The Vienna Konzerthaus is honouring the composer on the evening of his birthday with a concert of central works from his oeuvre. Those participating in the musical tribute include the ensemble co-founded by Friedrich Cerha, die reihe, and HK Gruber as chansonnier.

On the same evening, Austrian Radio OE1 is presenting a Long Night of Friedrich Cerha.

A video interview with Friedrich Cerha made by the Austrian broadcaster TW1 will be online soon.

The Salzburg Biennale in March also celebrates the life and music of Friedrich Cerha. As part of their Zoom series it presents concerts and a reading on 12 March at the Mozarteum University. The music is provided by Klangforum Wien together with the baritone Martin Winkler, performing Eine Art Chansons (A kind of Chansons). The composer will receive the Music Prize of the State of Salzburg on 13 March.

Finally, the Wien Modern Festival is also featuring the music of Friedrich Cerha this year. The opening concert of the festival on 28 October will present all seven parts of Cerha’s orchestral magnum opus Spiegel. This April, a new recording of the full work was released by Kairos. “A work that definitely needs to be staged”, wrote Gerhard R. Koch in the FAZ.

MIXED ENSEMBLE OPTION
Whilst written specifically for the instrument and addressing the challenges beginner flautists would encounter, a special section is included of four pieces which are "key friendly" for beginners on most instruments and are therefore ideal pieces for mixed instrumental groups. These same four pieces will appear in subsequent books for other instruments in the Debut series.

For the Pupil …
- Instrumental parts with fun cartoons for inspiration
- A CD providing stimulating demonstration performances for listening as well as  "minus-one" accompaniments for playing along at home
- Cartoons can be DOWNLOADED FOR FREE for
colouring in

For the Teacher …
- Sheet music for selected piano accompaniments can be DOWNLOADED FOR FREE - just follow the web link provided in the pupil's book!
- If preferred, the accompaniments of all of the 12 pieces can be purchased in one printed and bound volume

James Rae
Flute Debut mit CD
UE 21528

Flute Debut - Piano Accompaniments
UE 21529

Already available:

James Rae
Clarinet Debut mit CD
UE 21526

Clarinet Debut - Piano Accompaniments
UE 21527

Nicolai Podgornov's Romantic Piano Album Vol. 2
Includes: Night and Day & Comptine d’un autre été
UE 34983

Weitere Bestseller von Nicolai Podgornov:

Nicolai Podgornov's Romantic Piano Album Vol. 1
Includes: Can you feel the Love Tonight? & La Valse d'Amélie
UE 33937

Nicolai Podgornov's Piano Album
UE 33649

Nicolai Podgornov's Graded Pieces for Piano
Volume 1 - Easy
UE 34551

Volume 2 - Intermediate
UE 34552

Volume 3 - Advanced
UE 34553

Muerte sin fin was commissioned by the Dutch Flamenco Biennale 2011, Nieuw-Ensemble and Spain’s Ministry of Culture. The world première will be held in Amsterdam on 30 Jan. The approximately 30-minute piece was composed for flamenco singer, orchestra and electronics.

Alpha Centauri for ensemble and electronics can be heard for the first time in Madrid on 31 Jan, performed by the Ensemble Espai Sonor.

Instrumentation:
Parts 1 and 2 in C: Violin, Flute, Recorder, Oboe, etc.
Parts 1 and 2 in B: Clarinet, Trumpet, Saxophone
Guitar, Paino, Bass (Guitar, Electronic Bass, Cello, Keyboard)
Percussion ad lib.
Voice ad lib.

World Music Russia
Includes: Kalinka, Schwarze Augen, Der Mond scheint, Steppe rundherum, Valenky
(I. Malachovsky)
UE 31524

World Music Israel
Includes: Hava Nagila, Dror yikra, Ahavat Hadessa, Tchiribim Tchiribom, Shalosh bnot hapele
(T. Brauer & E. Meiri)
UE 31523

World Music Argentina
Includes: Tango, Vals Criollo, Milonga, Zamba, Chacarera
(D. Colatti)
UE 31528

World Music Ireland
Includes: The Foggy Dew, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Wild Rover, Dany Boy, The Connaughtman's Rambles
(R. Graf)
UE 31522

World Music Klezmer
Includes: The Silver Crown, Ma Yofes, Stoliner Nign, Dorohoi Khusidl, Romanian Hora
(Y. Strom)
UE 31529

World Music Brazil
Includes: Choro da Luz, Quebrasamba, Maracatu, Cantigas de Roda und Coco
(J. S. Neto)
UE 31526

World Music Cuba
Includes: Bolero, Son Montuno, Cha Cha, Mambo, Rumba
(R. Graf & R. Filz)
UE 31521

World Music Scotland
Includes: Scotland the Brave, My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, The Skye Boat Song, Mhairi's Wedding, 100 Pipers
(J. Rae)
UE 31525

World Music Madagascar
Includes: Apondo, O'Drakalo, Zahorava, Rabirina, Fianinana
(HAJAmadagascar & A. Schmidhofer)
UE 31527

World Music Junior America
Includes: Turkey in the Straw, Backwater Blues, Pine Apple Rag, Way Down upon the Swanee River
(J. Diermayer)
UE 32710 score with CD
UE 32711 set of parts

World Music Junior Christmas
Includes: O Tannenbaum, We Wish you a Merry Christmas, Silent Night, Jingle Bells
(R. Graf)
UE 32712 score with CD
UE 32713 set of parts

To celebrate their 25th anniversary, the Hagen Quartet will also be performing the world première of String Quartet No. 6 in Salzburg on 23 Jan – a piece commissioned by Salzburg’s Mozarteum Foundation, KölnMusik and the Wigmore Hall.

Listen now to the full interview. Available until 22 Jan.

Arnold Schönberg
Paintings
UE 26292

Have you already seen our Schönberg Mousepads?

Arnold Schönberg
Mousepad "Picture"
UE 80311

Arnold Schönberg
Mousepad "In the Garden"
UE 80312

Our individual Urtext editions containing facsimiles of Frédéric Chopin’s piano music have proved to be very popular. We are now offering a limited edition of the Wiener Urtext editions of the complete Nocturnes, the Preludes and the Etudes together with a facsimile of one of the works included.

These facsimiles give you a unique insight into the development of some of the most fascinating works by Chopin, in this his 200th anniversary year.

The Complete Etudes
+ facsimile for free Etude E major Op. 10/3
UT 50205

Nocturnes
+ facsimile for free Nocturne f minor Op. 55/1
UT 50065

24 Preludes Op. 28
+ facsimile for free Prelude D flat major Op. 28/15
UT 50005

Once again it has been a full and busy year here at UE. Here are some of the highlights from a year which saw 57 new works premièred:

Wolfgang Rihm’s new opera Dionysos was premièred at the Salzburg Festival, to overwhelming acclaim.

A Long Night of Jay Schwartz took place in Salzburg this summer, including the world première of Music for Orchestra II.

Johannes Maria Staud was a featured composer at the Wien Modern festival, where his Über trügerische Stadtpläne and On Comparative Meteorology II were given their world premières.

Arvo Pärt’s new work for choir and string orchestra, Adam’s Lament, was performed at the International Istanbul Music Festival, where he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Limited Approximations, Georg Friedrich Haas’ new work for six microtonally-tuned pianos, was performed at the Donaueschingen festival, where it was awarded the SWR SO Composition Prize.

Cristóbal Halffter conducted the world première of his new work for orchestra, Ritual, in Grafenegg.

Martin Fröst gave the first performance of Victoria Borisova-Ollas’ new clarinet concerto, Golden Dances of the Pharaohs, in Stockholm.

Vykintas Baltakas’ new work for orchestra, Scoria, was given its world première in Munich by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lucas Vis.

A new CD of music by Georges Lentz was recorded by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, conducted by Emilio Pomàrico.

As part of the Mahler in Manchester festival, Friedrich Cerha’s Like a Tragicomedy was performed alongside Mahler’s 3rd Symphony by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by HK Gruber.

In the same festival, the world première of Luke Bedford’s At Three and Two preceded Mahler’s 9th Symphony. Mark Elder conducted the Hallé Orchestra.

David Sawer’s highly acclaimed ballet Rumpelstiltskin continued its successful tour of the United Kingdom, finishing with two performances at the Spitalfields Festival in London by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

Mauricio Sotelo’s Cripta Colonia Güell for voices, choir, ensemble and electronics, was given its world première in Barcelona.

Alban Berg’s Lulu was performed in Copenhagen with the world première of the new third act by Eberhard Kloke.

Wolfgang Rihm: Verwandlungen
SWR Symphony Orchestra
Christian Arming, Matthias Pintscher
SCM Hänssler 093.263.000
Order online at Hänssler, Amazon

The Konzerthaus will officially commemorate the composer, whose music has always played a key role there, in concert on 16 Dec with an ‘Hommage à Luciano Berio’. The portrait concert will feature the soloists Alda Caiello, mezzo-soprano, Mario Caroli, fl, Garth Knox, vla, Krassimir Sterev, acc, Lukas Schiske, perc, Marino Formenti, pno and Studio Tempo Reale from Florence. The programme includes Quattro canzoni popolari, Sequenza I for flute, Momenti, Naturale su melodie siciliane, Sequenza XIII for accordion, Altra voce for alto flute, mezzo-soprano and live electronics, and Sonata.

The nominees for 2011 include:

In the category Best Opera Recording:

Alban Berg: Lulu
Antonio Pappano, conductor; Agneta Eichenholz, Jennifer Larmore, Klaus Florian Vogt & Michael Volle; David Groves, producer (Orchestra Of The Royal Opera House) – Opus Arte

In the category Best Choral Performance:

Frank Martin: Golgotha
Daniel Reuss, conductor (Judith Gauthier, Marianne Beate Kielland, Adrian Thompson, Mattijs Van De Woerd & Konstantin Wolff; Estonian National Symphony Orchestra; Cappella Amsterdam & Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir) – Harmonia Mundi

In the category Best Chamber Music Performance:

Arnold Schönberg: String Quartets Nos. 3 and 4
Fred Sherry String Quartet (Christopher Oldfather & Rolf Schulte) – Naxos

In the category Best Classical Contemporary Composition:

Arvo Pärt: Symphony No. 4
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Esa Pekka Salonen – ECM New Series

In the Newly Published Music Competition 2010 both a UE publication and a Wiener Urtext edition have been commended for making a considerable contribution to the flute repertoire.

Winner of the NFA Award 2010

Pedagogical Category
Tilmann Dehnhard
Jazz Studies
for flute, with CD
UE 33703

Flute and Keyboard Category
Carl Reinecke
Undine - Sonata for flute and piano
UT 50242

Winner of the NFA Award 2008

Flute Solo Category
Flute Project
for flute
UE 33661

Pedagogical Category
James Rae
Jazz Scale Studies
UE 21352

Winner of the NFA Award 2006

2 and more Flutes Category
Mary Karen Clardy
Classic Duets for Flute Vol. 2
UE 70078

Andris Nelsons	Josep Pons	Gustavo Dudamel
Riccardo Chailly	Manfred Honeck	Valery Gergiev

For a full list of all our Mahler video interviews, visit our Gustav Mahler Blog.

Jürg Henneberger conducts the piece's world première on 26 Nov.

The première of the Ballade No. 2, probably arranged for string orchestra towards the end of the 1930s, has now been scheduled: the Orchestra Nazionale Sinfonica della RAI Torino will perform on 19 Nov in Turin under Marco Angius, with Mario Caroli (flute) and Giuseppe La Licata (piano).

The award, with its prize money of SEK 25000, was presented to the composer on 12 November.

Three composers and five visual artists were selected to receive the £45,000 prize to support them at critical moments of their careers and enable their artistic development. This year's selected visual artists are Angela de la Cruz, Luke Fowler, Christina Mackie, Ben Rivers and Lindsay Seers. The composers are Anna Meredith, Jason Yarde and David Fennessy.

Since the first Awards for Artists in 1994, the scheme has supported over 90 individuals with total funding in excess of £3 million. Awards carry no obligations and are intended to allow recipients to work unhindered by financial constraint. They are made according to talent, promise and need.

David Fennessy's This is how it feels (Another Bolero) for orchestra is published by Universal Edition.

Listen to more music by David Fennessy

At the Donaueschingen Music Festival, Wolfgang Rihm spoke to the Dutch radio about the cuts:

“It is alarming to hear this news, as we all admire the musical culture of the Netherlands, and it is always astonishing to hear that of all people it is the conservative politicians who above all destroy cultural value. You would think that a Conservative would want to preserve something … When something is gone, it’s gone.

You can destroy an evolved structure, a mesh, a fabric, but it can never again be brought back to its former glory – that is, unless you have just as many years again. It is so short-sighted to scrap institutions and their performers in such a way for such a relatively modest amount of money.

I am appalled. Shocked.”

Listen to the full interview (in German).

Read more at the MCO website, where you can also take part in an online petition.

His work of many years on the reconstruction of Mahler’s 10^th Symphony was a valuable addition to UE’s Mahler catalogue. His reconstruction of the symphony, filling the gaps of the Cooke version with sensible insertions and intelligent suggestions in order to achieve the full Mahler sound, will remain an important item in a rich legacy. 

Sustained string tones are layered upon each other, and are then gradually replaced by rhythmically expanding piano parts including all imaginable beat tones. Woodwind and brass add strength and contrast with the string parts. The dynamics range from molto pianissimo to powerful forces of nature. “Melodies“ in the form of arias and intermezzi break with Haas’ usual layers of sound, glissandi and sequences of accelerandi/rallentandi, and lead to the concluding part of the piece. It is almost incredible to think that this kind of sound can be produced by acoustic instruments without electronic enhancement. 30 minutes of intense, intoxicating music, changing, gripping, fascinating. Haas shows us a fantastic example of his unique language and imagery.

With the prize, the orchestra also commits itself to performing the piece on future occasions.

Wien Modern, which is focusing extensively on Staud this year (29 Oct, RSO Wien, conductor: Peter Eötvös), will play host to the world première of Über trügerische Stadtpläne und die Versuchungen der Winternächte (Dichotomie II) – with its title inspired by Bruno Schulz – for string quartet and orchestra (5 Nov, RSO Wien, Arditti Quartet, conductor: Emilio Pomárico).

Lagrein, Sydenham Music and Vielleicht zunächst wirklich nur will be showcased in a portrait concert (10 Nov, Vienna Konzerthaus).

Pärt about his work:

The first impulse to write this work came from my spontaneous reaction to Paavo Järvi’s first-class interpretations of my work, which I had heard on one of his CDs. I called him immediately to tell him of my enthusiasm, and discovered that he was about to take on the new role as chief conductor of the Orchestre de Paris. I was filled with the irresistible urge to write something for this occasion, for his “new orchestra”. In the course of the telephone call it emerged that Paavo Järvi’s agreed. I immediately thought of Gustave Eiffel and his work, of an homage to a great architect. I was very happy to hear that the orchestra reacted positively to my idea.

A splendid book of illustrations of the plans and blueprints for the tower lay on my desk, captivating me. I was impressed and inspired in many different ways by Eiffel’s artistic vision, by his combination of sober rationality and elegance. From the perspective of a composer Eiffel’s tower has many features which are comparable to the structure of a piece of music – the connections between the structural elements, the transparency of the construction, and much more. Even stasis, such an important aspect of architecture, is also a key element of a piece of music.

As regards my work Silhouette, the piece came out short and light, like a dance, a waltz, something dizzying – perhaps like the winds which caress this pointed colossus.

Mauricio Sotelo:

One of the most important moments of my education was without a doubt the day when Luigi Nono showed me the details of the hanging model that Antonio Gaudi drafted for the construction of the church of Colonia Güell.

Luigi Nono spoke of overcoming the written word, revising oral traditions, a new way of approaching the material directly and cooperating with musicians (as the great architect worked with a small group of Catalan stonemasons). Finally, he also explained Gaudi’s anti-academic attitude to the creative process, similar to Nono’s own in the years before his death.

Last semester, I gave a series of seminars at the ESMUC as a visiting professor, and I started and ended the series with precisely this theme. Together with my students, I saw the mysterious church of Colonia Güell for the first time, with an intense rush of feelings. Even today, the church is a manifestation of a unique thought experiment and a universal example that Catalonia sets to the world.

Arthur F. Becker (od. Buhr?) was commissioned by the KlangForum Heidelberg. Hans Prinzhorn collected drawings by mentally ill patients at the Psychiatric University Clinic in Heidelberg up to the year 1921. Haas’ work refers to a sketch by the patient Arthur F. Becker; a sketch with an intricate, dense web of intertwined lines depicting a landscape. The threatening feeling, however, is created by the blank areas of the sketch. The world première will be held on 22 Oct with SCHOLA Heidelberg and ensemble aisthesis.

Cerha about his Viennese Kaleidoscope:
My familiarity with the music of the suburban Viennese establishment (also home in their day to Strauss and Lanner) dates back to the time when as a twelve-year-old I used to play second violin in a small ensemble at so-called “academies”, balls and other parties – waltzes, polkas, Viennese songs and numbers from operettas.  My Geschwandtner Tänze from 1938 were the first musical results of these experiences. When I began to be interested in folklore from outside Europe in the 1970s, and at the same time read with great pleasure the “Viennese proverbs” of my friend Ernst Kein, I was inspired to turn back to this folk music, which I had been carrying around with me since I was a small child, but had always ignored as a serious composer. So in 1980 – 1982 and 1983 – 85 I wrote my two song cycles for chansonnier and ensemble, which I called the 1st and 2nd Keintate. The title is a play on “cantata”, as in something to sing, and also the name of the lyricist Ernst Kein. The premiere of the 1st Keintate took place in 1983 at the “Metropol” – one of the aforementioned suburban establishments; the captivating chansonnier was HK Gruber, who has performed the pieces a number of times since then.

In 2006 my publisher suggested that I might put together the instrumental numbers to form a short cycle of their own, arranged for small orchestra. I liked the idea and did my best to keep some of the “typically Viennese” aural associations of the original in the concert suite, which I arranged for clarinets, horns, strings, button accordion and percussion. Because the suite seemed to need it, I also integrated two “Viennese songs”.

The musical models sometimes make reference to well-known melodies, but more often simply use the characteristic tone of Viennese folk music. All in all, I did not want to make fun of this music or use it as a “gag”; I took it as a model and then returned to it with a degree of alienation, exaggerating or specifically illustrating certain elements of the style.

Five pieces from the panopticum of this Viennese Kaleidoscope were performed on 25 October 2008 by HK Gruber and the Vienna Philharmonic at the Vienna Konzerthaus; the première of the whole cycle takes place in this concert in Manchester.

UE Music for Schools Catalogue includes:

• Music for ensembles – large or small, many with flexible instrumentation allowing for the ever-changing line up of instrumentalists
• Teaching material
• Operas and musicals
• Choral works from Richard Rodney Bennett to Arvo Pärt
• A selection of unusual solos and small ensemble works especially suitable for the school concert – a special selection for Christmas is also provided

Download PDF catalogue

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Tabula rasa – Special edition

In 1984, ECM brought a new sound into the musical world with the release of Arvo Pärt's "Tabula rasa", the first album on the label's New Series imprint. Now, on the occasion of Pärt's 75th birthday, this special edition with enclosed CD has been produced in collaboration with the composer's publisher, Universal Edition. It includes manuscript scores of "Tabula rasa" and "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten", published for the first time, and study scores of the album's four works. Rounding off the volume is a discography of Arvo Pärt's works on ECM with corresponding publishing details, as well as an essay by Paul Griffiths.

ECM New Series 1275
UE 35222
Euro 49.90 
Available from mid-September 2010

"I have been trying to create a non-linear work for a long time. It is not easy because we always perceive events in relation to time and space. It is like a pair of glasses that we look through to make sense of reality. I try to think of a SOUND, the “imaginary underlying sound of a piece”, which is rich, resonant, vibrant and displays different aspects of itself in turn. It is precisely this presentation that is typical of a linear form; this piece is a production which changes the perception of hearing and listening."

Vykintas Baltakas

The programme in Berlin will include the two long-time favourites Sinfonia and Folk Songs (London Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Daniel Harding), Coro (10–12 Sep, Berlin Philharmonic, conductor: Simon Rattle, who already presented the work in Birmingham), Voci (9 Sep, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conductor: Marek Janowski), Naturale, Kol od (13 Sep, musikFabrik, conductor: Peter Eötvös), Concerto (14 Sep, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, conductor: Kent Nagano) and Chemins I (16 Sep, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, conductor: Lothar Zagrosek). An impressive collection and a fantastic achievement!

The award to Wolfgang Rihm was suggested by director Luca Francesconi for music, and approved by the Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta. The award ceremony for the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement for Music will take place during the 54^th International Festival of Contemporary Music 30 September, 2010. In past years, the Music award has gone to Goffredo Petrassi (1994), Luciano Berio (1995), Friedrich Cerha (2006), Giacomo Manzoni (2007), Helmut Lachenmann (2008) and György Kurtág (2009).

“An extremely precocious talent”, states the motivation for the award, “Wolfgang Rihm has witnessed the great changes in almost 40 years of recent musical history, absorbing without ideological rigidity the most important developments of the era, themes that are as topical as ever. Rihm accepted the challenge of the most urgent expressive developments that exploded in the 1970s with the end of modernism, fighting with intellectual honesty and courage against the spectres of rational dogma and subsequently of post-modern cynicism; for instance, by reviving the lessons of Nono as of the early 1990s. Striving strongly towards a balance between expression and rigour, which is the most profound nucleus of the truest art. The music of Wolfgang Rihm is always rooted in the matter of sound, in rhythmic and harmonic force, with a lucid formal organisation often on a vast scale.”

Rihm’s first presence at the Biennale dates from 1981, for the significantly named “After the avant-garde” series. Another memorable occasion was the world premiere of In-Schrift for orchestra of 1995, performed in the basilica in Saint Mark’s square, for which the score was written, using orchestral instruments best able to exploit its acoustic possibilities.

Cerha responded to the award in his own inimitable and pithy way: 

"It's too late really. 50, 55 years ago, I was young and wasn't happy with the situation. I was confronted with animosity and icy rejection in Austria, as if all I wanted to do was destroy traditions. Now I am accepted and have already been awarded countless prizes and awards. The Salzburg Music Prize comes at a time in which I no longer need it. ... In defiance of all the decay of old age I have nevertheless kept my vanity, which now gives me satisfaction."

To celebrate the composer's 85th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the world première, the Paul Sacher Foundation and Universal Edition have now published the two original manuscripts of the score for the first time: the pencil draft and a fair copy in different coloured inks. These fine examples of high-quality reproductions are also the earliest evidence of Boulez's friendship with Paul Sacher. The composer presented the scores to Sacher in the early 1960s.

The facsimiles are prefaced by an introduction, which places the work in a historical and aesthetic context and takes a look at the compositional techniques used. It is illustrated by a selection of manuscripts from different stages of the creative process, as well as other related documents.

Pierre Boulez
Tombeau
Nr. 5 aus dem Zyklus "Pli selon pli"
for Soprano and Orchestra
UE 34972

This year celebrates Alban Berg’s 125th birthday and remembers the 75th anniversary of his death. His musical language and aesthetics are as relevant today as they have ever been.

Lulu is Berg’s second opera, but remained unfinished at his death, with only two of the three acts completed. The unfinished work was given its world première in Zurich in 1937. The Salzburg Festival is presenting the 3 act version of the opera including the third act as completed by Friedrich Cerha in 1978, in which the complete drama of Lulu’s rise and fall is told.

The première will be broadcast on Austrian Radio ORF1 on
Saturday 7 August at 19:30 (Vienna time).

Available in our online shop:

Lulu Piano Reduction Vol. I
Lulu Piano Reduction Vol. II
and others ...

One of her most powerful first impressions was encountering the sound of the Angelus bell of the Frauenkirche. This bell has also given its name to her orchestral work, which premièred in Munich on 8 Jun 2008 with the Münchner Philharmoniker under Sylvain Cambreling, and the structure of the composition traces the Angelus over the course of its daily cycle.

Valery Gergiev will conduct the Swedish première on 24 Aug. The Mariinsky Orchestra will perform at the Berwaldhallen in Stockholm.

The concert will be broadcast live on Swedish Radio SR P2.
Listen live

The première is complemented by a journey across the “continent of Rihm”, a series of concerts featuring 15 works by Rihm programmed by concert director Markus Hinterhäuser between 29 Jul and 22 Aug. The revival of the Poème dansé Tutuguri at the Felsenreitschule on the 29 Jul has already attracted considerable attention.

Other highlights: Quid est Deus (2 Aug, conducted by Sylvain Cambreling), ET LUX (7 Aug, the Hilliard Ensemble, Arditti Quartet), Gesungene Zeit (8 and 10 Aug, conductor Riccardo Chailly, Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin), Séraphin-Sphäre (9 Aug, Klangforum Wien), Jagden und Formen (10 and 11 Aug, choreographed by Sasha Waltz with Ensemble Modern), Musik für 3 Streicher (13 Aug, ensemble recherche) and Ernster Gesang (21 and 22 Aug, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach).

There is also a series of events entitled “the exegesis of Rihm”, providing further information and discussion.

The piano reduction of Rihm's Dionysos is now ready for you to browse: 

Over the past year we have asked the world’s most prominent conductors about their relationship to Mahler’s music. Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, Daniele Gatti, Zubin Mehta, Lorina Maazel and many more have told us of their very personal Mahler experiences. The results can be seen in our Mahler Blog, which now contains 20 exclusive video interviews. They give a vibrant impression of what Mahler can still mean to us today.

The awards ceremony included the world première of Adam’s Lament, Pärt’s new work for choir and string orchestra. The work emerged from a co-commission by two European Capitals of Culture – Istanbul 2010 and Tallinn 2011. Gül: “He is a truly exciting composer. It makes us excited that he dedicated his Adam’s Lament to Istanbul.”

400 children on stage at the Concertgebouw

On 24 May star violinists Janine Jansen and Aleksey Igudesman were joined by 400 children at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw to perform two pieces from Aleksey's new book Celtic & More Violin Duets. A memorable experience, both for musicians and the audience!

Aleksey Igudesman

Aleksey Igudesman was born in St. Petersburg and joined the Yehudi Menuhin School at the age of 12, studying violin and composition. From 1989 until 1998 he continued his studies in Vienna. Today he is internationally active as a soloist, composer, conductor and actor. His own works have been performed by renowned performers all over the world.

Igudesman Bestseller

Celtic & More
Violin Duets
UE 33652

Latin & More
Violin Duets
UE 33653

Klezmer & More
Violin Duets
UE 33650

Pigs Can Fly
with CD
UE 33938

The Catscratchbook
UE 33094

Style Workout
UE 33338

This year we also look forward to the première of a new work for ensemble at the Transit Festival in Belgium, and to the first performance Vykintas Baltakas of Scoria at Musica Viva in Munich, with the Munich RSO (24 Sep).

Cerha's Like a Tragicomedy has been written to accompany Mahler's Symphony No. 3. Bedford’s At Three and Two for winds, percussion and double basses will be performed before Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 on 27 May by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder. The concert will be broadcast on 31 May on BBC Radio 3.

The instrumentation is expanded by an eight-track soundtrack circling around the 19-piece ensemble, with sounds derived from a variety of metalworking machines (the Portuguese première is in Porto, 25 May, Remix Ensemble conducted by Emilio Pomàrico; electronics: Peter Böhm).

As Victoria Borisova-Ollas writes in the preface to her new clarinet concerto, Golden Dances of Pharaohs: “We know practically everything about daily habits of the Pharaohs, but there is an important part of this picture which is still missing: the sounds are not there. What were the timbres of their voices; the moods of their ritual songs? What was the music like when they danced?” Borisova-Ollas has now created her own personal answer to these questions which will be premièred on 6 May by Martin Fröst and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo.

Nana was written in 1932 and was to have been premièred in Mannheim the following year. Gurlitt was at this time at the zenith of his fame as an opera composer and conductor. It was not to be though, and shortly before the première the National Socialist censors banned the work as "culturally destructive" (as they did Gurlitt's other works). In 1939 he emigrated to Japan, where he enjoyed a productive opera and concert career.

Enrico Calesso conducts the new production by Michael Schulz. Stage design is by Dirk Becker. Opening night is 25 Apr.

See our Manfred Gurlitt page for more information about the composer, as well as his other operas Die Soldaten and Wozzeck.

Neun Bagatellen for string trio (world première: 24 Apr) was inspired by a suggestion by violinist Ernst Kovacic. In this piece, Cerha once again indulges in his love of the "gripping translation of the direct, spontaneous idea" - as in the orchestral works Momente and Instants. The programme in Witten also features Netzwerk-Fantasie (soloist: Marino Formenti, 24 Apr) and an excerpt from Eine Art Chansons (Klangforum Wien, 25 Apr).

On 14 Apr, Remix Ensemble will be performing Les Adieux for the first time in Porto/P.

During the Witten Festival a new work by Georg Friedrich Haas will also be given its world première. Ensemble Recherche performs AUS.WEG for eight instruments on 24 April.

We are pleased to announce the publication of our new Clarinet Bestsellers catalogue. Selected from our extensive and varied complete clarinet catalogue - here there is something for everyone - from the classics, music of the 20th century and contemporary music through to educational titles and music in lighter styles.

View the catalogue

UE Clarinet Bestsellers Catalogue includes:

• Classical Repertoire: Mozart, Haydn, Rossini, ...
• 20th Century Classics: Schönberg, Bartók, Weill, Satie, ...
• Contemporary Music: Boulez, Berio, Rihm, Stockhausen, ...
• Educational Music: Rae, Introducing the Clarinet, Jazz Zone, ...
• Lighter Styles: Celtic Clarinet Duets, Play it Cool, ...
• Jazz: William O. Smith
• Ensemble: Kodály, Mussorgsky, Weill
• World Music: Ireland, Klezmer, Brazil, ...

Download PDF catalogue

Download PDF price-list

Das Gehege also sees a staged performance in Hamburg (from 10 March, conducted by Simone Young). The one-act opera can also be seen in a concert performance in Cologne at the final concert of the MusikTriennale (16 May). The conductor is Markus Stenz, who also performs DEUS PASSUS (Cologne, 1 April).

Writing about Will Sound when the work premièred in 2006, the New York Times described the score as "kaleidoscopic, intensive, detailled". Wolfgang Rihm has now expanded the work. The revised version receives its first performance by Klangforum Wien in Witten on 23 April.

ET LUX (6 May) and Gegenstück (29 Apr) continue the series of national premières in Amsterdam. Schrift-Um-Schrift can be heard in Geneva (26 March).

Sir Roger Norrington conducts Verwandlung 3 (with a revised ending) in Stuttgart (20/21 April), Shanghai (1 May) and Beijing (8 May). The Czech Filharmonie under Hradec Králové take on Musik für Oboe und Orchester (11 March).

The Munich Biennale presents Sotto voce (Siegfried Mauser, pno) and Pol-Kolchis-Nucleus (2 May). The Wuppertal Opera perform Hans Neuenfels' staging of Proserpina (11 April). COLL'ARCO stretches the technical possibilities of the violin to their limits. Carolin Widmann performs the work in Baden-Baden, Mannheim and Freiburg (28 Feb-3 March).

10 minutes of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel can be heard in Martin Scorsese's new thriller Shutter Island. The film, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, has already displaced Avatar as the highest box office success in the USA.

Visit www.universaledition.com/mahler

Explore sample pages of SOUND FOUNDATIONS at www.universaledition.com/soundfoundations

SOUND FOUNDATIONS

A source of reference and a guide for aspiring composers

James Rae & Mike Cornick have, together, produced a practical and informative resource to meet the needs of developing composers. Both are well-established music educationalists and composers with a combined wealth of teaching experience.

SOUND FOUNDATIONS includes:

• The fundamentals of music theory, including time- and key-signatures, scales and a section to get you started in understanding harmony
• Explanation of the basics as well as many of the finer points of musical notation and the applications of music software
• A CD with over 100 recorded examples directly related to the text as well as two play-along tracks for jazz improvisation
• Specific tips on writing for the voice and the piano as well as a thorough survey of virtually every other instrument, including ranges and characteristics
• The meaning of foreign musical terms
• Adding dynamics, articulation and other essentials to your score
• More than 150 suggestions for further listening in a wide range of genres
• An extensive glossary of technical terms
• A range of inspiring compositional assignments