On 11 June the world première of Friedrich Cerha’s Four Paraphrases for oboe, cello and piano will take place at the Ittinger Pfingstkonzerte.
Cerha on his new work:
“When I have previously used quotes in my work, they have often created allusions that only I can understand. In my Four Paraphrases for oboe, cello and piano, written to a request by Heinz Holliger for a specific programme, I have made my quotes clearly audible for everyone. It was appealing to me, by combining the originals with new elements, to show another side – in my opinion an unexpected side – of the original material.
In the first Paraphrase it is the B-minor Scherzo by Chopin, in the second the Rigoletto-arias by Verdi, in the third the well-known Humoresque by Dvorak, and in the fourth a mix of Johann Strauß, Offenbach, the Marseillaise, the Internationale and Lohengrin. Perhaps the recognition of something distorted within the banal can be a source of pleasure, although it is very clear to me that by their technically proximity to my chansons from the 1980s they amount to a borderline case within my oeuvre.”