Aribert Reimann

Started by Sean, December 03, 2007, 12:11:03 PM

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Sean

One of my few friends has been sending me CDs lately of this character's stuff- it's rather like Holliger or maybe Nono, or Stockhausen in languorous mode: it's serial or at least very expressionist if not Kafkaesque, and certainly written with complete disregard for the listener's tonal sensibilities, if not complete disregard for the listener altogether.

Piano concerto No.2 isn't too bad, glittery enough, though the voice and orchestra pieces Zykus and Kumi Ori with Fischer Dieskau could have been written by space aliens with totally different mental wiring, or maybe Egar Allen Poe, or Jackson Pollack. Fills in the picture though.


Don

Quote from: Sean on December 03, 2007, 12:11:03 PM
One of my few friends has been sending me CDs lately of this character's stuff- it's rather like Holliger or maybe Nono, or Stockhausen in languorous mode: it's serial or at least very expressionist if not Kafkaesque, and certainly written with complete disregard for the listener's tonal sensibilities, if not complete disregard for the listener altogether.


Listeners come in all sizes and shapes.  Which listeners are you referring to?

Sean

Well without going into inherent musical sensibilities, I guess I'm just saying it doesn't make any concessions to listeners used to tonal music.

lukeottevanger

Of course, this paints Reimann as a cold-blooded listener-hater, which is far from the truth. He's one of the most refined and celebrated lieder accompanists around, and his love of Schubert etc. shines through in his compositional reworkings and homages to them. I didn't find the two vocal works you mention 'alien' in the slightest - they seemed to me to be the perfect complement to the poetry they were setting, poetry, I might add, that it seems to me would be practically impossible to set using convention tonal means. For me they were very direct, dramatic and visceral, but particularly effective in their very original quieter moments - such as the passage for bass flute, alto flute, flute and piccolo which opens Zyklus.

(I'm using the past tense to describe my response to these piece, btw, because I've only listened to this disc once so far - by coincidence I ordered it a few weeks back)

Sean

Hi Luke, well included on the disc sent me was a piece of lieder called Die Pole sind in uns, the most interesting thing on it, some unusual sonorities. I take your points about those pieces but I certainly see them as a very tough listen and as musically difficult after repeated hearings as at first. As fantastical musing or vague background 'music' to the poems they might have some slight value but Reimann obviously has virtually no musical sense at all, and can only have prepared this in the academic equivalent of an asylum sufficiently cut off from reality. I'm playing devil's advocate, but the sense of cloistered indulgence and completely misguided high mindedness is inescapable. I see you probably know about Die Pole. Best wishes!

lukeottevanger

Quote from: Sean on December 04, 2007, 11:12:46 AM
Hi Luke, well included on the disc sent me was a piece of lieder called Die Pole sind in uns, the most interesting thing on it, some unusual sonorities. I take your points about those pieces but I certainly see them as a very tough listen and as musically difficult after repeated hearings as at first. As fantastical musing or vague background 'music' to the poems they might have some slight value but Reimann obviously has virtually no musical sense at all, and can only have prepared this in the academic equivalent of an asylum sufficiently cut off from reality. I'm playing devil's advocate, but the sense of cloistered indulgence and completely misguided high mindedness is inescapable. I see you probably know about Die Pole. Best wishes!

Yes, that's on the disc too. I don't feel strongly about this composer, Sean, as of his atonal stuff I've only heard this disc, and only once, as I said before (though I have downloaded tons more of his from the Avant Garde Project, and the little I've allowed myself to dip into has been very tempting.) But I do think saying that a man who in his 'other career' is recognised as one of the finest and most penetrating performers in an area of the tonal repertoire which requires the utmost musicality has 'virtually no musical sense' is a little gratuitous.

Sean


MDL

Reimann's opera Lear is hugely impressive, and the final scene, with its simple string threnody over chiming tam-tams, is immediately accessible. OK, the earlier stages of the opera are violently expressionistic, with clattering volleys of brass and percussion, and angular, declamatory vocal lines, but taken as a whole, Lear packs a tremendous punch. I have a recording of his Requiem on LP, but I haven't played that much.