Helmut Lachenmann: Schwankungen am Rand, Mouvement (-von der Erstarrung), "…zwei Gefuhle…" Musik mit Leonardo

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Helmut Lachenmann: Schwankungen am Rand, Mouvement (-von der Erstarrung), "…zwei Gefuhle…" Musik mit Leonardo

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"Schwankungen am Rand, written between 1974 and 1975, is probably the most extreme example of Lachenmann's aesthetic amongst the works on this disc. This orchestral score, lasting a little over 25 minutes, is largely made up of brief, fragmentary motifs that never quite seem to cohere. The remarkable central section of the work explores an enormous variety of sounds created using a group of thunder sheets (this is an explicit homage to Lachenmann's teacher Luigi Nono, whose use of the thunder sheet in his Diario Polacco I had so astonished the younger composer). This work is probably the most conventionally difficult listening on the disc, and I don't think it is completely successful, but the constantly changing variety of unconventional sounds remains intriguing throughout.

By the time of Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung), a work for seventeen musicians, written in the early 1980s, Lachenmann's musical austerity had been somewhat softened by his ambivalent attitude to the music of the past. Accordingly, the sound of the ensemble here is somewhat more conventional (though extended techniques are still constantly in evidence) and the work even climaxes with a swaggering, over-the-top march that has more than a hint of tonality about it.

More hard-edged is zwei Gefühle, a 1992 setting of Leonardo da Vinci for two speakers and 22 players that was later incoporated into the composer's opera The Little Match Girl. The work opens with hard-edged, volcanic rumblings in the bass that match the uproar depicted in the text. A brief, fortissimo percussion figure accompanies a reduction in tension, though the work never settles down to anything that could be termed placid. The return of the percussion figure triggers an ambiguous conclusion to the work. Typical of Lachenmann is the atomisation of the text (which is treated syllabically and split between the two speakers, thus deliberately countering any hints of flowing narration); also typical are the fragmentary motifs that often seem on the brink of revelation without actually reaching it."

-Edward Wright, Amazon.com