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Schoenberg / Zimmermann / Kelterborn - Chamber Works | Guild GMCD7322

Schoenberg / Zimmermann / Kelterborn - Chamber Works

£11.78

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Label: Guild

Cat No: GMCD7322

Barcode: 0795754732221

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Chamber

Release Date: 1st September 2008

Contents

About

In September 1899, the 25-year-old Arnold Schoenberg drafted the first version, for string sextet – two violins, two violas and two cellos - of Verklärte Nacht, during a three-week holiday with Alexander von Zemlinsky (who married the composer’s sister soon afterwards). By that time, Schoenberg had already set two poems by Richard Dehmel and, for the new sextet, he turned again to Dehmel for inspiration, choosing a somewhat melodramatic, rather sentimental, poem entitled Weib und die Welt (Woman and the World).

Verklärte Nacht is unique in musical history, for it is the first known programmatic work to be written for a chamber group. The language Schoenberg employs in the piece pushes Wagnerian chromaticism towards new boundaries – it was completed about twenty years before Schoenberg evolved his theory of composition with twelve tones – and the expressive nature of the score is heightened (as the Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks argued) in its stringent quality by the very thinness of the chosen ensemble.

The leading contemporary Swiss composer Rudolf Kelterborn was born in Basle, where he later studied theory, composition and conducting. Besides being a prolific composer with a large and impressive series of works to his credit, Kelterborn has also enjoyed a successful career as a teacher in Switzerland and in Germany. From 1974-80 he was also head of music for Swiss-German Radio.

Présence: that is the thin layer of ice, on which one’s foot merely lingers until it breaks; but whilst the foot still seems to be resting for a split second, it is already breaking, this thin ice sheet, and only the certainty of the pack-ice remains; in front the view to the future, certain of the present of the cracking ice sheet starting over and over again, and the absurdity, which lies in the constant attempt to find one’s feet. Thus, ‘Présence’ appears as the present that links the past to the future.

Absolut Trio:
- Bettina Boller, violin
- Imke Frank, cello
- Stefka Perifanova, piano

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