JOHANNES KALITZKE Story Teller
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JOHANNES KALITZKE Story Teller . Figuren am Horizont Johannes Moser Ivana Pristašová Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin œnm . österreichisches ensemble für neue musik Johannes Kalitzke JOHANNES KALITZKE (*1959) Story Teller (2015/2016) Figuren am Horizont (2011) for cello and orchestra for violin solo and six instrumentalists 1 Schaukel 7 Skizze für ein unbewohnbares [See-Saw] 5:24 Haus [Sketch for an Uninhabitable House] 5:12 2 Eiserne Puppe [Iron Doll] 4:33 8 Brennende Uhr [Burning Clock] 4:22 3 Manhattan Butterfly 4:52 9 Gebet auf schiefer Ebene 4 Bett im Licht [Prayer on a Slipper Slope] 5:07 [Bed in the Light] 5:53 10 Travestia de Tristano 4:56 5 Ruinenfee [Fairy of the Ruin] 3:48 11 Skizze für ein Haus im Licht [Sketch for a House in the Light] 7:14 6 Panic Room 2:59 TT 54:19 2 1 – 6 Johannes Moser violoncello Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin Johannes Kalitzke conductor 7 – 11 Ivana Pristašová violin œnm . österreichisches ensemble für neue musik Vera Klug fl u t e Andreas Schablas clarinet Nora Skuta piano Arabella Hirner percussion Susanne von Gutzeit viola Peter Sigl violoncello 1 – 11 Johannes Kalitzke conductor Recording dates: 1 – 6 18 January 2017 7 – 11 9 May 2012 Recording venues: 1 – 6 Haus des Rundfunks Berlin, Großer Sendesaal 7 – 11 Mozarteum Salzburg, Solitär Recording supervisor: 1 – 6 Wolfgang Hoff 7 – 11 Nicole Brunner Engineers: 1 – 6 Nikolaus Löwe 7 – 11 Walter Sailer Mastering, Editing: 1 – 11 Johannes Kalitzke, Anne-Kristin Sölter 7 – 11 Nicole Brunner Final mastering: Christoph Amann Producers: Johannes Kalitzke, Andreas Karl Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes . Bote & Bock Graphic design: Alexander Kremmers (paladino media), cover based on Artwork by Enrique Fuentes ein Ensemble der 3 Johann Kalitzke © Stefan Fuhrer © Stefan 4 Image — Sound — Memory ric design along with its attendant sound stylistic elements, and musical allusions. locations, volumes, tone colours, or types And in the case of the works brought to- of motion? If one conceives of Kalitzke’s gether here, Kalitzke also works with ele- modus operandi in this sense, the com- ments from the traditional instrumental poser’s role could be compared with that concerto, linking his interest in the visual of someone viewing a picture: the observ- with the parameters and possibilities of a er, in observing, arranges a picture’s com- specific musical genre. ponents as a temporal sequence by fixing In few composers’ oeuvres does contem- his gaze on details, following objects’ con- This becomes particularly clear in the case plation of the most varied kinds of visual tours with his eyes, or relating colour val- of Story Teller for violoncello and orchestra media play as great a role as it does in the ues to one another – thereby entering into (2015/16). With his decision to musically oeuvre of Johannes Kalitzke. But it’s less a performative relationship with the im- juxtapose a solo cello with an orchestral the references to visual creative means, age space’s individual elements. The (fig- collective, one could say that Kalitzke re- genre-typical characteristics, and concrete urative) similarity in what Kalitzke does is sorted to a model that is itself character- visual motifs in the titles of works or move- embodied by how he arranges his com- ised by a narrative context, since the solo- ments that are significant, here; the point positional elements in the sonic space to ist – one need only think of the virtuoso much rather lies in thinking about images create an initial situation where he then 19th-century concerto here – acts as a sort as a possible way of storing traces of the changes how these elements relate to one of “narrator” in the broadest sense: an in- concrete or symbolic in the visual space another. The composer deals with the fact dividual who, embedded in an appropri- in order to use specific arrangements of that his music cannot really be equated ate musical staging of his part, appears on corresponding elements to generate nar- with the representational quality of imag- this “musical stage” much like an actor and, rative relationships. Images are, as a rule, es by injecting historical references that, using solo monologues, holds his own static – meaning that the things they show ideally, help to activate all manner of as- against the collective of other musicians. are subject to the fixation of locations or sociations among the listeners. In this way, What’s more, the basic narrative situation conditions within a predetermined im- Kalitzke takes sediments of Western cul- referred to by the title Story Teller is lent a age space. But can this initial situation be tural and musical history as the subtext of very special profile: Kalitzke, in his com- transferred, at least by analogy, to a com- the music he conceives, which can be seen posing, refers to actual creative process- position’s actual construction? Or more in a very concrete way in references to the es from the visual realm, choosing photo- precisely: to a certain individual paramet- most varied compositional techniques, graphs staged by fashion photographer 5 Tim Walker in order to play with narrative in which he relates the cello to its musi- acter represented by the model being contexts as his mental starting point. In cal surroundings differ. At the same time, pushed out to the very periphery of atten- a way comparable to Walker’s process of this work’s six-part structure, comprising tion. opening up a narrative space with photo- a seamlessly joined sequence of move- graphs carefully arranged in terms of their ments bearing visually suggestive titles – The idea of disappearance projected onto details and pictorial motifs, which thus Schaukel [See-Saw], Eiserne Puppe [Iron the solo instrument in Story Teller also, represent the final state of a story that one Doll], Manhattan Butterfly, Bett im Licht though in an entirely different way, deter- can reconstruct using visual details, the [Bed in the Light], Ruinenfee [Fairy of the Ru- mines the concept of the composition Fig- composer chooses certain sonic elements ins], and Panic Room – is subject to a clear uren am Horizont [Figures on the Horizon] and compositional strategies to create the overarching dramaturgy in that the solo (2011): here, Kalitzke pits a solo violin part prerequisites for a musical dramaturgy part’s contours are absorbed more and against a six-part ensemble consisting of with a narrative flow. In doing so, he also more strongly by the orchestra, a process viola, cello, flute, clarinet, piano, and per- employs a layer of sampled sounds, the by which the relationship between fore- cussion played one-to-a-part, thereby an- concrete and acoustic character of which ground and background changes: while choring the narrative quality in a chamber possess considerable associative power the cello is at first introduced as a solo in- music-like fibre from which the soloist re- enabling them to represent the “flood of strument in the classic sense and accom- peatedly emerges as a component. This images and commercialism” in contempo- panied by the collective, the soloist grad- work, in keeping with its subtitle, consists rary everyday life. ually becomes more deeply involved in of “five obituaries” dedicated by Kalitzke to the tutti apparatus, serving as a “dialogue deceased artist-colleagues – whose names Thanks to unchanging structures that partner or a component” until his part ac- he refrains from revealing. What the com- Kalitzke, after a fashion, sends “through tually comes to parallel individual orches- poser is more concerned with here is hav- different spaces” and “alters by way of the tral parts, ever more often being entirely ing the “images” of the deceased individu- respective sonic and stylistic conditions of co-opted and ultimately “being absorbed als, imagined by way of changing musical their surroundings,” all of the movements by the rotating masses of sound” and vir- constellations, disappear compositionally in Story Teller have certain structural as- tually steamrolled by the mass that is the from the music and thus also from memo- pects in common despite their differing orchestra – quite similar to the way it is in ry, just as – in relating to the remembered character, and this lends the work cohe- Walker’s photographs, in which his highly dead on an everyday basis – our memo- sion. But since the composer follows dif- detailed staging of the space overgrows ries of a given person change and grow ferent rules in every movement, the ways everything, with the supposed main char- increasingly pale over time. In each indi- 6 vidual movement, Kalitzke shapes this an- the associative fields of a chorale motif Kasparek (on Figuren am Horizont, printed alogue of the transition from a state of ex- that – much like a “prayer that reaches no- in the Aspekte Festival 2012 programme perienced presence to one of remembered body” – is distorted by microtonal shifts book, Salzburg 2012, p. 16–17). absence in a different way, thus creating a and ends up taking on some characteris- series of “musical images” that represent tics of a parody. With Travestia de Tristano, Stefan Drees different modes of remembering and for- the composer refers to the 13th-century getting (as a musical analogy to emotional Lamento di Tristano, certain rhythmic ele- processes) – a strategy that, in turn, relies ments of which he emphases in order to upon a diversity of musical topoi and asso- reinterpret it as a wobbly tarantella that ciatively rich elements for support. ultimately grows blurrier and blurrier. And the final