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 © Stefan Fuhrer © Stefan 2 3 JOHANNES KALITZKE (*1959) 1 – 6 Johannes Moser violoncello Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin Johannes Kalitzke conductor Story Teller (2015/2016) Figuren am Horizont (2011) for cello and orchestra for violin solo and six instrumentalists 7 – 11 Ivana Pristašová violin œnm . österreichisches ensemble für neue musik Vera Klug fl u t e Andreas Schablas clarinet 1 Schaukel 7 Skizze für ein unbewohnbares Nora Skuta piano [See-Saw] 5:24 Haus [Sketch for an Arabella Hirner percussion Uninhabitable House] 5:12 Susanne von Gutzeit viola Peter Sigl violoncello 2 Eiserne Puppe [Iron Doll] 4:33 8 Brennende Uhr 1 – 11 Johannes Kalitzke conductor [Burning Clock] 4:22 3 Manhattan Butterfl y 4:52 Recording dates: 1 – 6 18 January 2017 9 Gebet auf schiefer Ebene 7 – 11 9 May 2012 4 Bett im Licht [Prayer on a Slipper Slope] 5:07 Recording venues: 1 – 6 Haus des Rundfunks Berlin, Großer Sendesaal [Bed in the Light] 5:53 7 – 11 Mozarteum Salzburg, Solitär 10 Travestia de Tristano 4:56 Recording supervisor: 1 – 6 Wolfgang Hoff 7 – 11 Nicole Brunner 5 Ruinenfee Engineers: 1 – 6 Nikolaus Löwe [Fairy of the Ruin] 3:48 11 Skizze für ein Haus im Licht 7 – 11 Walter Sailer [Sketch for a House in the Light] 7:14 Mastering, Editing: 1 – 11 Johannes Kalitzke, Anne-Kristin Sölter 6 Panic Room 2:59 7 – 11 Nicole Brunner Final mastering: Christoph Amann Producers: Johannes Kalitzke, Andreas Karl Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes . Bote & Bock Graphic design: Alexander Kremmers (paladino media), TT 54:19 cover based on Artwork by Enrique Fuentes ein Ensemble der 4 5 Image — Sound — Memory in what Kalitzke does is embodied by how he arrang- by fashion photographer Tim Walker in order to play duced as a solo instrument in the classic sense and es his compositional elements in the sonic space to with narrative contexts as his mental starting point. accompanied by the collective, the soloist gradually create an initial situation where he then changes how In a way comparable to Walker’s process of opening becomes more deeply involved in the tutti apparatus, these elements relate to one another. The compos- up a narrative space with photographs carefully ar- serving as a “dialogue partner or a component” until er deals with the fact that his music cannot really be ranged in terms of their details and pictorial motifs, his part actually comes to parallel individual orches- equated with the representational quality of images which thus represent the final state of a story that tral parts, ever more often being entirely co-opted by injecting historical references that, ideally, help to one can reconstruct using visual details, the com- and ultimately “being absorbed by the rotating mass- activate all manner of associations among the listen- poser chooses certain sonic elements and composi- es of sound” and virtually steamrolled by the mass In few composers’ oeuvres does contemplation of ers. In this way, Kalitzke takes sediments of Western tional strategies to create the prerequisites for a mu- that is the orchestra – quite similar to the way it is in the most varied kinds of visual media play as great cultural and musical history as the subtext of the mu- sical dramaturgy with a narrative flow. In doing so, he Walker’s photographs, in which his highly detailed a role as it does in the oeuvre of Johannes Kalitzke. sic he conceives, which can be seen in a very concrete also employs a layer of sampled sounds, the concrete staging of the space overgrows everything, with the But it’s less the references to visual creative means, way in references to the most varied compositional and acoustic character of which possess considerable supposed main character represented by the model genre-typical characteristics, and concrete visual mo- techniques, stylistic elements, and musical allusions. associative power enabling them to represent the being pushed out to the very periphery of attention. tifs in the titles of works or movements that are sig- And in the case of the works brought together here, “flood of images and commercialism” in contempo- nificant, here; the point much rather lies in thinking Kalitzke also works with elements from the traditional rary everyday life. The idea of disappearance projected onto the solo about images as a possible way of storing traces of instrumental concerto, linking his interest in the visu- instrument in Story Teller also, though in an entirely the concrete or symbolic in the visual space in order al with the parameters and possibilities of a specific Thanks to unchanging structures that Kalitzke, after different way, determines the concept of the com- to use specific arrangements of corresponding ele- musical genre. a fashion, sends “through different spaces” and “alters position Figuren am Horizont [Figures on the Horizon] ments to generate narrative relationships. Images are, by way of the respective sonic and stylistic conditions (2011): here, Kalitzke pits a solo violin part against as a rule, static – meaning that the things they show This becomes particularly clear in the case of Story of their surroundings,” all of the movements in Story a six-part ensemble consisting of viola, cello, flute, are subject to the fixation of locations or conditions Teller for violoncello and orchestra (2015/16). With his Teller have certain structural aspects in common de- clarinet, piano, and percussion played one-to-a-part, within a predetermined image space. But can this ini- decision to musically juxtapose a solo cello with an spite their differing character, and this lends the work thereby anchoring the narrative quality in a cham- tial situation be transferred, at least by analogy, to a orchestral collective, one could say that Kalitzke re- cohesion. But since the composer follows different ber music-like fibre from which the soloist repeat- composition’s actual construction? Or more precisely: sorted to a model that is itself characterised by a nar- rules in every movement, the ways in which he relates edly emerges as a component. This work, in keeping to a certain individual parametric design along with rative context, since the soloist – one need only think the cello to its musical surroundings differ. At the with its subtitle, consists of “five obituaries” dedicat- its attendant sound locations, volumes, tone colours, of the virtuoso 19th-century concerto here – acts as same time, this work’s six-part structure, comprising ed by Kalitzke to deceased artist-colleagues – whose or types of motion? If one conceives of Kalitzke’s mo- a sort of “narrator” in the broadest sense: an individ- a seamlessly joined sequence of movements bearing names he refrains from revealing. What the composer dus operandi in this sense, the composer’s role could ual who, embedded in an appropriate musical stag- visually suggestive titles – Schaukel [See-Saw], Eiserne is more concerned with here is having the “images” of be compared with that of someone viewing a picture: ing of his part, appears on this “musical stage” much Puppe [Iron Doll], Manhattan Butterfly, Bett im Licht the deceased individuals, imagined by way of chang- the observer, in observing, arranges a picture’s com- like an actor and, using solo monologues, holds his [Bed in the Light], Ruinenfee [Fairy of the Ruins], and ing musical constellations, disappear compositionally ponents as a temporal sequence by fixing his gaze on own against the collective of other musicians. What’s Panic Room – is subject to a clear overarching dra- from the music and thus also from memory, just as – details, following objects’ contours with his eyes, or more, the basic narrative situation referred to by the maturgy in that the solo part’s contours are absorbed in relating to the remembered dead on an everyday relating colour values to one another – thereby enter- title Story Teller is lent a very special profile: Kalitzke, more and more strongly by the orchestra, a process basis – our memories of a given person change and ing into a performative relationship with the image in his composing, refers to actual creative processes by which the relationship between foreground and grow increasingly pale over time. In each individual space’s individual elements. The (figurative) similarity from the visual realm, choosing photographs staged background changes: while the cello is at first intro- movement, Kalitzke shapes this analogue of the tran- 6 7 sition from a state of experienced presence to one of in the traditional Viennese Wienerlied genre – some- remembered absence in a diff erent way, thus creating thing akin to a memory from long-bygone times that a series of “musical images” that represent diff erent determines the work’s conclusion like a shadow, thus modes of remembering and forgetting (as a musical once again referring to the visual nature of Kalitzke’s analogy to emotional processes) – a strategy that, in composing. turn, relies upon a diversity of musical topoi and asso- ciatively rich elements for support. The quotations that appear in this text were taken from statements by the composer included in the It is in this way that Kalitzke, in the movement Skizze work commentaries by Eckhard Weber (on Story Tell- für ein unbewohnbares Haus [Sketch for an Uninhabit- er, printed in the ultraschall berlin programme book, able House], works with the Fibonacci sequence (a se- Berlin 2017, p. 22–23) and Gottfried Franz Kasparek ries of numbers directly related to the proportions of (on Figuren am Horizont, printed in the Aspekte Fes- the golden ratio) and transfers, as a way of underlin- tival 2012 programme book, Salzburg 2012, p.