The piano

[Mandryka]

Mark's harmonic vocabulary is much more dense and complex than Walter's (and not really modal), and his expressive world much darker..

It’s a shame there isn’t more of Walter on record.

Do you have the CD of Beginner’s Mind? I’m wondering if Ian Pace wrote an essay on the music for it - I can see nothing online discussing this strange piece.

The other Zimmermann CD I’ve been enjoying is called The Echoing Green.

[Richard Barrett]

It’s a shame there isn’t more of Walter on record.

There are four CDs on Mode, including Lokale Musik which I think is his most important work, reissued from a highly obscure 3 LP set released at the beginning of the 1980s which is one of my most prized possessions. I don't have the Pace recording of Beginner's Mind but the record made in the mid 1970s by Herbert Henck, for whom it was written. You can see the complete score and read an article (in German) about the piece and its origin in the ideas of John Cage and Zen Buddhism here.

[Bryn]

Mark's harmonic vocabulary is much more dense and complex than Walter's (and not really modal), and his expressive world much darker. I wouldn't have made that connection myself, except for the pared-down quality, although by no means all of Walter's music could be so described - Wüstenwanderung is almost the opposite of Beginner's Mind in that regard.

Trying to find some Walter Zimmermann works on QOBUZ, using the deplorably inefficient QOBUZ search 'facility', I was presented, among other false returns, with Aki Takahashi's recording of Feldman's For Bunita Markus. Following that up, I was alerted to her recordings of late Schubert piano sonatas. I was intrigued enough to set that with D960 to import. Is anyone here familiar with her Schubert recordings?

[Mandryka]

Trying to find some Walter Zimmermann works on QOBUZ, using the deplorably inefficient QOBUZ search 'facility', I was presented, among other false returns, with Aki Takahashi's recording of Feldman's For Bunita Markus. Following that up, I was alerted to her recordings of late Schubert piano sonatas. I was intrigued enough to set that with D960 to import. Is anyone here familiar with her Schubert recordings?

Yes, I have quite a few of her Schubert recordings, some of which are hard to find out of Japan. The style is distinctive, I’m not sure what to think about it, I’d need to give it time. I was impressed by the D960, I can’t say anything more about it than that, but the 960 prompted me to seek out the others - which I haven’t listened to properly really I’m listening to her D946 as I type this and it’s . . . slightly tense, and not specially fluid and lyrical (which is all to the good in my opinion!)

She’s recorded three Satie CDs for Camerata recently and I’d love to hear them - but I can’t get them into the UK without paying an arm and a leg in import duties.

Qobuz search is execrable.

Feldman said something positive about her For Bunita Markus, something along the lines of it being prayerful, it’s in Goodby to 8th Street I think. I suspect he found something positive to say about pretty well everyone who played his music.

[Mandryka]

There are four CDs on Mode, including Lokale Musik which I think is his most important work, reissued from a highly obscure 3 LP set released at the beginning of the 1980s which is one of my most prized possessions. I don't have the Pace recording of Beginner's Mind but the record made in the mid 1970s by Herbert Henck, for whom it was written. You can see the complete score and read an article (in German) about the piece and its origin in the ideas of John Cage and Zen Buddhism here.

That’s interesting, thanks. Over the past couple of days I’ve become really addicted to his music - I’m sure I’ll grow out of it. I found him through exploring Christopher Fox, this turned up online

https://core.ac.uk/reader/234136749

And look what I just found

https://soundcloud.com/user-985460328/sets/herbert-henck-beginner-studio

(Lots of things there to explore in fact.)


I haven’t heard Local Music yet - will do tonight all things permitting.

[Mandryka]

That’s interesting, thanks. Over the past couple of days I’ve become really addicted to his music - I’m sure I’ll grow out of it. I found him through exploring Christopher Fox, this turned up online

https://core.ac.uk/reader/234136749

And look what I just found

https://soundcloud.com/user-985460328/sets/herbert-henck-beginner-studio

(Lots of things there to explore in fact.)


I haven’t heard Local Music yet - will do tonight all things permitting.

The transfer of Beginner’s Mind on Walter Zimmermann’s website is very good. I’d say that the timbres of piano are captured more charismatically on that transfer than on Ian Pace’s Metier recording. And the performance is also charismatic.

Henck has a good singing voice too.

Henck deserves to have a box of his recordings released, this and his Koechlin and I suppose many other things are not easy to find.

[Richard Barrett]

this turned up online

https://core.ac.uk/reader/234136749

Indeed that article was my introduction to WZ's music, although at the Darmstadt summer course the following year (1984) I was able to hear some live performances of his work and acquire the aforementioned Lokale Musik recording. I could say something very similar about many articles in the Contact journal, like the Ferneyhough issue in 1980 and, later on, articles on the music of Aldo Clementi, Borah Bergman and others, which sent me off to find ways of hearing the music I had read about (not very easy in those days compared to now!).

[Mandryka]

This is a new release, which I’ve been listening to this afternoon, they make the music sound sensual - it’s well recorded, which helps. Anyway, I don’t want to get into comparisons with other Mantras, I was strapped to my seat for the whole thing, and normally my attention span is about the length of a Scarlatti sonata. So I guess it’s not all bad.

Philippe Manoury writes a few paragraphs for the booklet, where he talks about Mantra inaugurating Stockhausen’s final period, which, he says, culminated in Licht. Am I really the only person in the world who appreciates the first dozen pieces in Klang?

And the pianists say that the music reminds them of Bartok’s two piano sonata - and I guess I can see that.

Manoury also wrote a piece for two pianos which is, I think, the systematic exploration of an idea like Mantra - Le temps mode d’emploi. I’m going to dig it out later.

Mantra for me is a really important piece - I saw it in London years ago and loved it. And I also followed Stockhausen’s lectures on YouTube about it, and that was fun. (especially the end, the questions and answers - some bright people in the audience (at Imperial I think) and Stockhausen is, of course, a genius.)

(By the way, if you don’t know there was a new Stimmung released a few weeks agofrom Electric Phoenix, I haven’t heard it)

[Bryn]

. . . (By the way, if you don’t know there was a new Stimmung released a few weeks ago from Electric Phoenix, I haven’t heard it)

New release but old recording: "Electric Phoenix recorded in live performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on 6th April 1997, by John Whiting."

+ https://www.darylrunswick.net/stimmung.html

[Richard Barrett]

they make the music sound sensual - it’s well recorded, which helps. Anyway, I don’t want to get into comparisons with other Mantras, I was strapped to my seat for the whole thing, and normally my attention span is about the length of a Scarlatti sonata.

I listened to that recording the other day and thought it's the closest anyone has got to the original recording by the Kontarsky brothers, but better recorded. I would wish the electronic component to be a bit stronger sometimes, but for me it's certainly the second best recording so far. I'm not that keen on Manoury's work generally - I find his use of live electronics is often far too complicated for what it actually achieves in musical terms - but what I do like about it is that he takes Stockhausen more seriously than most composers of his generation and younger (particularly in Zeitlauf).

Back on topic: one of my favourite 20th century piano pieces is the sonata by Elliott Carter. I'm fond of a lot of his later music, especially from the Symphony of Three Orchestras onwards, but I think it would also have been nice if he'd developed the "early" style of this piece further.

[gradus]

Why on earth did Sibelius describe the piano as 'ungrateful', what was it supposed to be grateful for?

[LeMartinPecheur]

Why on earth did Sibelius describe the piano as 'ungrateful', what was it supposed to be grateful for?

Somebody with an extremely delicate sense of pitch might agree with Lionel Tertis that the piano is the one instrument that's never in tune. (Remark to pupil who injudiciously hit a note on the piano after LT told him he'd played a note with suboptimal intonation!) Sibelius was a violin player who nearly set out to make a career as a virtuoso.

[vinteuil]

Why on earth did Sibelius describe the piano as 'ungrateful', what was it supposed to be grateful for?

... the first definition for 'grateful' in the OED -

"Pleasing to the mind or the senses, agreeable, acceptable, welcome"

( the second definition is "Of persons, their actions and attributes : Feeling gratitude; actuated by or manifesting gratitude; thankful" )

.

[kernelbogey]

Finnish gratiude might mean something entirely different....

I do wonder about the translation of this remark though. (I know not one word of the language.)

[Roslynmuse]

I just think the piano didn't do what Sibelius wanted it to do - it can't sustain in the way a low brass choir can, or crescendo on a single chord. One of the most ungrateful piano reductions of any concerto is the Sibelius Violin Concerto - it's almost impossible to make it sound effective, where other concertos can at least sound adequate with piano, even the Tchaikovsky, or the two Prokofievs. A lot of his song accompaniments feel as though they would be better with orchestra. There are some short pieces for violin and piano which are a bit more ...grateful... to play; but they aren't Sibelius at his best (and I'm writing as a great admirer of his music).