Wednesday
Contemporary music
Philip Glass:
It's Armin Brunner's (from ETH Zurich) guilt that I came into contact with Philip Glass' oevres. Glass is a member of the Minimal Music guild, but he is very versatile.The first CD (a cardboard box containing two CDs and a thick booklet) was Akhnaten, an opera. My very big favorites are
- Window of Appearances: Echnaton, Nofretete and Tye appear on the palace window, accompanied with the acoustical regalia of power: kettledrums, trumpets and increasing orchestra.
- dazu erklingen die akustischen Insignien der Macht: Pauken, Trompeten und zunehmend erstarkendes Orchester und
- Epilogue: we slowly proceed from the waves of the nile towards the barren wasteland, where sand swirls seem to grant a short-lived kind of body for the spirits of the sunken city.
The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra is very nice, too: especially the 2nd movement. Or something entirely different: Negro River.
These Minimal Music representatives have very nice pieces to offer: In Wim Mertens' "Motives for Writing" the piece The Whole as an example (thoroughly joyful!) or Karma Shadub by Paul Giger (hold out until minute 3.14, that's where a melody breaks through - the one that explains the title. The piece is very subtle, like the silhouette of a landscape not fully revealed by the mists. Appenzell. Note the flurry ice crystals in the sparse sunrays. At 5:20 the darkness of the fir forest, and finally the clear view into the majestic mountains. The sun gets very bright in the middle of the piece, we didn't expect that. But towards the end the mists succeed.
With Karma Shadub we enter fusion cooking. If you liked this, you probably want to listen to pieces of Laszlo Hortobagyi (e.g. Barocus Raga or Legend of Yrch, fascinating).