UDO ZIMMERMANN (b.1943): Lieder von einer Insel for Cello and Orchestra, ELLIOTT CARTER (b.1908): Cello Concerto.
Catalogue Number: 10M084
Label: Neos
Reference: 11014
Format: CD
Price: $19.98
Description: These two works stand in striking apparent contrast to one another in many respects. The Carter, from 2001, is typical of recent music by the composer; relatively economical but no less labyrinthine and intricately constructed than his earlier scores, with the soloist competing in active dialogue with an orchestra of soloists - a concerto for orchestra with a concertante cello part, with the constant layering of material in contrasting meters and textures to which we have become accustomed. Udo Zimmermann's concerto takes five diverse texts around themes of mourning, night and displacement as superscriptions to the piece, and also achieves a layered texture, though using canonic techniques that hark back to much earlier musical styles, over which the cello maintains a long, aching, singing melodic line, with only one interrupting, more fragmented active movement. The piece is far more tonal than the Carter, though with its own harmonic strangeness resulting from archaic, 'consort of viols' textures; this is not conservative neo-anything, however, but an ingenious means to present highly expressive and deeply felt polyphony of meaning in music of equally densely argued polyphony. Jan Vogler (cello), Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Kristjan Järvi. SACD hybrid.