Kirchner - Bildnisse I Fur Orchester - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Although the Symphony and the Requiem appear to be fundamentally different in concept and in the resulting treatment of the musical material, they do have an important point in common. This is the focus of the composer's aesthetic creed which recalls Byzantian thinking a musical statement always contains it's opposite. It is a whole which includes and unites singularity and multiplicity. It is Inchthis-as-well-as-thatInch, yet at the same time Inchne-utralInch (in the original sense of Inchneither-this nor-thatInch). In the end it neutralizes it's musical precondition, it's relation to tradition, distancing itself from tradition, and becoming in it's way an original phenomenon. Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Peter Gülke conductor / Maria Bayo soprano / Iris Vermillion mezzo soprano / Victor von Halem bass / Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg / Staatlich Akademischer Chor Riga / Imants Cepitis chorus master / Gerd Albrecht conductor.

Telemann's Wedding Serenata Georg Philipp Telemann never missed the opportunity to delight those around him with countless compositions treating the subject of love and it's consequences. The origins of his enormous achievement in this field are certainly to be sought in his personal disposition in his exuberant joy in composition, combined with an open, optimistic attitude in his dealings with his environment, which in his works not rarely revealed his roguish sense of humor. And so he above all was very much in demand as a composer of wedding pieces. The texts of the wedding serenata »Liebe, was ist schöner als die Liebe« undeniably exhibit mirthful exuberance and belong to the most original and wittiest musical creations of all by this composer. The serenata has the form of a disputatio, a dramatic dialogue in which an advocate of marriage (Ametas, soprano) and a skeptic (Crito, tenor) are in disagreement about the usefulness of the institution of marriage. The album also includes the solo cantata InchLieben will ich,Inch in which the imponderables of love are celebrated in witty free texts, and the cantata InchDer Weiberorden,Inch which quite clearly was composed in conjunction with a wedding feast and in lighter tones enables to join the young bride in joyous anticipation of her future married life.

Volker David Kirchner has repeatedly been denied the recognition he deserves because he is out-of-step with the aesthetic ideas that the avant-garde believed were the only valid ones. For Kirchner, e.g. The reference to the tradition and particularly to the sound of the human voice cannot be denied. His obsidian songs are characterized by almost theatrical drama, while the songs of poems by Else Lasker-Schuler and the cycle Media vita in morte sumus rather emphasize the meditative. The two last mentioned works were written for the mezzo voice heard on this recording, Julia Ostertag.