Stefan Temmingh - Corelli a la Mode - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Seven Disobediences Seven Imperatives is my answer to the tradition of character pieces for piano, such as Debussy's Préludes and Grieg's Lyric Pieces; short, relatively simple but concise miniatures with a motto, and usually with one prevalent sentiment-like a musical short story. The title of each of the seven pieces is an imperative consisting of four letters Seek! Push! Lean! Etc. One of the pianists who has taken the Imperatives into his repertoire, is Kenneth Karlsson-central to the founding and artistic development of Cikada. So, when Donaueschinger Musiktage asked me to write a work for Cikada for their concert there in 2018, I seized the opportunity to explore another cornerstone of the piano literature In a solo concerto, you see a whole orchestra dutifully following a brilliant ego that is completely dominating the stage. Beethoven's last piano concerto was even called the Emperor Concerto, an epithet the thoroughly anti-authoritarian composer would have hated. As I transformed Seven Imperatives (2001) into the InchconcertInch Seven Disobediences (2018), I looked into Cikada's beautiful collaborative social and artistic structure. When Kenneth, InchThe EmperorInch (Italian imperatore) gives his imperatives to his fellow musician, how do they react? Well, when he tells them to spin, they happily spin together with him, but when he says InchSINK!Inch, they do the opposite and rise gracefully towards the sky. Towards the end, they all leave their positions and their instruments and gather around the piano's big body to caress it and make it purr by fondly knocking on it's shiny, black surface in loving disobedience. -Rolf Wallin

Stefan Temmingh - French & English Suites [COMPACT DISCS] date 06/28/2011

The Mediterranean Sea has been the hub of resettlement and migration for centuries. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the people who settled in those areas that were depopulated by years of war, expulsion and flight. And in 1492, the Spanish Reconquista led to the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews, who brought their culture to many countries around the Mediterranean. Even today, the Mediterranean again plays an inglorious role in flight and expulsion. The German gambist Friederike Heumann has taken this as an opportunity to present, together with the Turkish singer Nihan Devecioglu and the Spanish guitarist Xavier Díaz-Latorre, the many ancient cultures around the Mediterranean the tradition of the Sephardic people, songs from Lebanon, Turkey, Armenia and Greece, art music from Venice to Fado in Spain and Portugal, whose influences reach as far as South America.