Bernd Ganter

It seems justified to say that in Europe language has never before been the subject of heated, or even public, debate, as was the case in the decades around the year 2000. It had by this time become obvious that English was now the dominant language world-wide. …

The decision as to where the borders of music lie can only be determined by the work of composers, who are always trying to make understandable that which is incomprehensible, to turn chaos into order, to encompass that which has no borders: an impulse of the human spirit since the beginning." (Bernd Alois Zimmermann, 1956) The present CD brings three pieces of occasional music (the miniature ballet "Un petit rien", the Music for a Puppet Theater, "Das Gelb und das Grün" [The Yellow and the Green], and the film music "Metamorphose" [Metamorphosis]) together with the composition which laid the groundwork for the "linguistic compositions" of Zimmermann's Late Period: the highly serialized cantata "Omnia tempus habent.

One of the most important German composers to emerge during the post-World War II era, Bernd Alois Zimmermann was born in the outskirts of Cologne in 1918. Zimmermann's music frequently borders on unplayability, and it is only through the exceptional gifts of a handful of players and conductors (including cellist Siegfried Palm and conductor Hans Rosbaud) that his powerful musical creations escaped oblivion.

The CD release of the “studio reihe neuer musik”-series starts with a CD with works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann. His complex “pluralistic” style fuses past, present and future into a musical unit of the highest order. The “Concerto pour violoncelle et orchestre en forme de ‘Pas de trios’” created in the late 1960s develops its binding power from a single musical nucleus; “Tratto II” and “Photoptosis” represent Zimmermann's compositional opening of time and space.

With the new WERGO production "Initiale – Lieder und frühe Kammermusik" (Initials – Songs and Early Chamber Music), the complete Lied compositions by Bernd Alois Zimmermann are now available as a recording for the first time. The eleven songs were all interpreted by the adorable singer Anna Prohaska. The up-and-coming 27-year-old star currently captivates the opera world with her light and lyric soprano voice. The CD title borrowed from the eponymous song "Initiale" is also programmatic for this recording because it contains not only Zimmermann's vocal works but also his early chamber music. Members of ……..