Sassmanshaus Violine

Karlheinz Stockhausen - In Freundschaft für Violine, Bassklarinette, Viola, Tuba, Violoncello (2014) {Stockhausen-Verlag No. 102}
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© 2014 Stockhausen-Verlag | Stockhausen 102
Classical / Avant-Garde / Experimental / 20th Century

Since 1991, a complete edition of all recordings in which Karlheinz Stockhausen has personally participated is being released on compact discs. Each CD in this series is identified by Stockhausen's signature followed by an encircled number. The numbers indicate the general historical order of the works. Stockhausen realised the electronic music and participated in these recordings as conductor, performer, sound projectionist, and musical director. He personally mixed down the recordings, mastered them for CDs, wrote the texts and drew the covers.

The sonatas of 1763 presented here show not only the composer's ability to express personal feelings, but are direct precursors of the great creations of Mozart and Beethoven in the field of instrumental sonatas with obligato piano accompaniment. These passionate works anticipate developments that would appear later in the Romantic era. That alone should be enough to want to listen to them. Period instrument experts Piet Kuijken and Albrecht Breuninger bring this music to life with spontanety and a dash of improvisation - just right for these Sturm und Drang works of original genius.

The trio on this dics is chamber music performance at its highest level of enjoyment. Listening to the CD, you get an impression of three great friends having a most delightful conversation, elegant and graceful. The recorded sound is first rate. You hear all the details of instruments being played and also the acoustic features of the room in which they performed.

Buxtehude’s Opus 1 and 2 Sonatas for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord belie the composer’s common image as austere and sober. They instead delight the listener with what Johann Mattheson, writing in 1739, called their « unfamilar progressions, hidden ornamentation, and ingenious colourations ». It comes as no surprise to learn that the sonatas were a great success when they were first published in Germany in the 1690s, in the midst of the fashion for the ‘stylus fantasticus’ (described by Athanasius Kircher in 1650 as “…especially suited to instruments. It is the most free and unrestrained method of composing, it is bound to nothing, neither to any words nor to a melodic subject. It was instituted to display genius, and to teach the hidden design of harmony and the ingenious composition of harmonic phrases and fugues.")