Goebbels

Using the texts of playwright Heiner Muller and collecting a wide range of imaginative musicians, Heiner Goebbels constructed a fascinating music-theater piece that mixes languages and musical styles. The text, read and sung by Arto Lindsay, concerns the thoughts and fears of an employee summoned to his boss' office and has something of a Brazil-like aura about it. Perhaps coincidentally, Lindsay interjects some Brazilian songs into the proceedings. But the highlight is the performance by this stellar ensemble, ranging from free to punkishly tinged jazz-rock to quasi-African. There are outstanding contributions from guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, and the late Don Cherry on trumpet, voice, and the African hunter's guitar known as the doussn'gouni. Goebbels brews a rich stew of overlapping languages and styles in a dense matrix that creates an appropriate feeling of angst, but never loses a sly sense of humor…

A House of Call is a cycle of invocations, prayers, poems and songs for large orchestra. It incorporates recordings of sounds and voices from all over the world collected by Heiner Goebbels during his travels, research, and chance encounters. The cycle is a response to the history of these recordings and to their complexity, rawness and radiance. In this secular “responsorium”, the orchestra accompanies and supports the voices, answers and challenges them.

Frank Zappa & Heiner Goebbels - Perfect Strangers - The Norwegian Radio Orchestra (2014) {Lawo Classics LWC1063}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 373 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 163 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 8 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2014 Lawo Classics | LWC1063
Classical / Modern Classical / Orchestral

This is an unusual disc from Norwegian label, Lawo Classics: Perfect Strangers. Coupling the works of Heiner Goebbels and Frank Zappa, and performed by The Norwegian Radio Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Søndergård, it is recorded onto SACD in surround sound. Frank Zappa’s music crosses all boundaries, with fans in all musical camps. The recordings of his own band are legendary, but with the release of The Yellow Shark featuring Ensemble Modern, Zappa’s music became standard repertoire for symphony orchestras — or at least those that dare to accept the challenge! This is intense and demanding music, but who is better equipped for the task than the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, celebrated for the diversity of its repertoire and collaborations?

It's a seductive, sometimes shocking and viscerally exciting musical experience; the premier recording of an unconventional opera that made a major impact at its premiere in Geneva in 2002. Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten translates as 'Landscape with distant relatives', and trying to describe it is a bit of a nightmare…not least because Goebbels himself doesn't exactly revel in unpicking his music in front of critics and audiences. "What drives the attention of an audience is the unforeseeable, and the secrets and mystery of a performance".

Heiner Goebbels - La Jalousie, Red Run, Herakles 2, Befreiung - Ensemble Modern (1993) {ECM New Series 1483}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 290 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 152 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 27 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1993 ECM Records | ECM New Series 1483
Classical / Electronic / Contemporary Classical / Modern Composition / Avant-Garde / Experimental

Sometimes music is so theatrical that it needs no stage or actors to enlighten its listeners. If such music comprised a genre in and of itself, composer Heiner Goebbels would be one of its most idiosyncratic masters. Along with Michael Mantler, Goebbels represents a theatrical strand in the ECM universe that challenges the reviewer attempting to describe it, yet which is perfectly clear once it reaches the ears. My first encounter came through Surrogate Cities, a dazzling piece of music theatre that remains the yardstick by which I’ve measured all Goebbels experiences since. That being said, the more I hear, the more I recognize the futility of such comparison, for in his decidedly textual sound there is equal room for any and all sentiments to frolic, dance, and weep.