Music From Other Minds

Program 800: World Edition

KALW Broadcast Date: September 29, 2024 | Host: Richard Friedman

This program features recent releases on the World Edition label based in Cologne, Germany. World Edition has been presenting the music of the global avant-garde for over two decades. It is a platform for the avant-garde arts, publishing not only CDs but books, videos, and events as well. Their website, world-edition.com, is worth a visit.

We begin with Spanish composer Maria de Alvear‘s MAGNA MATER for voices, ensemble and video installation from 2013. This is a ritualistic invocation of Mother Nature through sounds, words, and images evoking, “her power and wisdom, the destructiveness of earthquake, asteroid impact, drought and firestorm, and the life-giving elements of soil, sun, water, air, sky, clouds, rain.” This recording is of a performance in 2014 in Cologne’s Saint Peter’s Church arts center with Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by Nacho de Paz, the Ars Choralis Cologne directed by Maria Jonas, the Girls chorus of Cologne Cathedral, and baritone Nicholas Isherwood. There is also a large-scale video projection by the composer’s sister Ana de Alvear. In fast motion, the film shows natural cycles of day and night, becoming and passing away, inhalation and exhalation, growing and wilting. The cycles of moon and stars, days and seasons, ebb and flow, wind and weather, building up and erosion are shown in iconic hyper-clarity. Hours, days, years, whole geological eras and eons go past during the piece. In many of her works, Maria de Alvear explores neglected or forgotten human archetypes by employing the qualities of ritual, cult, and spirit through music.

In the second hour we feature a World Edition recent release by German composer and jazz musician Frank Gratkowski. It’s called Mature Hybrid Talking, a project he worked on with the Frankfurt am Main-based Ensemble Modern in 2022. Gratowski has released over 50 CDs as conductor, soloist, bandleader, or sideman, playing flute, alto sax, bass clarinet, and trombone, and has appeared in numerous new music and jazz festivals. He currently lives in Berlin. Much of the music we hear in Gratowski’s Mature Hybrid Talking is precisely notated, but much is also not notated and left to each performer to balance with the others. The piece is a patchwork of separate modules for between one and ten instruments alongside improvisatons. The work is dedicated to Iannis Xenakis on his 100th anniversary, and to James Joyce.

And finally we hear two pieces by one of Europe’s foremost composers, Walter Zimmermann. From the World Edition release Chantbook for Lipparella comes Zimmermann’s Chantbook of Modified Melodies, from 2021. Scored for double string duo: baroque violin with tenor recorder, and lute with viola da gamba, it is a commentary on South Indian folk music. It is followed by Zimmermann’s Paraklet from 1995, for multitracked baroque violins. Zimmermann describes Paraklet as a helping spirit making a reverse pilgrimage to the former Yugoslavia.

Program Audio

30-Second Spot