BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMANN (1918-1970): Requiem für einen junger Dichter.

Description: The 'young poet' of the title is a metaphor for the Europe that the composer had seen traumatized by the events surrounding WWII, which occurred during his formative years and this Requiem is a characteristically ambitious and multi-faceted work, primarily concerned with overlapping layers of widely divergent textual sources. Exemplifying the composer's 'pluralistic' mature style, the first part is based around eight channels of pre-recorded material prepared by the composer (and restored from the original tapes for this performance). The work is scored for huge forces, in addition to the taped material, which includes historical speeches, overlapped, distorted and transmuted; the spoken and sung texts are in multiple languages, sometimes clearly understandable, at others a tumult of incomprehensible voices. The predominant mood of the piece is, predictably enough, intensely dark and tragic, though incorporating a hugely varied timbral palette and embedded fragments of diverse musical styles including Zimmermann's haunting, ironic cabaret references. An important work for our appreciation of this complex and important figure in 20th century music. Claudia Barainsky (soprano), David Pittman-Jennings (baritone), Michael Rotschopf, Lutz Lansemann (speakers), Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno, Slovak Philharmonic Choir, Europa Choral Academy, Eric Vloeimans Quintet, Jan Hage (organ), Holland Symfonia; Bernhard Kontarsky.