| Label: Wergo Catalog: WER65792 Format: CD Ensemble Court Circuit; Ensemble Mosaik; Ensemble Unitedberlin; Ensemble Cairn; conductors: Titus Engel, Guillaume Bourgogne; piano: Heather O' Donnell
Oliver Schneller Aqua Vit for eight instruments / Trio for accordion, cello and piano / Five Imaginary Spaces for piano and live electronics / Stratigraphie I for six instruments and live electronics / Resonant Space for two pianos, two percussionist and live electronics / Stratigraphie II for six instruments and live electronics
wholenote Discoveries - February 2011
Oliver Schneller; Various Artists; Wergo WER 6579-2; In my other life as general manager of New Music Concerts I have had the pleasure of being exposed to the music of some of the world’s most exciting compositional talents over the past decade. Last May, in a concert curated by Brian Current, Canadians Nicole Lizée and Analia Llugdar were featured alongside Frenchman Fabien Levy and Germans Enno Poppe and Oliver Schneller. Schneller’s delicate Trio (1998) for accordion, cello and piano was featured on that Toronto concert and I was pleased to find it on a new recording along with five more recent Schneller compositions. Trio and Aqua Vit (1999) for eight instruments are the only purely acoustic compositions on the disc, with all of the more recent works involving live electronics. Schneller’s fascination with the nature of sound itself is evident even in the instrumental compositions, as he examines textures and timbres as if through a microscope. This concern is taken further with his use of technology in the later works, most notably Stratigraphie I (2006) and II (2010), both for six instruments and live electronics. Also of note is his alluring addition to the two pianos/two percussion repertoire with Resonant Space, a compelling work which adds live sound manipulation to the mix. David Olds
A woodland stream, a word from Joyce, ships' horns in Beirut harbor, architectural sketches: the composer Oliver Schneller frequently proceeds from extra-musical patterns, models, and objects trouvés in his search for 'the song present in all things'. Yet he is equally far removed from Messiaen's birdsong and Cage's start charts. His music is neither a "personal confession", nor does he want to extirpate the auteur. Instead, as in "Aqua Vit", he subjects the babblings of a woodland stream to spectral analysis and transforms it into a fully autonomous score. Schneller, who studied with Tristan Murail among others, strikes a balance with the dynamics inherent in the material itself. His precisely calibrated compositions always sound at once rigorous and open-ended, and they frequently conjure up surprising associations in the listener. A micro-intervallic canon for piano and live electronics can give rise to a sea of pealing bells, a string trio to an apocalyptic scenario, thanks to his consummate command of digital technology. Born in Cologne in 1966, Schneller comes from a generation of composers who take the computer for granted as one resource among many, as is apparent in such sound installations as his polyphonic urban collage "Polis" for Berlin's Martin Gropius Hall. In his most recent works Schneller, who received a composers' prize from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2010, has directed his interest toward himself. "Stratigraphie", for example, is the archaeological model, but not the findings, of a journey of self-discovery. Here, too, his music makes room for the listener's own experiences and emotions in the secret life of sounds, allowing for magical moments of the sort that occur only to those who refuse to force them. Price: $25.98 |