Heinz Holliger: Induuchlen

Sylvia Nopper, Kai Wessel, Olivier Darbellay, Matthias Würsch, Swiss Chamber Soloists

Strangely beautiful album from Heinz Holliger, with the Swiss composer drawing inspiration from very Swiss sources. The centrepiece of this recording is the vocal cycle “Puneigä” which sets the poetry of Anna Maria Bacher, who writes in an idiom threatened by extinction: the Walser-German language of Pumattertisch, native to the Pomater valley. “Holliger regards a word, like a breath or a heartbeat, as a physical impulse” (Michael Kunkel, in the liner notes). Soprano Sylvia Hopper sings, amid transient sounds intoned by flute, horn, cello and viola. Mrs Bacher also recites her verse in a sequence of unaccompanied readings. “Induuchlen” itself is comprised of four songs with words by Albert Streich, for countertenor and natural horn, and the album is bookended by two pieces set up to challenge the resourcefulness of ensemble players and soloists – “Toronto Excercises” and “Ma’mounia” – with Holliger in conductor’s role. The recording is issued simultaneously with Holliger’s Bach album “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis”.

Featured Artists Recorded

1959-2010

Original Release Date

17.06.2011

  • Toronto-Exercises
    (Heinz Holliger)
  • 1I Monotonia02:46
  • 2II Moto perpetuo03:13
  • 3III Harmonia03:31
  • 4IV Canon in prolatio01:10
  • 5Der Wênter (Der Winter)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:26
  • 6… aber wêr si Fogla ! (... aber wir sind Vögel!)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:28
  • 7Wen mu plangät (Wenn man sich sehnt)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:30
  • 8Herbscht (Herbst)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:24
  • 9Der letscht Flug (Der letzte Flug)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:30
  • 10Hêlf ! (Hilf!)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:27
  • 11Lengi Nacht (Lange Nacht)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:24
  • 12T Rosa im Morgä (Die Rose am Morgen)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:24
  • 13Dem Toot (Dem Tod)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:42
  • 14Dechä un Werter (Gedanken und Wörter)
    (Anna Maria Bacher)
    00:22
  • Puneigä
    (Heinz Holliger, Anna Maria Bacher)
  • 15I Der Wênter01:59
  • 16II …aber wêr si Fogla !01:10
  • 17Umgiiri (Nachtgeister) - Zwischenspiel I02:06
  • 18III Wen mu planget03:35
  • 19IV Herbscht01:57
  • 20V Der letscht Fluk01:48
  • 21z Fingerschädru (Das Fingergetuschel) - Zwischenspiel II01:01
  • 22VI Hêlf !00:58
  • 23z Rêtschkuts (Das Geknarre) - Zwischenspiel III00:54
  • 24VII Lengi Nacht02:24
  • 25VIII T Rosa im Morgä01:17
  • 26Ischu Koraal (Eis-Choral) - Zwischenspiel IV01:54
  • 27IX Dem Toot03:57
  • 28X Dechä un Werter03:36
  • 29Induuchlen
    (Albert Streich)
    00:28
  • Induuchlen
    (Heinz Holliger, Albert Streich)
  • 30Brienzinium "Uf steinigem Boden"04:56
  • 31Zitronefalter03:12
  • 32Induuchlen05:40
  • 33Der Stäg04:37
  • 34Ma'mounia (2002)
    (Heinz Holliger)
    12:12
But in Puneiga Holliger’s hyperactive, explosive music ensures an immediate and lasting impact. Sylvia Nopper (soprano) and the Swiss Chamber Soloists are fine, sure-footed performers. Scored for a countertenor (the excellent Kai Wessel) and a natural horn player (Olivier Darbellay), who also has to sing, Induuchlen is an evocative, haunting exercise in studied virtuosity and expanded sound fields.
Stephen Pettitt, Sunday Times
 
Heinz Holliger zeigt sich fasziniert vom Kleinen, Naheliegenden, Ursprünglichen. In der Zentralschweiz und im Wallis suchte er nach Spuren einer nur scheinbar verloren gegangenen Naturmusik. Der Naturgesang und mit ihm das stark präsente Horn generieren wie von selbst das Urchige, allerdings in zeitgemäßem neuen Kleid. Wo nun der Begriff der “swissness” bald unersetzbar zum täglichen Diskurs zählt, sehen sich diese beiden CDs an der vorderen Front einer künstlerischen Befragung der Ursprünge, der kulturellen Werte, die es zu erhalten und zu beleben gilt.
Urs Berger, Biel-Benkemer Dorf-Zytig
 
Holliger folgt dem fremden, archaischen Klang dieser Dialektworte Herzschlag um Herzschlag zwischen Beklemmung und Aufbegehren, Schweben und Todesahnung.
Franz Cavigelli, NZZ am Sonntag
 
Although best known for his oboe playing, Swiss Heinz Holliger is also an accomplished composer, as well as conductor. Here from new music specialist label, ECM, is a selection of his chamber music; it’s one of only three CDs devoted entirely to Holliger’s work. Well-performed and well-recorded this is nicely produces, and should be snapped up by lovers of contemporary music. Holliger’s music is distinctive and full of character and beauty. This CD does him proud! […] The four substantive works are ones which have connections, have aspects in common and reference one another, albeit in oblique ways and ways about which you have to be informed to appreciate. At the same time, each is its own work; each answers chiefly to itself. The achievement of Holliger as conductor and the Swiss Chamber Soloists is to have struck the balance between these two extremes very successfully: they obviously know the body of Holliger’s work well enough to make the necessary links… the ways in which wind instruments are used for example. At the same time they enter into the very particular sound-world of each piece sufficiently deeply and well as to provide convincing and highly satisfying performances.
Mark Sealey, Music web international
 
Induuchlen, for counter tenor and horn, consistently blurs identities and inverts almost any norms you care to mention. The flighty Peuneigä, with its own world of unorthodox sounds, is almost hyperactive by comparison. If you´ve ever wondered where the theatricality of Ligeti´s 1960s Aventures might have gone, here it is. The two ensemble pieces that top and tail the collection, Toronto-Exercises (2005) and Ma´mounia (written as a competition test piece in 2002), are in the same mould.
Michael Dervan, The Irish Times
 
Holligers Liederzyklen halten eine wunderbare Balance zwischen Geräusch und Ton, spielen virtuos mit den poetischen Möglichkeiten der Instrumente und, wie im Fall von “Induuchlen”, der außergewöhnlichen Besetzung. Das Klangerlebnis erhält etwas unverkennbar gebirgiges, schroff einerseits und karg, rätselhaft verknappt, andererseits aber auch vielfältig und abwechslungsreich in den Farbspielen und Panoramen, die vor dem inneren Auge geöffnet werden. […] I “Wie ein Naturlaut“ – aber unverkennbar durch die Ohren eines Zeitgenossen gehört, gefiltert, meisterhaft verarbeitet und virtuos interpretiert.
Tobias Roth, Klassik.com
Issued simultaneously with “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis” (ECM 2229), his dazzling account of Bach’s music for oboe, “Induulchen” puts the focus upon Heinz Holliger as composer of idiosyncratic genius, defining a sound-world of his own. Here, Holliger’s creativity draws inspiration from arcane Swiss sources, setting the poetry of Anna Maria Bacher who writes in the endangered idiom of “Pummattertisch”, and verse by the late Albert Streich, who wrote in Brienz-German. As conductor Holliger draws committed performances from a cast of gifted chamber musicians and singers Sylvia Nopper and Kai Wessel. The outcome is intriguing, mysterious and often strangely beautiful.

Holliger has described Anna Maria Bacher’s poetry as “a force of nature, like an avalanche or a thunderstorm”. It has inspired one of Holliger’s most complex works of verbal art. In the liner notes Michael Kunkel writes that it is near-impossible to describe the cycle Puneigä sequentially: “Multiple sound-worlds coalesce in a single work distinctly rich in connections, contrasts and perspectives that is nonetheless comprised of a number of short, atmospherically and stylistically similar songs and interludes (…)

“New Music’s literary canon revolves around a relatively small selection of names: Hölderlin, Beckett, Celan, Mandelstam, Robert Walser, Nelly Sachs... For Holliger, not entirely uninvolved in the establishment of this canon, it is increasingly difficult to continue working with a body of literature that has worn thin in numerous musical reworkings. In this context, his long-standing penchant for dialects and local idioms, preferably of a Swiss nature, becomes very topical indeed: The poetry of Anna Maria Bacher and Bernadette Lerjen-Sarbach (Gränzä, Borders) or the legends of the Upper Valais (Alb-Chehr) were, from a composer’s point of view, still untouched and had, for Holliger, similar significance as art forms outside the realm of high culture as for his teacher Sándor Veress, for Anton Webern (op. 17) or Béla Bartók (Cantata profana). And in Induuchlen (Darkening), Albert Streich’s Brienz-German verses provide even more opportunity to dip into Bartók’s ‘pure fountain.’”

Michael Kunkel’s liner notes provide background and context for the compositions and poems presented here.

This has been a remarkable season for Holliger at ECM New Series. Long one of the label’s core artists, he has been ubiquitous in 2011, with three discs already benefitting from his music and/or his active presence: pianist Alexander Lonquich recorded Holliger’s “Partita” alongside Schumann’s “Kreisleriana” (ECM 2104); the album “Manto and Madrigals” (ECM 2150) featured three sketches from Holliger written especially for the violin and viola duo of Thomas Zehetmair and Ruth Killius; and Jörg Widmann’s album “Elegie” (ECM 2110) found the resourceful Swiss musician in his first recording as a pianist, duetting with clarinettist/composer Widmann on “Fünf Bruchstücke”.

One of the most versatile and accomplished musical personalities of our time, Holliger was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, in 1939. He studied oboe with Emile Cassagnaud and Pierre Pierlot, piano with Sava Savoff and Yvonne Lefébure and composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez in Bern, Paris and Basel. After winning first prizes at international competitions in Geneva and Munich, he embarked on an unparalleled career as an oboist. As a conductor, he has collaborated with the most distinguished orchestras and ensembles for many years. The recipient of numerous awards and prizes (including Composers Award of the Schweizer Tonkünstlerverein, Art Prize of the Town of Basel, Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, Music Prize of the Town of Frankfurt, honorary doctorate of the University of Zurich, Zurich Festival Prize, Rheingau Music Prize and others), Holliger counts among the most strikingly original contemporary composers in the world today. At the Zurich opera house, his opera "Schneewittchen", based on a text by Robert Walser, was received with international acclaim, and was subsequently the subject of an ECM recording (ECM 1715/16). Other major recordings of Heinz Holliger’s compositions on ECM include the “Scardanelli-Zyklus” (ECM 1472/73) after poems of Hölderlin, “Beiseit/Alb-Chehr” (ECM 1540), “Lieder ohne Worte” (ECM 1618), the multiple prizewinning “Violinkonzert” (ECM 1890), and the 2009-released “Romancendres,” a meditation upon artistic sensibilities in German musical and literary romanticism.