DAVID PHILIP HEFTI (b.1975): Éclairs for Ensemble (Ensemble Modern), Moments lucides for Orchestra (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra), Changements for Orchestra (Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin), Gegenklang for Cello and Orchestra (Thomas Gorssenbacher [cello], DSO-Berlin), Klangbogen for Orchestra (Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern).
Catalogue Number: 11P084
Label: col legno
Reference: WWE 1CD 40407
Format: CD
Price: $18.98
Description: The recent (2011 and 2012) Changements and Moments lucides, even more than the works of a few years earlier, create a powerful sense of atmosphere through a plastic, sculptural use of orchestral timbre. Although extended techniques, noise textures and microtonal pitch deviations are present in abundance, so are shadowy, half-glimpsed or half-remembered ghosts of the late romantic era - arching, Mahlerian string lines in rich chromatic harmony, fanfares, rhythmic pulsations (sudden echoes of Le sacre) or march rhythms - always juxtaposed against, or metamorphosing into, sonorously atonal masses of sound. Changements has the character of a nocturne, shadowy and opaque, while Moments lucides complements it in brighter, translucent textures. The cello concerto consists of an active first movement, full of febrile energy, which accumulates throughout a continuous accelerando that encompasses the entire movement; and a contrasting, static slow movement in which microtones emerge to enrich the harmony and timbre, a technique that the composer uses elsewhere, including in Klangbogen, which consists of an accumulating series of sound fields, initially somewhat consonant and chordal, latterly of far greater density due to the proliferation of micro-intervals and multiphonics. Éclairs consists of eleven brief episodes of sonorous, fluid activity, interrupting, as it were, static, dissonant chords or clusters which slowly dissolve one into the next. David Philip Hefti (conductor).