intrinse's video: Milko Kelemen Compos Flor al Changeant Hommage Heinrich Sch tz Surpris Classical Contemporary

Tracklist: 1 Composé 00:00:00 2 Floréal 00:14:23 3 Changeant 00:24:42 4 Hommage À Heinrich Schütz 00:36:51 5 Surprise 00:42:13 AN INTRODUCTION BY THE COMPOSER The work "Composé" for two pianos and orchestral groups was written for the piano-playing brothers Kontarsky. The piece benefited considerably from the stimulus of Dr. Strobel, the great patron of new music, and the first performance took place at Donaueschingen in 1967. "Composé" means put together, composed; and by this is understood an intricate web in two colours, in which figuration and basic colour vary. At first sight it is a bewildering piece, yet its form is quite clear, being in five parts. It is characterised by powerful musical outbursts, in which particles of sound arranged in the most delicate variations struggle desperately together, giving an effect that can be very primitive, folkish, or archetypal. Then an orchestral crescendo, very varied in harmony, leads to absurd coagulations of sound, with the two pianos finding an outlet in wave-like structures in the high register. The most important turning-point is reached roughly in the middle of the piece, where a ship's bell announces the start of the improvisatory section of the composition. After this the playing is fired with a phosphorescent, iridescent quality which brings relief-and leads to the ending with a monstrous cadence in which heavy chains are dropped onto a gong lying on the floor. In 1969 I received a commission from the Library of Congress in Washington to write a work for large orchestra for the Library's thirtieth anniversary. When the work was already half-finished, there came a letter from the Director of the Institute: to his consternation there had been a mistake, and I was to write a piece for small orchestra as the room was too small for a large orchestra. To avoid such problems in the future I sketched the piece out in three versions at once: for small, medium-sized, or large orchestra. The title "Floréal" evokes associations with blossoms and flowers: however, it is not a program- matic allusion. I tried rather to write a piece in which the concepts "slow" and "quick" take on a new dimension, There is a confrontation between quick figures in a slow tempo and slow rhythmic values in a quick tempo. The composition is also based on the idea of the dramatic use of tone-colour, showing the interaction between "density" and "rhythm" of tone-colour. In past years I have used various kinds of improvisation in my compositions. A synthesis of all the experience I had thereby gained found expression in the work "Changeant" for cello and orchestra. I saw before me many quite contradictory aleatoric versions of this composition, realised through a technique free from all interpretative notions, as if everything had been forgotten. Just as the most diverse musical shapes and forms were passing before me, I called a halt. The work remained fixed in its present form before me. "Changeant" signifies the interplay between various colours. In the course of the piece a particular style of playing is evolved in which delicate nuances of colour and small rhythmic values undergo a continuous process of renewal and development. The climax is reached at the point where a player with thimbles on his fingers impro- vises on the harpsichord lid, the bongo player "writes" on his instrument with his fingers, and the harp's "accords lancés" (sweeping chord clusters) introduce the great cello cadenza. This cadenza degenerates into music that is "unthinkable" and absurd, in which the greatest virtuosity is merged with off-the-cuff improvisation at the peak of the soloist's musical consciousness. "Changeant'*' is dedicated to Siegfried Palm and it was he who first performed the work in 1968 at one of the concerts in the "Music of Our Time" series in Cologne. "Hommage Heinrich Schütz," a choral work written in 1964, was inspired by study of motets by Schütz. The basic idea of the composition is the evolution from speech sounds to mixtures of sung tone organised vertically and horizontally, and back again to the wide spectrum of sound produced by whispering. One of the first conductors to take up my music on the international scene was Antonio Janigro. When in 1955 he founded I Solisti di Zagreb, the chamber orchestra which has since become world-famous, I wrote a whole series of compositions for this string ensemble who played them throughout the world. This was also the case with "Surprise," which was given its first performance by Janigro at the 1967 Zagreb Biennial Festival. "Surprise" is a short piece which starts in a transparent chamber style but is developed by the contrapuntal use of varying colours and comes to a surprising conclusion in a grandly laid-out crescendo. Milko Kelemen Credits: Composed By, Liner Notes - Milko Kelemen Photography By [Colour] - Lore Bermbach