Internet Symphony for large orchestra based on themes by Harald Genzmer (1999)
Joint composition by Bertold Hummel, Roland Leistner-Mayer and Moritz Eggert
I. Andante con moto, II. Adagio, III. Finale
3 Fl. (3.+ picc.), 2 Ob., Klar., Bass-Kl., 2 Fg., Kontra-Fg. - 4 Hn, 2 Tr., 3 Pos. - 1 Timp., 3 Schlgz. - Streicher 10.8.6.5.4 Instruments
Duration: 20 minutes
Hofer Symphony Orchestra | Howard Golden
Vogt and Fritz
There was a lot of vital music.
The work is extremely effective and virtually jumps out at the listener with its percussion accents.
It is impossible to predict how the virtual audience will feel about it. In the concert hall, the work was an immediate success.
As if by a miracle, it did not remain a random selection of pieces. The listener at the premiere was presented with a puzzle in which the seams between the countless individual segments seemed to be smoothed and polished beyond recognition. The symphony surprised on Saturday - not least thanks to Howard Golden, who conducted the above-average orchestra with superiority and meticulousness - through the original variety of its richness of events as well as through the unity of its overall form. Although the motivic developments and realisations were not exactly easy to understand, there was always a subliminal coherence in the often disjointed, yet captivating moods. The musicians served this purpose by giving the detailed contours and colours of the sound the same importance as the theme (for example through the varied use of percussion).
Condensation and acceleration, tumult and harshness here - there a sudden, almost astonished standstill, a floating on a carpet of sound: For the performance never ran out of propulsive breath - not in the rather restrained first two movements - related like siblings, often eerily darkly coloured -; certainly not in the neoclassically illuminated and agitated finale; a burlesque with a bitter aftertaste.
In addition to the four contemporary composers, many of their predecessors and role models also played a part in all of this: the hidden allusion, the interlude, even the quotation is an important stylistic device in the work, which sometimes appears with the robustness of Hindemith or the sharpness of Shostakovich, then dresses itself in the dignity of Wagner or Bruckner or, in wonderfully suggestive moments, pays homage to Debussy, Messiaen, Toru Takemitsu - masters of music of the spheres.
An attentive audience demanded the symphony and found it in Hof. It did not serve him with pleasing music to welcome a "new era" after the 2000 threshold. On the contrary: it revealed quite serious, almost apocalyptic traits: as if it wanted to recapitulate the past, the progress and regression of the 20th century, destruction and hope.
Michael Thumser
| They still work traditionally with pencil and paper, reports Moritz Eggert, who at 33 represents the young generation of composers. He is the only one of the four who works regularly with the Internet and also maintains his own homepage. Older colleagues such as Bertold Hummel are rather suspicious of the World Wide Web: he is at an age where people are surprised at how much time young people spend in front of the computer. |
The Bavarian Music Council also wanted to honour the state government's motto "Heritage and Mission" for the millennium celebrations with a contribution from Bavaria's musical life. Jörg Riedlbauer, Secretary General of the Bavarian Music Council, came up with the concept of organising a joint project with the four composers Harald Genzmer, Bertold Hummel, Roland Leistner-Mayer and Moritz Eggert, who represent all generations of Bavarian composers of the 20th century. The Internet was chosen as the central medium of the 21st century in order to utilise an unprecedented form of global art communication for the first time.
Harald Genzmer developed three themes for a three-movement symphony. Bertold Hummel began the first movement, Moritz Eggert the second and Roland Leistner-Mayer the third. The three colleagues exchanged their scores with each other and each continued the ideas of his predecessor.
Bertold Hummel began the first movement. In a calmly flowing movement (Andante con moto), the theme of the first movement given by Harald Genzmer initially develops in an emphatically restrained manner over a sound field of the basses in the bass clarinet and the low strings. Medium and higher tonal colour registers are gradually developed; the percussion sets distinctive accents until finally Genzmer's 12-tone row becomes the structure for the brilliance of the full orchestra. In an artificial manner, Hummel now exploits the various possibilities and variations of Genzmer's model, repeatedly winning concertante qualities from the orchestra alongside effective tutti passages. Motifs split off, wander nimbly through the individual orchestral sections, are subjected to a continuous process of intensification and finally find their way back into calmer waters, which also brings about a transition to the middle section by Moritz Eggert . This middle section of the first movement is deliberately jocular, with the frequent changes of rhythm and metre exerting a distinctive charm. Eggert also splits off small-cell motivic material; occasional references to Hummel's developmental techniques contribute to the inner coherence. The capricious playing within the individual instrumental groups intensifies and, after a burlesque tutti, leads to a charming juxtaposition between horns, low strings and the bassoon group, until Roland Leistner-Mayer's contribution returns to Hummel's opening tempo and brings the movement to a calm close after various refined rhythmic variations.
Moritz Eggert initially conceived the middle movement as a broad adagio, which develops subtly from a network of woodwind voices, soon coloured by horn and baton accents. However, the broadly fanned-out string section soon dominates the tonal events, massively fuelled by wind and percussion accents, which Bertold Hummel takes up in his middle section, also intensifying the movement with several changes of time signature and soon transforming the Adagio into a more animated intermediate movement. This agitated passage leads into a calm sound field, which is subtly moved rhythmically in the final section by Roland Leistner-Mayer, again leading to a piu mosso intensification and fading away in the calm interplay of low string registers, the horn and trombone section and the solo clarinet.
Also dynamically restrained, but rhythmically extremely intense and full of tension, Leistner-Mayer then finds the introduction to the finale, which he begins presto and places under intense tension. This rhythmic momentum creates a continuous pulsation, which is continued in the middle section by Bertold Hummel, which acts as an "oasis of calm", and is brought to a lively, animated conclusion by Moritz Eggert, who, in a manner comparable to "zapping" with a television remote control, removes the various elements of what has been heard so far from their original context, fragments them and reassembles them in a new way.
(from the programme of the world premiere by the Hofer Symphoniker)
Of course, I was rather sceptical at first whether something like this would work, because every composer gives up part of his creative work in favour of the joint result, but this way of working was very interesting and I am now very confident: the work seems to have succeeded.
Bertold Hummel (Frankenpost 21.12.1999)
The predetermined themes of Harald Genzmer: