Word: stockhausened
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...four concerts focused on the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen, a highly influential German composer noted for combining musique concrète with electrical music. Stockhausen, who died in December of last year, was at the forefront of avant-garde music, composing challenging but hugely influential works...
Avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen liked to say he was born on a planet near the star Sirius, and for fans of his abstract, complex music, it was a plausible theory. He made his name in the 1950s as a pioneer of electronic sound and went on to compose such big, vivid pieces as Light, a 29-hour, seven-part opera that took him 30 years to finish, and Groups, played by three separate orchestral ensembles at once. An influence on musicians from John Lennon to Björk, Stockhausen made news in 2001 for a comment suggesting that...
...they play rock music, and they don’t sing. This is not an altogether surprising combination of characteristics—Germany, after all, has a long and proud tradition of instrumental rock acts dating back to Can and Neu (and earlier, you could always argue, to Stockhausen, etc.). The instrumental rock genre itself, if there is one, has seen a recent renaissance with bands like Man or Astroman?, Don Caballero, Mogwai, and Trans Am. Couch fits right in. (Note: I don’t know no German, so I let the often hilariously inaccurate Babelfish translate titles...
...they play rock music, and they don’t sing. This is not an altogether surprising combination of characteristics—Germany, after all, has a long and proud tradition of instrumental rock acts dating back to Can and Neu (and earlier, you could always argue, to Stockhausen, etc.). The instrumental rock genre itself, if there is one, has seen a recent renaissance with bands like Man or Astroman?, Don Caballero, Mogwai, and Trans Am. Couch fits right in. (Note: I don’t know no German, so I let the often hilariously inaccurate Babelfish translate titles...
Debussy's Preludes, Book One, comprised the entire second half of the recital. The generic eclectics of these 12 miniatures must have appealed to the amply-repertoired Pollini, who has recorded both Mozart and Stockhausen for Deutsche Grammophon. His technique was particularly well-suited to the fierce leaps and skips of the third prelude, "The Wind of the Plain." It was equally fun to watch him grab fistfuls of notes with such glorious abandon in "The Hills of Anacapri," the ending of which seemed contrived by Debussy to recall the final arpeggio of the earlier "Gardens in the Rain" from...