Friedrich Cerha - String Quartets 1-3, Eight Movements after Hölderlin Fragments - Arditti String Quartet, Thomas Kakuska, Valentin Erben - 1999

Friedrich Cerha (*1926) ‎– String Quartets 1-3, Eight Movements 

after Hölderlin Fragments

Arditti String Quartet, Thomas Kakuska, Valentin Erben

CPO 999 646-2 - 1999

• String Quartet No. 1

• String Quartet No. 2

• String Quartet No. 3

• Eight Movements after Hölderlin Fragments

   for string sextet

                      01. String Quartet No. 1
                      02. String Quartet No. 2
                      03. String Quartet No. 3 - Furioso
                      04.  - Elegie
                      05.  - Con spirito
                      06.  - Intermezzo
                      07.  - Sehr ruhig
                      08.  - Dotted crotchet = 84
           
                      Eight Movements after Hölderlin Fragments
                      for string sextet

                      09. Schönes Leben
                      10. Doch uns ist gegeben
                      11. Es kommen Stunden
                      12. Wie wenn die alten Wasser
                      13. Die Linien des Lebens sind vershieden
                      14. Und unstef wehn und irren
                      15. Weh mir, wo nehm' ich
                      16. Das Herz ist wieder wach

Arditti String Quartet
             Irvine Arditti: Violin
             Graeme Jennings: Violin
             Garth Knox: Viola
             Rohan de Saram: Violoncello

Thomas Kakuska: Viola [09-16]

Valentin Erben: Violoncello [09-16]

Cerha, Friedrich

(b Vienna, 17 Feb 1926). Austrian composer and conductor. He studied at the Vienna Music Academy, where his teachers included Uhl (composition) and Prihoda (violin), and later, on the recommendation of Schiske, attended the Darmstadt summer courses (1956, 1958, 1959); he also studied philosophy and German studies at the University of Vienna (DPhil 1950). In 1958 he co-founded the ensemble Die Reihe with Schwertsik. Its regular concerts from 1959 gave a platform not only to a wide range of new compositions, but also to the work of the Second Viennese School, especially Webern. After the ensemble’s first foreign tour in 1962, Cerha embarked on an international conducting career. He has also been an active champion of early music, founding the ensemble Camerata Frescobaldiana in 1960 and producing several editions of 16th- and 17th-century Italian music. He is perhaps best known for completing the orchestration of the third act of Berg’s Lulu (1962–78). In 1959 he was appointed to teach at the Vienna Academy (later the Vienna Hochschule), where he later became reader (1969–76) and professor (1976–88).

Influenced by musicians and theorists active in the ISCM who carried on the inheritance of the Second Viennese School in postwar Vienna, Cerha also associated with artists and literary figures who regarded themselves as a kind of avant-garde opposition to the ‘official’ conservative cultural life of Vienna. While many of his compositions of the late 1940s and early 50s, such as the Divertimento ‘Hommage à Strawinsky’ (1954), owe something to neo-classicism, others, such as Ein Buch von der Minne (1946–64), are characterized by an extreme reduction of materials and an avoidance of traditional developmental processes. Although impressed by serial procedures, particularly their way of ‘eliminating the old experience of time’ (Cerha, 1969), he was critical of the tendency for isolated events to lose their individual significance in serial music. As a conductor under the influence of Josef Polnauer, he kept his distance from Webern’s anti-expressive, pointillist interpretations.

Cerha’s compositions of the mid- to late 1950s, such as Deux éclats en reflexion (1956), Formation et solution (1956) and Espressioni fondamentali (1957), develop serial ideas, but assume individualized forms through distinctive expressive content and audible developmental procedures. In Relazioni fragili (1956–7) and Intersecazioni (1959) sound-aggregates produce a static effect, while colour and complexity of sonority occasionally take on form-determining functions. In 1959, with Mouvement I–III, Cerha began to compose using planes (or areas) of sound (Klangflächenkomposition). Each of these three pieces is restricted to a single characteristic sonority; musical interest results from changes or events that take place within that otherwise constant sound-configuration. He pursued this technique on a larger scale in the orchestral cycle Spiegel I–VII (1960–61), in which musical development derives primarily from the combination of sound blocks.

Expansion of parts of an earlier work (Exercises) led to the composition of Netzwerk (1962–7), a stage work that introduced a new phase in Cerha’s compositional style. Its intermediate sections, called ‘Regresse’ (‘reversions’), abandon the musical language characteristic of Cerha's previous works, with its conscious avoidance of stylistic reminiscence, in favour of more conventional structures. This return to more traditional means of musical expression, at times involving the combination of quite disparate styles, became more pronounced in the compositions that followed. Both Curriculum (1972–3) and the Double Concerto for violin and cello (1975–6) combine a wide range of heterogeneous materials, and this synthesis of diverse idioms is taken even further in Baal (1974–80), Cerha's first opera in the conventional sense. Its portrayal of fate of the poet Baal reflects the fundamental theme of all Cerha’s stage works, namely the relationship between the desires of the individual and the demands of social order. The highly expressive character of the music is often cited as reminiscent of Berg’s style.

Beginning in 1980, Cerha frequently returned to earlier projects, resuming work on them from a new perspective. He has remarked that for him innovation does not lie in the creation of the material itself as much as in the act of shaping it. His wish to expand his musical language and exploit a wide range of musical possibilities has led to the increasing influence of non-European music on his style, especially in such works as Der Rattenfänger (1984–6) and the string quartets (1989–90).

Markus Grassl
[From The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians]