without words

I don’t know, some times, one feels like prussian icarus…

Kino Dynamique Jena: This time I couldn’t resist doing a movie myself. The result can be seen here, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Waldesnacht (Johannes Brahms) is sung by the King’s Singers – Buy their CD’s! – they are great.

Enjoy!

For a while now I am caught by the concept of “Historically informed performance“. So I use this change to once more present an amazing example of music out of this “genre”:

Christina Pluhar has become one of the most recognized musicians in this domain. Her ensemble “L’Arpeggiata” already featured a high quality selection of guests like Philippe Jaroussky and many others. From her work with Nuria Rial, a spanish soprano, comes this beautiful and musically astonishing interpretation of Giovanni Felice Sances’ (c. 1600 – 1679) “Stabatar Mater” (Lyrics):

Enjoy!

This tiny bit of music is particularly interesting because of its arrangement – try to follow individual voices – you will see, it’s quite hard Especially in this amazing interpretation by the King’s Singers.

Download the score la, la, la, la je ne l’ose dire.

A friend of mine introduced me to Spinosi’s interpretation of Vivaldi’s Op. 439 “La notte” – I found it amazing and fresh. Thus I want to share this amazing pice of music with you:

(Unfortunately I could not find the scores for the Vivaldi online beside this one at Google Books which is quite restricted.)

Also check out this Telemann interpretation (TWV 52:e1): which is as impressive as the Vivaldi above.

The Kino Dynamique Jena (KDJ) festival offered a spot for filmmakers from all over the world to meet and work together producing short movies. They got 60 hours of time for developing an initial idea, filming, cutting, post-processing and presenting the movies in a public screening at the Schillerhof cinema – plenty of time so to say
Nico Herzog came up with the Idea to visualize the flute playing and the sounds coming from the instrument. Izabela Spaleniak and me used the opportunity to help out Nico playing a improvised voiceless dialog with our flutes. The title “Der Besondere Kuß” actually originates from an article by Arthur Schopenhauer, who stated that the flute player’s lips actually form the shape of a special gentle kiss rather for a beloved one than for an instrument. Probably, this is one reason for the very special relation between flautists and their instruments – I like that idea

See the result:

Thank you Iza, Nico and Mathias for your support and of course: Thanks to the people who organized the festival!

Also have a look at some other movies produced at the festival here!

Recitativo:

Er hat uns allen wohlgetan.
Den Blinden gab er das Gesicht,
die Lahmen macht er gehend;
er sagt’ uns seines Vaters Wort,
er trieb die Teufel fort;
Betrübte hat er aufgericht’t
er nahm die Sünder auf und an;
sonst hat mein Jesus nichts getan.

Aria:

Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben, aus Liebe,
aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,
aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,
Von einer Sünde weiß er nichts, nichts, von einer Sünde weiß er nichts.

daß das ewige Verderben und die Strafe des Gerichts nicht auf meiner Seele bliebe.
Aus Liebe, aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,
aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,
von einer Sünde weiß er nichts, nichts, von einer Sünde weiß er nichts. 

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben

Download Score from Werner Icking’s Archive

Indian (here Hindustani) classical music has an amazing depth. Often misunderstood as Jazz alike in the western worlds it represents an other rich but very different approach to reach the highest spheres of musical culture beside the western classical music. (isn’t “classical” actually a quite inapplicable term?)