Elmar LAMPSON
Mysterienszenen
Elmar Lampson’s music has got what is commonly referred to as “soul.” It becomes apparent in the way the music embraces the listeners and accompanies them through time in images of sound. The Mysterienszenen were inspired by the Mystery Dramas of Rudolf Steiner, with whose ideas Lampson (whose grandparents had personally witnessed Steiner’s performances) became acquainted already as a young man.Both works relate to the old tradition of confronting scientific knowledge with mystical knowledge. Ye…
I Hate Mozart
"Why do I have to sing Mozart all the time?", the tenor in Bernhard Lang's opera "I hate Mozart" cries out in despair. Well, why always listen to Mozart operas and not an opera of the early 21st century for a change? With their provocatively named contribution to the Viennese Mozart Year 2006, composer Bernhard Lang and librettist Michael Sturminger succeeded in creating a parody of the opera business that loses none of its sharp wit in the CD recording. The "backstage insights" supplied on DVD …
FADENKREUZE
For Elmar Lampson, composition and the phenomenology of music overlap as disciplines, and attentive listening is as critical to his works' reception as is analysis of their carefully timed structures or pitch content. Lampson's String Quartet No. 2 (1992-1998) operates on several aural planes, some near and easy to distinguish, and others more remote and indistinct. The material shifts between active, atonal flurries and soft, almost lyrical passages of modal simplicity, and the extremely soft d…