*2022 Stock.* Starting off with a merry, but very cautious fairytale melody, the little figures trip down a spiral staircase, then move in sudden rash movements across the stage, hide behind a tree or a rock, stick their heads out in a peek-a-boo-manner, look cautiously around with big apprehensive eyes, then dart forth again, to the next hiding spot – until they feel more at ease, and expose themselves center stage, holding hands or arms, dancing around, still looking and listening, in the spotlight, while the rest of the stage is in darkness… This is “Formel” (“Formula”) which Stockhausen composed in November – December 1951, directly following “Kreuzspiel”. Once again, like the case was with “Drei Lieder” on the Edition Volume 1, I find this piece too actually behaving like choreographic music, extremely well suited for a fairytale ballet, though I’ve seen no mentioning of that anywhere, and not in the notes to this CD either. In fact, Stockhausen keeps the notes on “Formel” very short, almost as if he’d like to rush by it (even though the first four pages of the score are reprinted in the booklet). However, I do not want to leave this piece too hastily, because the fantasies it starts in me, of little tin soldiers, princesses, clowns, poor peasants and a little fairy, somewhere in a little sleeping child’s room in the world, make me feel very very comfortable and childish, very childishly adventurous. “Schlagtrio” (“Percussive Trio) was composed in 1952. It immediately strikes me as a relentlessly forward-moving force, like Destiny, or like the passage of time. I get analogies to a work by Luciano Berio; “Eindrücke”, though that was composed much later than “Schlagtrio”, and for orchestra, while Stockhausen’s piece is written for the wonderfully stripped-bare and naked instrumentation of a piano and 2 x 3 timpani. It takes a musical genius to shape great music out of these small means, and Stockhausen does it. It shows a highly intricate structure, in ever-changing geometrics, giving intellect and emotion more than their due, as you jump on this moving force and ride along, getting the feeling of invincibility yourself, for some illusionary moments. “Spiel” (“Game”, “Play”), composed 1952, hits hard on opening, with a combination of percussive and stringed instruments, in which the percussive sounds get more space than in just any average chamber piece. The sounds of the strings remind me of the way Swedish composer Allan Pettersson uses his string sections in his symphonies, like alarms from the soul, or like signals from within distress or sorrow or an inward vulnerability – or just like swift Japanese calligraphic signs on a piece of rice paper! Allan Pettersson (1911 – 1980) was for most of his life over-looked in Sweden (except for his Seventh Symphony), but now he has been released in extenso by the German label CPO; Classic Produktion Osnabrück). However, in other aspects, “Spiel” has more in common, like was the case with “Schlagtrio”, with music like Luciano Berio’s “Eindrücke”, though “Spiel” presents a much more intricate structure. Sven-Erik Bäck’s “Ein Spiel um ein Spiel” (“A Game Around a Game”) is also remotely related to “Spiel”. Stockhausen’s “Spiel” progresses in a swaying forward motion, in an atmosphere of something very powerful, yet also meditative and introspective, until it just slowly and mellowly fades out after sixteen minutes. It is the last piece Stockhausen divided into movements; it has two; 4’23 & 11’38. The last composition on this CD is “Punkte” (“Points”) from 1952/62. It is the longest work on the CD with its 27’37. Stockhausen – as the dating hints – rewrote “Punkte” in 1962. He says: “In the new version, points are only seldom simply tone points: they become the centers of groups, formations, swarms, vibrating masses, nuclei of micromusical organisms.” In the booklet accompanying the CD Stockhausen goes deeper into the explanation of the structure and into his compositional methods. - Sonoloco.com