Michael Riessler

Héloise is the live recording of a project by the clarinettist, saxophonist and composer Michael Riessler, recorded at Donaueschingen on 17 October 1992. Riessler's ensemble tells, in music, the love story of Pierre Abélard and Héloise. Improvisation here works on theme and harmony, and on historical European styles reaching back to the Middle Ages. In that period Arab cultures influenced Europe, and modal playing lived alongside thorough bass.

Riessler was born in Ulm in 1957. For this project he gathered a ten-piece group: Valentin Clastrier on hurdy-gurdy, Michel Godard on tuba and serpent, Renaud Garcia-Fons on bass and Rabih Abou-Khalil on oud, with others on accordion, harp, cimbalom and percussion. The concert was recorded by Südwestfunk Baden-Baden, with Achim Hebgen as recording supervisor and Max Federhofer as engineer. Riessler wrote the liner notes.

The thirteen pieces run from a 22-second fragment, Neulich, to the six minutes of Nocturne and Comme dans un train pour une étoile. Several titles point to the world of Abélard, such as Wilhelm von Champeaux, Paraklet and Sic et Non. Clastrier composed three of them: Paraklet, Organistrum and Comme dans un train pour une étoile. The motto Wergo attaches to the project is a sentence of Abélard: "Truth is created by questioning and kept up by disputation." In the music this becomes a constant exchange between written structure and free playing. Instruments of medieval and folk origin, hurdy-gurdy, serpent, oud and cimbalom, sit beside clarinet, saxophone, tuba and bass.

The recording received the quarterly award of the German Record Critics (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik). In the Frankfurter Rundschau (24 October 1992), Hartmut Lück heard "stunningly fresh scenes with instrumental ties across all historical and cultural boundaries". Bernd Feuchtner, in Der Tagesspiegel, praised the "supreme instrumental virtuosity" of the ensemble and described Riessler as a clarinettist at ease from jazz and ethnic music to Stockhausen.

CD in digipak, Wergo WER 8008 2, released in 1993 in the WERGO Colours series, total time 54:22.