Mauricio Kagel

In 1961 Mauricio Kagel wrote a piano piece with two titles. Played alone it is Metapiece; played together with other music, simultaneously or in alternation, it becomes Mimetics. On Mimetics the pianist Sabine Liebner takes up that open invitation and builds a whole programme of Kagel's piano music around it, with first recordings among the tracks.

Kagel (1931-2008) left the combination open: the other pieces could be by himself or by any living composer. Liebner's answer is to use only Kagel's own piano works, so the disc becomes a journey through his writing for the instrument across more than two decades. She recorded it in 2017 in Studio 2 of the Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich, in a coproduction with BR Klassik. Liebner had already recorded Giacinto Scelsi for Wergo, a disc mentioned by MusicWeb International in its review of this one.

The six parts of Mimetics alternate with the four Cuatro piezas para piano of 1954, which are played in their original form. Both are short, atonal and aphoristic, with extreme dynamics and angular shapes and MusicWeb heard in them a subtle play of sonority and articulation. In An Tasten (1977), a piano étude built on triads, a version of Mimetics is laid over the étude and subverts it. MM 51 (1976), subtitled a piece of film music for piano, is theatrical, with a ticking metronome and chords that recall the cinema. To close, Metapiece appears on its own in a solo version of about twenty minutes.

Liebner's response is unusual because it turns a conceptual offer into a single continuous recital, in which Metapiece surrounds the other works, alternates with them or is laid over them, and finally stands alone. The reviewer compared the triadic writing of An Tasten to the tintinnabuli style of Arvo Pärt. Reviewing the disc for MusicWeb International, Dominy Clements called it "another fine performance of some intriguing music in superb sound". He added: "You can reject it as having no clothes, but then you discover that it cares deeply about what you think."

CD, Wergo WER 7363 2, released in 2017, a coproduction with BR Klassik.