Balz Trümpy

Oracula Sibyllae is a portrait of the Swiss composer Balz Trümpy by the El Cimarrón Ensemble, for whose members the title work was written and to whom it is dedicated. Four instrumental pieces for guitar, marimba and flute lead into it from different directions. All five works are heard here in their first recordings.

Trümpy was born on 4 August 1946. He studied piano, theory and composition at the Basel Music Academy. He was assistant to Luciano Berio from 1975 to 1978, and from 1979 until 2011 taught theory and composition at the Basel Hochschule für Musik. He has described feeling obliged, when young, to belong to the serialist avant-garde, without any talent for it. In the end, he says, his programme was simply the wish to write beautiful and coherent music. The ensemble was founded in 1999 by Michael Kerstan, Ivan Mancinelli and Christina Schorn. Here Schorn plays guitar and Mancinelli marimba and percussion, with flautist David Gruber, soprano Johanna Greulich and bass-baritone Robert Koller. The disc is a coproduction with Radio SRF 2 Kultur.

The Ballade (2005) for guitar opens the disc, followed by the Cinque pezzi per marimbafono (2013), five virtuosic character pieces. Aeolian Song (2011) is for solo flute. The Vier Duette (2009) for marimba and guitar are dedicated to the duo of Schorn and Mancinelli. Each duet grows from a basic constellation of dialogue between the two instruments, whose combination yields colours neither has alone.

Oracula Sibyllae (2008), for soprano, baritone, flute and percussion, joins two earlier works on the sibyls. Carmen Sibyllae for baritone and percussion sets the ancient Oracula Sibyllina, alternating noise and ecstatic song. Oratio Sibyllae for soprano and flute draws on the Cumaean Sibyl's warnings in the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid. For Trümpy, composing is a way to bring something from other dimensions into our reality of time and space. This piece, at 24 minutes, makes that clearest. His music has been played at Donaueschingen, the ISCM World Music Days, the Davos Festival and the Lucerne Festival.

CD, Wergo WER 7335 2, released in 2016.