This is the first CD recording of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Tierkreis (Zodiac) in the version for organ. Stockhausen (1928-2007) wrote the cycle of twelve melodies of the star signs for music boxes. Here the melodies are arranged for organ and recorded by Dominik Susteck at St. Peter in Cologne, on an instrument built for contemporary music.
Susteck, born in Bochum in 1977, studied church music, composition and organ in Essen, Cologne and Saarbrücken, and was organist of the Cologne church from 2007 to 2021. He recorded the project at St. Peter's Art Station. Since the 1980s this Catholic church has combined worship with contemporary art, and it has become both an exhibition venue and a place for new music through its concerts and services with 20th- and 21st-century repertoire. Its organ, built by Willy Peter and inaugurated in 2004, consists of a four-manual great organ and a three-manual choir organ with 104 stops in all, including additions such as a siren, a saxophone and a percussion set with cymbals, drums and xylophone.
The twelve melodies run from Wassermann (Aquarius) to Steinbock (Capricorn), each between about one and a half and four minutes. Susteck groups them in threes and places one of his own Improvisations after each group, four in all, so that the cycle and its commentary alternate. Each improvisation lasts between four and a half and almost six minutes, longer than any of the melodies. He describes his reading of the work as “frozen musical movement”, in which the instrument no longer sounds like an organ but like a colourful, agile and dynamic being.
Stockhausen composed Tierkreis in 1974 and 1975 and published it himself through the Stockhausen Verlag as opus 41½. The number places it next to Musik im Bauch, opus 41, written in 1975 for six percussionists and music boxes. The score allows any melody or chordal instrument, and Stockhausen went on to make versions with voice, for chamber orchestra, for clarinet and piano and for trio. An organ, with its sustained tone and its choice of registers, is one more answer to the open scoring. The booklet notes are by Susteck and Rainer Nonnenmann, and the disc runs to 48 minutes.
CD, Wergo WER 6736 2, released in 2011.
