Konrad Boehmer (1941-2014): The Piano Works. Klangstrück I (1958, Potential II & III (1961), Nordisches Liedchen (1975), In Illo Tempore (1979), Tango deslavado y moroso (1984), Kinderlied zu Dresden (1990), Orpheus unplugged (2000). Nicolas Hodges . BVHaast CD 0901 (no copyright indication) barcode 786497475926
Recorded 28-29 December 2000 and 13-14 August 2001 at Bloomline Coryphée, ‘s Gravendeel, The Netherlands
What a Boehmer!
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 2 December 2013
Sorry, I couldn’t refrain myself from the title. But it does express my feelings.
Konrad Boehmer is a German composer born in 1941 and he was still alive when I first posted this review. He was the youngest pupil at Stockhausen’s composition course in Darmstadt in the summer of 1959, and later was active at the electronic music studios of the West German Radio in Cologne. He moved to Holland in the late 1960s.
The early pieces, Klangstück I from 1959 and Potential II and III from 1961, sound uncompromisingly and intractably “contemporary” and serial: lots of pointillistic single notes and crashing chords all over the place. The original “Potential” was first called “de-composition” and was a semi-determined piece in which (to quote the composer), “a fully determined, serial musical texture was to be combined with textures which were only partially defined in pitch and/or duration (…) supposed to be assembled by the performer himself and to be inserted into the original texture”. Apparently the semi-aleatoric results weren’t very convincing and Boehmer subsequently elaborated three fully-determined versions, of which Hodges plays here II and III.
“Tango deslavado y moroso” from 1984 is a world apart – the title says it all: it can be translated by “Washed out and dawdling Tango”, but it is interesting for combining the melodic strains and dissonances of tango into a language of contemporary music; the tango survives. No wonder it was premiered by Ivar Mikhashoff. “Nordisches Liedchen” from 1975 was written for the piano class of his two little nieces, and is exactly that: a tonal, simple little song.
The three recent pieces written in a truly contemporary language, “In Illo Tempore” (1979), “Kinderlied zu Dresden” (1990) and “Orpheus Unplugged” are less pointillistic than the early serial pieces, but they pound a lot, often furiously. “Kinderlied zu Dresden” was inspired by Boehmer’s presence at the demonstrations in Dresden on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of East Germany, and is a deconstruction based on Schumann’s song on an ironic text of Goethe, “Die wandelnde Glocke”, a symbolic spoof on the failure of the German revolutions of 1848/49. Boehmer has the pianist shout the text (excerpts from Goethe’s poem, updated to fit the 1989 situation) in a kind of demented Sprechgesang, over pounding piano. It sounds like a modernized version of Berg’s mad scenes in Wozzeck (and I’ve experienced that Berg’s orchestra reduced at the piano can sound furiously pounding). Of “In Illo Tempore”, Boehmer says that it is “conceived as an audible history of keyboard music”, making no actual quotation but staging “all the attitudes which have been adopted by keyboard-players towards the instrument (as well as its quickly developing technique and music since the Middle Ages): all gestures and `attacks’, which are here melted into a single composition.” On the menu it seems pretty appetizing, but sorry Konrad, I simply don’t hear it. What I hear is 30 minutes of mostly furious pounding, an while the sheer decibel power and energy spent by the pianist can be very impressive, I found it very soon very monotonous. Same tricks and same piano pounding in “Orpheus unplugged”, a kind of preparatory study for “a music theatre piece” Boehmer was working on, but now it comes with the tape recording of three poems by Albert Ostermaier (texts provided, but no translation), read by himself in a very matter of fact tone that could be used for reading the newspapers, mixed with various real sounds that Boehmer recorded in Greece, France, Rome, Oslo: one wonders why he went so far, since wind, thunder, rustling river, hoisting crane, sawing machine, heartbeat of an unborn babe and even (despite Boehmer’s claim that they benefited from the “wonderful acoustics” of St Peter’s Cathedral in Rome during the night hours) “pissing and farting” sound alike wherever you record them, especially if they are going to be mixed beyond recognition and covered by the din of the furiously pounding piano. All this sounds to me absolutely vain, and I will avoid Boehmer’s music theatre piece if I can, when it is completed.
Nicolas Hodges is brave to have tackled Boehmer’s piano music, but there is nothing here that I feel requires permanent presence of the shelves of my music library.