Detlev Glanert: Italian memorial
(June 1998)Following the successful premiere of Detlev Glanert’s opera The Mirror of the Great Emperor in 1995, the Mannheim National Theatre commissioned a new orchestral work from the composer which was premiered on 17 March this year, conducted by Jun Märkl. At the focus of the new score, entitled Katafalk, is Italian opera, and the whole lyrical tradition from South of the Alps which had exerted a similar musical pull on Glanert’s teacher Hans Werner Henze.
The funerary title of the work implies that this human world of Mediterranean song and theatre is lost to us for ever, and can now only be viewed from our contemporary perspective in memorial or nostalgic terms. Katafalk takes the listener on a dreamlike walk through a graveyard where we stumble across monuments, aphorisms, fragments and relics which trigger memories of songs, homing in on a quotation from Puccini which is revealed as the theme behind the orchestral metamorphoses. Like many of Glanert’s most important works, and as described by the Mannheimer Morgen reviewer, "it is music about music - a homage, albeit wistful".
"The music is born out of silence. Drip-drop motifs coalesce into a haze of colours before splintering off again. With woodwind rhythms providing the backbone, the music becomes animated and more robust, stirred still further by violent discharges, until at the climax a melody steps forward, raised aloft like an icon into the sunlight... With four bars from the Intermezzo of Puccini's Manon Lescaut Glanert glimpses the 'South' - one of those beloved verbal images conjuring up the warm beauty of a sensuous, immediate yet deeply-felt art from an irretrievably lost past." Mannheimer Morgen
Other recent Glanert events include performances in Krefeld of The Mirror of the Great Emperor in the new production first seen at Monchengladbach last season, and the German premiere of Symphony No.3 on 20 May by the Heidelberg Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Thomas Kalb. The first performance of the symphony at the 1996 BBC Proms did much to establish the composer’s reputation in the UK, and he makes a welcome return visit to London on 6 June for an all-Glanert portrait concert at the Royal Festival Hall. This early evening event is part of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series, and the programme includes first UK performances of the Chamber Symphony and Chaconne, and the composer in conversation about his music.
> Further information on Work: Katafalk
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