This ECM debut album introduces Swiss maverick-composer Alfred Zimmerlin to the international public with excellent performances from three leading Swiss chamber groups.
Alfred Zimmerlin (born 1955), who won an early international reputation as an improvising cellist, has long been known in his native Switzerland as a prolific composer of strong sonic imagination, assured technique and resourceful talent. His catalogue of more than 70 compositions includes solo pieces, music with live electronics alongside works for radio and film.
The ECM debut album introduces him with three attractive works for small forces, all of them in performances both energetic and sensitive. "Euridice singt", a 35 minute "Szene" for soprano, oboe, cello, piano and tape is based on a libretto by Swiss poet, rapper and free improviser Raphael Urweider. Not Orpheus himself is the central character in this intelligent rendering of the much-used operatic subject matter from Greek mythology but Euridice, whose death is shown here as the very catalyst for Orpheus' artistic awakening. A most diverse array of musical elements makes for unsettling listening.
The interest in a formally elastic integration of heterogenous materials lies at the heart of Zimmerlin's aesthetic in which the concept of the "column of time" plays a central role - the awareness that many layers of the historical past are communicating with each other while providing the fundamentals for a genuinely "contemporary" music. In Zimmerlin's strangely sensuous compositions there is space for expressive cantabile, the sound of prepared instruments, noises of musique concrÞte and even rap.
Personnel: Ensemble Aequator, Aria Quartet, Carmina Quartet