The star of German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann has been on the rise; some of his forbidding modernist scores are tough going for average listeners, but his opera Die Soldaten continues to draw new performances. His music employs serialist techniques but looks outward from them to such influences as African-American music. The latter can be heard in the last movement of the Violin Concerto, innocuously marked as a "Rondo" but opening with brassy rumba rhythms. The Violin Concerto makes a good place to start with ...
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The star of German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann has been on the rise; some of his forbidding modernist scores are tough going for average listeners, but his opera Die Soldaten continues to draw new performances. His music employs serialist techniques but looks outward from them to such influences as African-American music. The latter can be heard in the last movement of the Violin Concerto, innocuously marked as a "Rondo" but opening with brassy rumba rhythms. The Violin Concerto makes a good place to start with Zimmermann's music and its principle of vivid contrast: the difficult orchestral sections are juxtaposed with lyrical violin lines, given the desired lushness here by soloist Leila Josefowicz. Photoptosis (1968) is another varied score featuring motor rhythms, a harsh, futuristic surface, a quotation from Beethoven's Ninth, and more. Which leaves Die Soldaten, which so flummoxed its commissioning musicians at the Cologne Opera that they declared it unplayable. In response, Zimmermann devised...
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