Mikael Rudolfsson – Encounter (2024) [FLAC 24bit/48kHz]

Mikael Rudolfsson – Encounter (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 57:28 minutes | 534 MB | Genre: Avant-Garde Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © NEOS Music

“Encounter” is a colorful term. The English word stands for encounter, meeting, collision, unexpected, touch. Our program also speaks of this diversity of meaning. It lives from vital exchange, from resistance, dangers and surprises, and not least from risk. Our soloist commissioned three of the pieces specifically for this purpose. They were tailor-made for him, although not bite-sized. On the contrary: they challenge you and want to leave your comfort zone.That also applies to Sequence V, which still looks spectacular almost 60 years after it was created. Luciano Berio pulls out all the stops when it comes to experimental sound production. From breathy and muffled tones and noises to the “confused” exclamation: “Why?” The question of all questions – in German, long-formed as “Waruuuuum?” – was the trademark of the clown Grock, who once inspired the composer to write this piece. The role model can also be felt in the scenic actions, the instructions for lighting, movements or gestures. Berio, who famously loved the “polyphony of actions,” takes multitasking to the extreme in a slapstick manner. The performer has to play and sing simultaneously, as if it were a completely new, instrumental style voix humane to generate.

Completely harmless, as it were Four short pieces, is the title of the adventure that Eloain Lovis Hübner prepares for the player and us. The instrument is literally taken apart here, the “good” tone is avoided throughout. All imaginable noise/tone combinations – from shadowy to shrill screeching – can be heard. Aluminum foil, garbage bags, PVC spiral hose and a children’s horn are helpful. In fact, all pipes (including the fourth valve and tuning slide) are blown like a bottle to produce air sounds of various pitches: the trombone as an oversized pan flute. Sometimes you blow without a mouthpiece, close your mouth around the pipe opening or bring your tongue into play. Sometimes you hear popping or rustling, whistle tones, trumpet approach with a more or less stable tone. Lip tension and air supply are varied, inhaling and exhaling are included. All of this – “if possible” – with circular breathing. And: “hold until you run out of air.” Or until the doctor comes. But the trombone simply cannot be broken. Here it blossoms into a whole new life and proves to be “a fragile, changeable system”. The leaflet recommends that the pieces, when played live, be performed in measured doses, not en bloc, but rather sprinkled into the program as intermezzi.

Bernhard Ganders speaks of an elementary encounter Brass 1. Copper meets zinc, from which – alloyed to brass – brass instruments are known to be formed. From the atomic numbers of the metallic elements, Gander derives the rare meters 29/8 and 30/8, which drive the piece forward in constant alternation. Just as the hammering rhythm is vaguely reminiscent of the workshop, specifically of the production of the instrument: those tongue- and lip-twisting tone repetitions in extreme positions that – in the resulting heat – increasingly bend and deform, dissolving into elastically circling figures or chorus passages . The whole thing is a real tour de force, which usually pushes its limits in terms of speed and dynamics. This means distributing your strength well so as not to get out of breath early on.

Konstantia Gourzi creates an eerie encounter full of “amazement, fear and curiosity”. The Encounter. The soloist is confronted with an undefined sound world via playback. He reproduces the changing emotional states, incorporating rhythmic breathing noises, vowels and consonants that are articulated directly into the instrument and are intended to sound sung, whispered or Morse code-like. This interplay of action and reaction intensifies towards the end until the threatening “object” slowly floats away, the noises dissolve into melodies and the soloist “finds his way back to inner balance”. It’s all ok.

The encounter in Gérard Griseys is almost intimate Solo pour deux. Strictly speaking, it is a monologue that takes place in the space between two unequal partners who combine to form a hyper-instrument. Specifically: the clarinet dives into the trombone and both play until their sounds can hardly be distinguished. They float and merge spectrally, shift their tones in glissando, mix them with singing and breathing noises, alienate them with lip and palate vibrato, with multiphonics or mutes. What initially progresses in a calm, pulsating manner continually increases the speed, screams briefly, bursts forth in virtuoso runs and in the end remains open like an unanswered question. It is a Dialogue interior, which requires all sorts of physical and musical agility and sensitivity. The fact that the underlying formal process is derived quasi-scientifically – from the Fibonacci series – does not detract from the “original eroticism” that Grisey evokes here with a wink. On the contrary: the instruments approach and meet each other in the most intimate way, without ever touching each other.

Tracklist:

1-01. Mikael Rudolfsson – Solo pour deux (15:34)
1-02. Mikael Rudolfsson – Sequenza V (09:26)
1-03. Mikael Rudolfsson – 4 Kurze Stücke: No. 1, — (02:33)
1-04. Mikael Rudolfsson – 4 Kurze Stücke: No. 2, — (02:33)
1-05. Mikael Rudolfsson – 4 Kurze Stücke: No. 3, — (02:16)
1-06. Mikael Rudolfsson – 4 Kurze Stücke: No. 4, — (02:28)
1-07. Mikael Rudolfsson – Messing 1 (08:52)
1-08. Mikael Rudolfsson – The Encounter, Op. 100 (13:44)

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