Abrahamsen: Schnee

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The scene is set by a pertinent note from the composer, keen to avoid the impression that the rarefied nature of his music makes it wantonly cerebral - something which those who give this disc... — Gramophone Magazine, August 2010 More…

Release Date: 1st Feb 2010
Catalogue No: 9101592
Label: Winter & Winter
Length: 58 minutes

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Abrahamsen: Canon 1A - Ruhig aber beweglich

Work length8:40

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Abrahamsen: Canon 1B - Fast immer zart und still

Work length9:13

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Abrahamsen: Canon 2A - Lustig spielend, aber nicht zu lustig, immer ein bißchen, melancholisch

Work length6:57

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Abrahamsen: Intermezzo 1

Work length2:00

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Abrahamsen: Canon 2B - Lustig spielend, aber nicht zu lustig, immer ein bißchen melancholisch

Work length7:25

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Abrahamsen: Canon 3A - Sehr langsam, schleppend und mit Trübsinn (im Tempo des "Tai Chi")

Work length6:52

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Abrahamsen: Canon 3B - Sehr langsam, schleppend und mit Trübsinn (im Tempo Des "Tai Chi")

Work length7:19

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Abrahamsen: Intermezzo 2

Work length1:56

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Abrahamsen: Canon 4A (minore) [Hommage à WAM] - Stürmisch, unruhig und nervös

Work length2:34

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Abrahamsen: Canon 4B (maggiore) [Hommage à WAM] - Sehr stürmisch, unruhig und nervös

Work length2:41

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Abrahamsen: Intermezzo 3

Work length0:37

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Abrahamsen: Canon 5A (rectus) - Einfach und kindlich

Work length1:06

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Abrahamsen: Canon 5B (Inversus) - Einfach und kindlich

Work length1:11

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“Hans Abrahamsen’s Schnee is a wonder. How to say how? It is a sequence of aural images of snow, in some cases onomatopoeic (the swish of brushing off a wooden deck, the soft ease-crunch of steps through a fresh snowfall) but more often poetic, suggesting crystalline whiteness, cold light, gentle falling. It is a set of ten canons, ten systematic processes in which the same ideas are floating in slow spirals seen in mirrors. It is a study in melancholy (and joy). It is a succession of five pairs of movements, where the second in each pair repeats the first, as if the first had been music on glass and could now be overlaid on something else. It is simultaneously time standing still, splitting, revolving and accelerating away—standing still because we are held under the spell of a basic melody throughout, splitting because layers will move at different speeds, revolving because the same ideas are constantly being refracted and reformed as layers knock against one another, and accelerating away because the movements get shorter and shorter, from nine minutes down to one for a total length of just under an hour. A tune picks itself out right at the top of the piano as one of the string instruments keeps repeating a superhigh harmonic, almost pitchless, creating gasps of intensity, fire in ice. This is the pristine sound world, new and unforgettable, established at once. The tune is repeated and then overlapped, in the first intimation of the kind of interference pattern of past and present that is one of the most remarkable features of the work. On a larger scale, the entire first movement (for piano quartet, sounding as no piano quartet ever did) is embedded in the second (for the full ensemble, adding a second piano, percussion and three woodwinds), and on the largest, perhaps all the movements are doubles of one another. Certainly every listening, of which there will be many, brings new relationships into focus—though it is easy, too, to be snow-blinded by the beauty, which persists immovable, through changes of character, speed and tuning, adjustment to the last being accommodated in three short interludes.” Paul Griffiths

Reviews

August 2010

The scene is set by a pertinent note from the composer, keen to avoid the impression that the rarefied nature of his music makes it wantonly cerebral - something which those who give this disc the benefit of any doubt will surely agree.

Abrahamsen: Schnee

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