HEINER GOEBBELS – The Italian Concerto – CD – IDA024

With Chris Cutler, The Icarus Ensemble, Sira and Boubacar Djebate, Johannes Bauer, Tiziano Popoli, Jocelyn B. Smith and the Orchestra of the Teatro Popoli, Bologna, conducted by Yoichi Sugiyama, this is a rare release from one of the pioneers of contemporary cross-platform composition. Working with montage, superposition and elements of different musical languages, Heiner sidesteps genre to concentrate on the material. This CD comprises four high quality (world premiere) recordings that feature a disparate set of compositions performed at a three-city festival organised by Angelica in 2007. The Italian concerto/Tutti Writing marks a now vanishingly rare live appearance from Heiner in an extended duet with Chris Cutler, concluding with TuttiWriting, in which they are joined by the Icarus Ensemble. This is followed by Ou bien Sunyatta for Kora, Voice and Orchestra, Die Faust im Wappen, derived from a story by Franz Kafka, for trombone (Johannes Bauer) and orchestra and So that the blood dropped to the earth, for orchestra and voice adapted from Surrogate Cities. These are remarkable and substantial pieces.

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