There's just one GBSR concert left this year, but it's a humdinger.
Sunday 3rd Dec 7:30pm at Kings Place, we team up with living legend Ian Dearden of Sound Intermedia once again to present key Stockhausen surround-sound works. There will be costumes. There will be theremins. There will be brain-buffeting spatialised FM synthesis!
Leaving KONTAKTE aside for once (although our recently New York Times -acclaimed recording is always available here...), we're focusing this time on some of Stockhausen's still more ambitious later explorations of multi-channel surround sound: COSMIC PULSES, STRAHLEN and SYNTHI-FOU.
The cutting-edge object-based surround-sound d&b Soundscape system currently installed in Kings Place Hall 2 allows the movement of the pieces' sound objects around the hall with revolutionary clarity and verisimilitude, offering a one-off chance to hear these highly complex masterworks presented with more detail and depth than ever.
Details of the programme:
Simon Stockhausen performs SYNTHI-FOU
First up, Siwan plays SYNTHI-FOU, the first of Stockhausen's Klavierstücke to be written for synthesisers. And is it ever – the piece is a colossal hyperactive multi-keyboard workout, requiring the player to create and perform on 131 different electronic voices distributed across four keyboards, jumping between them at great speed while portraying the character of the "Synthi-Fou", a deranged electronic music addict. On top of all of that, the player performs at the same time as Invasion-Explosion, the eight-channel electronic from DIENSTAG aus LICHT. It is one of the manic high-points of Stockhausen's virtuosic mid-LICHT period.
The Sala de Cámara and Sala Sinfónica of Auditorio Alfredo Kraus, Gran Canaria -
the double venues of HOCH-ZEITEN's premiere
From the first of Stockhausen's electronic Klavierstücke to the last, GB will perform STRAHLEN, the unrealised Klavierstück XIX in Stockhausen's version for vibraphone and ten-channel electronic music. This posthumously-realised work reinterprets a central musical passage of SONNTAG aus LICHT – music which constitutes both the choral music in HOCH-ZEITEN, the infamous two-venue work for choir and orchestra, and the synthesiser music of SONNTAGS ABSCHIED, the final passage of the final opera of LICHT. Quite unlike any other Stockhausen work, it is beatific, austere, and quite stunning.
Stockhausen's plot of some of the movements of
sound layers in COSMIC PULSES
Finally, the big boss, the game-end supervillain of Stockhausen's oeuvre, COSMIC PULSES, a work that Paul Driver likened to the "background roar of the universe". A terrifying, controversial, overpowering octopus of a piece, this work has to be heard in its full eight-channel glory to be fully believed, let alone comprehended. The at-times overwhelming STRAHLEN has ten voices of music in five different tempi; COSMIC PULSES has twenty-four layers, at twenty-four different speeds, in almost constant motion around the audience. A presentation with Ian D at the helm of the d&b Soundscape system promises to be a life-changing experience. A light pre-concert dinner is recommended.
We would dearly love to see you there for this concert, which we are extremely grateful to Kings Place for putting on.
