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from the booklet: The music in Entre Deux Guerres claims
to be political. How can Eichmann's composition fulfill this claim,
when there is no words to be sung or spoken? The days when you
could play marches or have the roar of canon fire on stage are
over. Mere sound illustration is too banal and imitating a siren
will at best evoke wild derision.
Radical concentration is the basic tool in Eichmann's musical
language. There is no hint of reconciliation, no compromise, no
repetition, quotation, nothing to appeal to cliché, pathos, or
sentimentality, nothing that is not always new (unlike Shostakovich's
Seventh Symphony, where war rears up like a huge bulky cylindrical
drum forever rotating around its own axis). Furthermore, Entre
Deux Guerres refuses to even hint at entertainment, or seemingly
concede to any listeners' sensibilities. It leaves no room for
mercy. (...) Eichmann's music is cruel in order to make you aware
of your own ready acquiescence to the state of permanent warfare;
it reveals our own moral failure, it is the sound of the cynicism
which makes war still acceptable, two hundred years after the
Enlightenment, still unaccomplished as it is, and the articulation
of the natural human rights, and to the accompaniment of concepts
of an 'eternal' peace somewhere else.
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reviews:
The German pianist Dietrich Eichmann works both as
a free-improvising musician and as a composer. This CD is a recording
of the 1999 world premiere of Eichmann’s Entre
Deux Guerres, a “concerto for solo piano and fourteen
instrumentalists.” The score contains no elements of improvisation
or indeterminacy, and the scrupulously atonal musical language
is drawn from the vocabulary of contemporary composition; this
is thus a disc that falls more or less outside of Cadence’s
remit. Yet the impact of the players like Cecil Taylor or Eichmann’s
piano teacher Alex von Schlippenbach on the piece’s piano part
(expertly played by Christoph Grund) is unmistakable, and Eichmann’s
unusual choice of instrumentation (electric guitar and two percussionists
sit alongside a string quartet, an accordion and various woodwinds)
is clearly influenced by his interest in jazz and rock.
This is a piece – as the title announces – preoccupied
with the wars of the 20th century. If I have a bone to pick it
is primarily with its rather narrow manner of dealing with that
subject-matter: the score carefully avoids lament or satire, opting
instead for a continuous dissonance which rarely rises to all-out
sonic violence but scrupulously avoids any sense of musical resolution.
If this is a “concerto for piano” it is nonetheless a piece informed
by the post-Schoenbergian questioning of traditional hierarchies
of foreground and background, soloist and accompaniment; in the
absence of such musical hierarchies the pianist stands out from
the other instruments primarily through the greater rhythmic freedom
and complexity of his part. Entre Deux Guerres is
divided into four parts that run continuously; it’s not easy (given
the composer’s careful avoidance of obvious structural logic or
repetition) to intuit the design of the piece as a whole, but
certain landmarks are clear. The centre of the piece finds the
ensemble splitting apart: part IIb finds the pianist dropping
out for a prolonged period, while part III is a seven-minute piano
solo full of ghostly ruminations. The lengthy final section starts
almost schematically with two extremes: an abrupt descent into
silence, and an equally abrupt blast of noise. But the movement
thereafter, for all its busyness of texture, enacts a gradual
withdrawal rather than a climax or summing-up, very gradually
sputtering out into silence.
An interesting disc, within its chosen aesthetic territory.
–
Nate Dorward, Cadence Magazine,
December 2002
Dietrich Eichmann is both a composer and a free improviser. One
facet of his activities informs the other, giving him a different
grasp of indeterminacy in music. There is no chance or improvisation
involved in "Entre Deux Guerres," the 46-minute work
featured on this CD. Everything is written down, but some sections
were obtained through free improvisation that was later notated.
It gives the music an unusual momentum, free-flowing yet rigid,
like a showroom dummy placed in a pose that suggests freedom.
If it sounds like Eichmann has failed, it is not the case. Ambiguity,
tension, and forced movements of this sort are at the heart of
this work. The title "Entre Deux Guerres" is a French
expression that designates the historic period between the first
and second World Wars (1918-1939) — literally the "between
two wars." Presented as a "concerto for solo piano and
14 instrumentalists," it would be better described as being
scored for 15 soloists. Except in part three where it is featured
in a cadenza, the piano rarely takes center stage and the distinction
between soloist and ensemble gets as thin as possible — soldiers
working toward a same goal but surprisingly refusing any form
of authority except for the battle plan. It sounds like highly
controlled chaos, reminiscent of Edgard Varèse's most dynamic
pieces. Christoph Grund had the difficult task of negotiating
scored improvised gestures. Members of the SWR Symphony Orchestra
Baden-Baden and Freiburg perform on strings, brass, woodwinds,
percussion, electric guitar, and accordion. This work is not entertaining,
neither is it pleasant. Eichmann's views on war are forcefully
negative and he made no attempt to tone them down. The music leaps
at the listener, aggressive, challenging, uncompromising, punishing.
The demonstration is at times cold but makes for a rewarding listen
and it will surely stand as a landmark in Eichmann's oeuvre.
–
François
Couture / All Music Guide
Composer
and improviser Eichmann has kindly sent me a copious bunch
of his recent and past releases, and I’m happy to report about them pretty
regularly, since the man fathers music that is difficult, stimulating
and provocative, often all of the above in a single outing.
Such is the case of this “concerto for solo piano and
fourteen instrumentalists”, where everything was carefully
notated but I’ll be damned if these scores don’t
sound like a complex collective improvisation, except for selected
moments (for example pianist Christoph Grund’s soloist
spots, which reveal him as a brilliant interpreter, very much
in line with Eichmann’s score and intentions). The concert,
of which the CD contains the première, was recorded
in Karlsruhe on October 1999 and executed by the soloists of
the SWR Symphony Orchestra conducted by David R.Coleman. Its
concept is essentially based on the “beastly” characteristics
of war, although detailing this without quoting large chunks
of Harald Borges’ explicative notes would be too complicated
for the scope of a review. Let’s just say that there
is neither a “hook” or “refrain”, nor
anything that could be memorized or instantly sung back. The
aspects of Eichmann’s architecture range from bitter
to violent: many bursts and explosions, scarcity of smooth
sections (in any case scarred by acrid dissonances). A potentially
unifying instrumental element may be Teodoro Anzellotti’s
accordion, maybe the only fairly “static” presence
in an otherwise perennially boiling cauldron, yet even that
is soon swallowed by the general sense of barely repressed
rage that the music seems to exalt. It’s an intriguing
record that nevertheless won’t emerge as “appealing” after
twenty tries. Certainly not for everyone, significant just
the same.
– Massimo
Ricci, Touching Extremes
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