Heinz MARTI Portrait (orchestral &
chamber works)
Grammont CTS-P 22-2
Many (most?) countries have national organisations (equivalent to our BMIC
& NMC) to promote their music and its recordings, and those of smaller
countries which are so liable to be overlooked in UK concert programming
are well worth investigating. A recent visit to Switzerland to review
Zurich Opera for S&H has
prompted a fresh look at some of the Grammont Portrait Series. These are
all well recorded and informatively presented, with biographical notes, analyses
of the music and illustrations.
Heinz Marti (b.1934) is represented by two orchestral and three chamber
works dating from 1972-85 Mask for three orchestral groups is closely
modelled on Mahler'sWo die schönen Trompeten song, with a 'masked'
version of the trumpet call after each strophe. Full orchestra is avoided,
reflecting the song text's melancholy. By contrast, Growing Threat is
a vast crescendo of intensity to suggest modern civilisation's relentless
destruction of its environment. Correspondance (... à la sourdine)
for violin & piano has identical melodic lines for both instruments,
but proceeding in opposite directions; a large scale retrograde inversion,
perceptible by ear alone only intuitively. Echoes of Distress for
piano & harmonium evokes the suffering of a gifted painter whose most
creative period was after committal to an asylum in 1923, where he spent
his last 20 years; the unworldly music, with its weird sound spectrum, questions
our behaviour towards people excluded from 'normal society'. Response
for string trio in seven sections considers its source material from various
perspectives.
Marti's idiom tends to be reserved, but with emotional intensity not far
below the surface. Serious, exploratory music that repays repeated hearing.
A recent work by his composer son Valentin was successfully introduced to
Zurich Opera House at an
Opera
Nova concert attended by Seen&Heard.
Peter Grahame Woolf
