Schwertsik's music
is eclectic, stylistically gregarious
and accommodating. Its accent is on
tonality despite his 1950s studies with
Stockhausen and Kagel. Before appointment
as professor of composition in Vienna
University he had been second horn in
the Vienna Symphony Orchestra so he
knows the orchestra. He lives in Vienna
with his wife Christa, a soprano with
whom he gives song recitals. His German
father was killed on the Eastern Front
during the second world war. His influences,
on the evidence of the music to be heard
here, include Bernard Herrmann (he is
a science fiction buff), Sibelius, Nyman,
Stravinsky (overwhelmed by hearing Le
Sacre as a teenager he there and
then determined to become a composer)
and Panufnik.
Irdische Klänge
is said to owe its existence
to Stockhausen's Trans (1971).
Perhaps this voice can be heard in the
first of the two episodes but a proto-Sibelian
minimalism trudges and patters through
the fascinatingly emphatic second section
and reappears in the second of the Op.
45 pieces.
The Op. 45 work
is in five sections and was written
to complement Op. 37. It is more tonal
and even emotionally filmic with breathy
bottle noises and even Arnoldian whoops
enriching the fabric. Wind and thunder
machines provide delicate touches to
the colour-world of the piece and there
are yet more Sibelian woodwind interjections
- deliciously cheeky and propulsive.
Elysian running water noises cool the
fourth episode while the final picture
rasps with rambunctious Stravinskianisms
and the sort of Ligeti sounds you get
in the nightmare sections of Le Grand
Macabre.
Op. 60 is full
of brassily energetic confidence with
military whoops and a destructive sneer
suggestive of the tragedy and disillusion
of 1930s Berlin. The timpani and side-drum
assault of the last few minutes is unyielding
and heartless.
The single movement
Uluru (Ayers Rock)
has the listener in a dream-world which
occasionally coasts close to film music.
Schwertsik had visited the famous rock.
This piece has an inwardness not always
found in the other pieces. The song
of the butcher bird weaves in and out.
This is a major piece of lyrical writing
at times indebted to Mahler's famous
adagietto (the Adelaide violins
do sing out their hearts), to
Sibelius's Tapiola and to Rubbra
- if this is not too rudely miscellaneous
a juxtaposition. It is an extremely
impressive piece with a sure symphonic
stride.
Tree Songs is
in six movements. They lack the cohesive
charge of Uluru but have a varied
American accent - rather like the stark
aspects of the writing of Carl Ruggles
and William Schuman. The sehr gedehnt
movement has a small town smile
to it and a light dancing step. This
makes for a contrast with the predominance
of harshly sphinx-like Stravinskian
stamping gutturals.
A sprinkling from the
cruet of 'modernism' across a palette
that takes in Stravinsky, Sibelius,
Schuman, Mahler, Ruggles, Copland, Arnold
and Herrmann (surely North by North-West
must have been in Schwertsik's mind
when he wrote the final panel of Tree
Songs).
Rob Barnett
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra/David Porcelijn