For
many, this will fall into the category of ‘difficult’ music – elements
of improvisation, pre-recorded or electronic sound effects, a
diversity of instruments, some of which would seem more at home
in a toy shop than the concert hall – these are a few of the
ingredients which make up the staple diet of Duo Conradi-Gehlen.
Having
bitten the bullet and decided that it’s about time to listen
properly and explore what’s going on here, you might be pleasantly
surprised to find that you have more in common with some of the
music than you expected. Beginning with the Grand-Daddy of ‘chance’ music,
John Cage, the Sounds of Venice are quite literally that:
taped sounds of church bells, singing gondoliers, a cat’s meow
and birdsong among other things. Cage’s score also calls for
live sounds, which in this version come in the shape of sporadic
percussion and some cruelly spanked guitar strings. In all this
is quite a gentle experience with which to start, allowing the
ears to adjust and learn to ‘expect the unexpected.’
Swiss
composer Stefan Lienenkämper sets the two guitarists either side
of a ghetto blaster, whose intended effect in Mind the gap… is
to bring the sounds of the street into the concert hall, rather
than the other way around. Striking matches, crumpling cans,
running water, footsteps, cars and other noises accompany sometimes
mellifluous, sometimes more freely atonal guitar playing, and
the piece ends with that familiar London Underground announcement – nostalgia
for old ex-pats like myself and a nice, light gesture in this
otherwise serious, serious musical world.
Alexander
Raskatov was born in Moscow, and completed his studies at the
Moscow Conservatoire in 1978. Stykhyra has a spiritual
text which is from an Old Russian hymn of praise for the Mother
of God icon. The text is distorted by using falsetto voice and ‘horse-like
singing’, with a lot of air in the sound. The guitars engage
in hocketing and Zappaesque following of the vocal line, but
the impression is above all one of the elemental forces of mysticism
at work – a musical ritual which dwells in a deep dark hole in
the ground.
Bucharest-born
Violeta Dinescu is the only female composer represented here. Ismaïl şi
Turnavitu is written for two electric guitars and is based
on a short story by the Rumanian author Urmuz (1883-1923), whose “bizarre
leaves” can be seen as a forerunner of a kind of Dadaism in literature.
Dinescu uses heavy reverb, which gives the guitars a heavy, rumbling
quality which almost breaks out into a kind of jazz idiom on
occasion. There is some sustained wandering around and some moments
of nice nuance, but very little sense of direction as far as
I could make out.
Bernd
Franke’s Half-way house - SOLO XFACH (für Joseph Beuys) is
part of a work cycle called SOLO XFACH begun in 1988, and using
the work of Joseph Beuys as a starting point. This long piece
has some subtle layering of sounds, the juxtaposition of live
playing and tape, which enhances a sense of space. Live performances
also involve specific lighting directions and varied positioning
of the musicians within the performing space. Given that such
visually conceived ‘aural sculpture’ will always work better
live, duo Conradi-Gehlen are given plenty to get their teeth
into. I’m not sure grinding glissandi on guitars with heavy distortion
will be everyone’s cup of tea, but there is certainly a sense
of sound manipulating shapes in space. About halfway through
there are more tonal elements added, and recognisable sounds
from piano (sometimes transformed into cracks of lightning) and
violin, rendered surrealist by their disembodied appearances
at differing levels and locations. I was almost convinced, but
if a ticking clock had appeared in the backing track I would
have been the first to shout ‘Pink Floyd!’ and been thrown out
of the auditorium.
Knowing
the possibilities of the e-bow – a compact electronic device
which can sustain notes on guitar or piano strings indefinitely,
I was looking forward to Eckhart Beinke’s 68 – part one for
two e-bowed electric guitars. It’s nice to hear sounds appearing
from nothing, but the intervals and textures used in this piece
are so open and empty sounding for the most part that the novelty
soon wears thin. There are some moments of counterpoint, but
these are either rhythmically stagnant or melodically fairly
uninspired – Robert Fripp did it better in my opinion. The CD
ends with another version of Cage’s Sounds of Venice which
sounds almost identical to the first version.
As
with almost any release of this kind, some tracks will ‘grab’ you
more than others, but there is always something for the receptive
mind to absorb and digest. Guitar fans can revel in a wide variety
of sonic effects, and serious, serious, serious composition
students can have their horizons broadened, although there is
very little the serious composer won’t have encountered already – assuming
he or she has made it to one or other of the serious, serious, serious New Music Fests we love
to hold here in Europe.
Dominy Clements
Duo Conradi-Gehlen: Stefan Conradi & Bernd
Gehlen. 
