Logo: takte
Das Bärenreiter Magazin
  • Portrait
  • Music Theatre
  • Orchestra
  • Contemp. Music
  • Complete Ed.
  • Publications
  • Calendar
  • Contact

Deutsch wechsle zu deutsch

Premiere in Prague: Miroslav Srnka’s “No Night No Land No Sky”

Miroslav Srnka
No Night No Land No Sky for chamber orchestra
Premiere: 18.5.2014 Cologne (Philharmonie), Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, conductor: Aziz Shokhakimov
Scoring: 2,2,2,2 – 2,2,0,0 – timp – str
Publisher: Bärenreiter, performance material available on hire

Photo above: FloKu www.photocase.com – portrait Srnka: Kl. Bermannová

Miroslav Srnka’s new composition for chamber orchestra receives its premiere in the Philharmonie Cologne. The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, conducted by Aziz Shokhakimov, performs.

In No Night No Land No Sky for chamber orchestra, Miroslav Srnka develops a seemingly unending tonal landscape, changing within itself. The classical orchestra, with double wind and timpani, becomes the place of a development repeatedly expanding from fine, focussed moments to dense, laden sound fields, then returning to the reduced texture – as if looking into an unending frozen landscape, as if attempting to focus individual contours within it, to then be lost again in the expanse, without being able to make out whether they are driving masses of snow, solid ice surfaces or simply shrouded skies.

This powerful pull of a continual developing movement is based on a dynamic harmonic field, elastically stretched in the passage of time. The treatment of the tonal forces reflects this flexible constellation: double wind and brass are handled from time to time as double parts, as if one part is played by two instruments, and sometimes a large, double-choir ensemble of soloists is created from the chamber orchestra. Or it is treated like a group of soloists in a Concerto grosso, then homogeneous tonal groups are brought together again in episodes. The chamber orchestra scoring is a challenge to develop a completely separate tonal world, which constantly generates new kinds of events and constellations. The continuous changing of the tonal space can be compared with the fluctuation between extreme temperatures, and freezing paralysis or blazing burning are evoked by the instruments in different registers and with different playing techniques. A fluctuation between states with unexpected turning points and an uncertain outcome.

Marie Luise Maintz
(Translation: Elizabeth Robinson)
(from [t]akte 1/2014)

<- Back to: Contemp. Music

Deutsch wechsle zu deutsch

Contemporary music

Premieres of Works by Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini
The individual and the collective. Miroslav Srnka’s “Superorganisms” for Berlin
A harpsichord concerto! Miroslav Srnka’s new work for Mahan Esfahani
Beat Furrer explores the secret life of things
Premieres by Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini
New works by Charlotte Seither
“Sixty years in the groove: Dieter Ammann”
Music out of music. Philipp Maintz’s new ensemble work and chorale preludes
Spannungen. Matthias Pintscher premieres and first performances
Torsten Rasch’s “Die andere Frau” – first performance in Dresden
Charlotte Seither member of the European Academy of Sciences
Beat Furrer: premieres in Donaueschingen and Vienna
“Singularity” – Miroslav Srnka’s Space Opera
Tireless progress. The death of the Swiss composer Rudolf Kelterborn
Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini’s orchestral work to complement Mahler’s 4th Symphony
ImprintData Protection