VANESSA BENELLI MOSELL | PIANO
Feature - Stockhausen
I feel the XXth century has been giving the world such a vast and diverse Arts heritage. The key is the parameters. Starting from our music schools to concert seasons, society has continued to give us the simple, old and wrong parameters in use, such as pleasure, beauty, happiness, unhappiness, tonality, harmony and all things we like on the surface, to harshly judge music, without taking any care of the natural its evolution.
Whether we "like" it or not, whether we receive from it any pleasure or not. Art is free. Free from all parameters. It can be related to them. Music can be about everything, can express feelings, can provide enjoyment, express beauty and ugliness, frustration and madness, personal ideas and original structures but those are the stories that it tells to us. It is not the substance of itself but the infinite possibilities of it.
Technologies offered to composers in the 1960s were giving Stockhausen the possibility to explore a new conception of Sound, as one of the most extremely important element in his piano music. Nowadays the use of these technologies would sound pathetically ancient.
At the time, the acoustic instrument seems not be enough for the demand of his piano music. Ideally electronics can provide a much wider range of sounds and which are potentially more expressive. I tried not to have just an acoustic limited range of sounds : listening to most of his electronic music works has been extremely helpful to get the inspiration for the kind of imaginative sounds required on the acoustic instrument.
Lately Stockhausen would go back to research on the natural durations of Sounds on the acoustic piano with "Natuerliche Dauern", something that can only be explored on a live instrument.
The experience of his music has been very strong since the beginning. When I first met him, it was in order to give him directly in his hands the recording I made of his I-IV Klaviestücke. He looked at me with surprised eyes and after two weeks he wrote me a letter home, telling he was carefully listening to my recording, over the past weeks and he would enjoy working with me on these pieces together in Kuerten.
His remarks were very few, and this has been extremely meaningful for me as I was obliged to look back on my work to keep understanding him. His music asks for precision in rhythm and tempos, fidelity to the text, big range of dynamic levels and especially coherence between them, personal interpretation. The score is very detailed and there are many interpretational signs such as dynamics, touches, tempo remarks and indications which give the performer a huge freedom, despite what one could think, as each remark is subjected to a personal approach and interpretation: that’s why the few recordings of his piano pieces are completely different from each other.
When the idea of recording his piano pieces came up, he told me that if I would want to make it happen it should be for the reason to make a better version then the latest recording, the one himself curated for his recording label. I took the challenge, having always been always inspired by the music and the score.
© Vanessa Benelli Mosell, 2014
Whether we "like" it or not, whether we receive from it any pleasure or not. Art is free. Free from all parameters. It can be related to them. Music can be about everything, can express feelings, can provide enjoyment, express beauty and ugliness, frustration and madness, personal ideas and original structures but those are the stories that it tells to us. It is not the substance of itself but the infinite possibilities of it.
Technologies offered to composers in the 1960s were giving Stockhausen the possibility to explore a new conception of Sound, as one of the most extremely important element in his piano music. Nowadays the use of these technologies would sound pathetically ancient.
At the time, the acoustic instrument seems not be enough for the demand of his piano music. Ideally electronics can provide a much wider range of sounds and which are potentially more expressive. I tried not to have just an acoustic limited range of sounds : listening to most of his electronic music works has been extremely helpful to get the inspiration for the kind of imaginative sounds required on the acoustic instrument.
Lately Stockhausen would go back to research on the natural durations of Sounds on the acoustic piano with "Natuerliche Dauern", something that can only be explored on a live instrument.
The experience of his music has been very strong since the beginning. When I first met him, it was in order to give him directly in his hands the recording I made of his I-IV Klaviestücke. He looked at me with surprised eyes and after two weeks he wrote me a letter home, telling he was carefully listening to my recording, over the past weeks and he would enjoy working with me on these pieces together in Kuerten.
His remarks were very few, and this has been extremely meaningful for me as I was obliged to look back on my work to keep understanding him. His music asks for precision in rhythm and tempos, fidelity to the text, big range of dynamic levels and especially coherence between them, personal interpretation. The score is very detailed and there are many interpretational signs such as dynamics, touches, tempo remarks and indications which give the performer a huge freedom, despite what one could think, as each remark is subjected to a personal approach and interpretation: that’s why the few recordings of his piano pieces are completely different from each other.
When the idea of recording his piano pieces came up, he told me that if I would want to make it happen it should be for the reason to make a better version then the latest recording, the one himself curated for his recording label. I took the challenge, having always been always inspired by the music and the score.
© Vanessa Benelli Mosell, 2014
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