VANESSA BENELLI MOSELL | PIANO
Feature - Stockhausen
Here she is with Stockhausen at the prize giving in 2006.
Stockhausen’s Music
How to understand it? by Vanessa Benelli Mosell In my opinion "understanding" in art is a concept that turns people away from enjoyment of art itself. The distance emphasizes when it comes to approach the arts of XXth and XXIst centuries. I am speaking from a very lucky position, as when I first came in contact with art, music in particular, I was three years old, the first opera I went to was Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky when I was five, and it was "love at first listening" with the music by Stockhausen when attending a recital of Maurizio Pollini at Carnegie Hall in NY when I was eleven years old. I want to clarify that I don't come from a musical family. In my very young age I was not considering the problem of understanding the music I was hearing. Everything started from my personal curiosity and enjoyment. I have always been very receptive and positive regarding contemporary arts: in my teen age, I had a Le Corbusier and Mies Van der Rohe period and have been fascinated by the rational architecture. I wanted to absorb and not to judge (who was I to judge such artworks) all forms of art, especially the ones of our time and of the century before. I wanted to receive and would not deprive me of anything. |
"Vanessa Benelli Mosell has the power to let people appreciate my music." Stockhausen
Internationally renowned for her performances of Stockhausen's Klavierstuecke, Vanessa met the composer for the first time in 2006. Following her recording of Klavierstuecke I-IV featured in a RAI 3 documentary, produced by the music critic Mario Bortolotto, Vanessa was then invited by the composer himself to study with him in Germany. Since that time until the unexpected death of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Vanessa had been working closely with the famous composer, receiving much critical acclaim and prizes for her interpretations. 
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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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