Alfred Zimmerlin

---

Kammermusik
Order Reference:	EWR 9605
Medium:	CD
Composer:	Alfred Zimmerlin
Performers:	Dünki / Frey / Aeschbacher / Capt / Hefti / Moster
The three pieces on this CD are related insofar as Alfred Zimmerlin has attempted here to bring together and make a theme of the two opposing sides of his musical activity: on the one hand as an improvising musician and on the other as prescribing composer:
In "Clavierstück 4", for example, one can easily hear how Zimmerlin is posing himself relatively simple and therefore perceivable compositional problems from segment to segment. Much of this comes across like an improvisor who wanted to take a closer look at some problems which occurred to him while playing.
In "Klavierstück 5", Zimmerlin retuned part of the piano microtonally. With the resulting intervals a continuous play evolves between nearness and strangeness, between seduction and repulsion. lf this gigantic piano piece produces something like a metaphysical shiver, it is because we lose every possibility of classification. We can only rely on the music itself.
The experiences of the improvising cellist are most clearly poured into the "Klarinettenquintett", since what he tries to achieve here as a composer is almost self-evident in improvised chamber music: a coexistence of differing time layers.This can be beautifully demonstrated by the end of this piece, in which the instruments gradually unleash themselves from their context and start to gyrate in themselves. lnto this monadic circle the beginning of the piece (recorded in a different space and put through loudspeakers) resounds. Because of impulse sounds used in this music from the beginning, an extreme "togetherness" prevails and individual time-freedom is absent. The most important tension of great chamber music, the tension between autonomy and its dissolution in togetherness, is with this ending both fulfilled and newly created.