Pleasurable turmoil

The Ensemble für Neue Musik Zürich, founded in 1985, is characterized by remarkable consistency. Within the sextet, changes took place slowly and unspectacularly. Certain themes kept reappearing, and the ensemble remained loyal to many of its fellow musicians. The CDs are always released by Werner Uehlinger, whose new label ezz-thetics continues to cross boundaries. The two most recent CDs once again feature soprano Jeannine Hirzel and baritone Niklaus Kost as well as composer, arranger, violist and conductor Sebastian Gottschick - another happy collaboration.

A first Songbook with arranged songs by Charles Ives (has now art 183) now follows Another SongbookThe result is not a reverent and fussy transcription for the ensemble, but a joyful program in which the singers and the ensemble cheekily throw themselves into the mix, as the roles are not always so clearly assigned. But Ives was not a man of simple orders, he let things loose on each other. You can feel that here from the very first note, the choral masses of Majority. The transcendentalist aspects of Ives, for example in Thoreauare lovingly worked out. Incidentally, he has also set German texts to music. The criticism that he has I do not resent was worth a remark to him in his printed edition - which is of course also quoted on the CD.

Gottschick has learned from such a free approach to music history as a composer. In his own pieces, to which the second disc is dedicated, echoes appear again and again, including references to composers such as Heitor Villa-Lobos (the Concertino with the subtitle Bachianas Suisas) or with choral fantasies for Protestant church music. With his Walt Whitman setting Whispers Of Heavenly Death he also draws a line back to Ives. But it would be inadequate to hear and interpret this music only as metamusic. It follows the rhythms and motifs far too stubbornly for that, allowing itself to be carried away or playing with them. In a completely unromanticized way, lucid and also plausible sound images are created, very diverse in style, imaginative in approach, pithy in instrumentation.