Circles around Schönberg and Suter

As in the chamber music piece related to Robert Schumann Hommage à R. Sch. by György Kurtág prevail in the work dedicated to Robert Suter (1919-2008). Hommage à R. S. expressive miniatures. These include not only the two suites for piano (1943 and 1945) and the very short piece Epilogue - tome reminiscence (1997) by Robert Suter, but also the composition inconceivable en Forme de Suite for singing and speaking voice and piano (2011) by Claudia Sutter.

The musician, who has become known as a pianist, singer, lyricist and director of the Basel concert series "Le Salon bleu", feels a kinship with Robert Suter. His basic principles served her as a model for her vocal suite, which combines her own texts with a poem by Ingeborg Bachmann: Archaic, intimate, abstract and virtuoso. With its inclusion of the speaking voice and expressive gestures, the composition is reminiscent of unbelievable to Schönberg's Pierrot lunairewhich stood at the beginning of Robert Suter's compositional development.

Like Claudia Sutter in her composition, Robert Suter also circles around the German chansons for voice and piano (1978 and 1987) by the Viennese twelve-tone pioneer. In his German Chansons (Brettl songs) with the Swiss composer, along with the lyricists Otto Julius Bierbaum and Frank Wedekind, the light tone, irony and that typical Viennese charm that also characterizes Georg Kreisler's chansons, which are related to Suter. In Suter's witty refrain songs and the other gems, the artist is just as convincing as a sensitive alto as she is as a pianist in the free-atonal piano suites. The way she shapes trill chains and legato slurs, astounds with a wealth of tonal color even in pianissimo passages and remains faithful to the musical text down to the smallest dynamic detail is deeply impressive.

Hommage à R. S. Robert Suter: Suites for Piano No. 1 & 2, German Chansons for voice and piano ; Claudia Sutter : unfassbar en forme de Suite for voice and piano. Claudia Sutter, piano, alto voice and Sprechgesang; Leslie Leon, mezzo-soprano. Guild GMCD 7382