Marina Syomina:
Klaus, tell us how music came into your life and why you chose this path and this profession.
Klaus Lang:
Unlike many of my colleagues, I don't come from a musical family: my mother worked as a secretary, my father was a teacher. But my family attached great importance to education and saw music as one of its most important components. Since my childhood I was surrounded by art and it interested me: I read a lot and was enthusiastic about music. At the age of twelve or thirteen, it was clear to me that I wanted to become a musician. This was not by chance, but I was influenced by role models and books, as is often the case with musicians. It was my own conscious decision. I learned to play the piano and was also very involved with music.
Marina Syomina:
In one of your interviews you say that you see music as a free acoustic object, valuable in itself, and that music is time made audible. What role does the composer play in this case?
Klaus Lang:
From the 19th century to the present, music has generally been perceived as a form of self-expression. It is supposed to reflect the author's own feelings and emotions. If we look into the past and turn to the Baroque period, for example, we can see that music at that time belonged to the sphere of rhetoric, that is, it was a kind of means of communication. Music could convey joy or love, but composers and performers did not express their own feelings in it. In my work, I go even further back in time - to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (I'm talking about Western culture), when there was no concept of rhetoric. Just as an:e artist:in creates paintings and a:e sculptor:in creates statues to be placed in space and looked at, I create complete musical objects without translating my emotions into them. Music in this case is not a means of communication. My compositions can evoke feelings in the listeners. They can please and inspire them, but I do not address the listeners directly.
Marina Syomina:
Is the author's personality present here or is it left out?
Klaus Lang:
Let me give you another example from music history. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach created a famous work - Fantasia, in which he expressed his deepest personal feelings. His father, Johann Sebastian Bach, on the other hand, wrote in the tradition of rhetoric without revealing his own feelings in his music. His works are subject to the strict rules of counterpoint. Nevertheless, they evoke a certain emotionality in us, and in his music one can undoubtedly trace the style of an individual author.
Marina Syomina:
Let's turn to today's concert at the Pushkin Museum. Please tell us what work is played today and how it was created.
Klaus Lang:
The concert is called "The Geometry of Counterpoint". In it we turn to classical linear counterpoint. For this concerto, I was asked to write a work that relates precisely to the contrapuntal tradition. In search of an idea, I dove deep into music history and eventually turned my attention to the beginning of the 15th century and the work of Ockeghem, the most prominent representative of the Franco-Flemish school of counterpoint. He is the forerunner of the Italian composer Palestrina, who, along with Bach, is considered the greatest counterpoint player. When writing my paper, I took into account the fact that the concert will take place in Moscow and turned to Russian art. Russian icons have always fascinated me. Ockeghem composed a lot of spiritual music in his artistic work and icons are also works of spiritual art. I have combined this in my piece.
I especially like the "rizas". These are gold or silver plated metal covers that complement and decorate the bottom layer of paint on the icons. At the same time, the image itself on the icon may be much older than the gold plating that overlays it. I've also always been fascinated by the fact that because of the covering, only small fragments of the icon itself are visible - face, arms, legs. Figuratively speaking, I took Ockeghem's work as an icon and painted the "top layer" for it. First we see a glorious sparkling "fitting" and then gradually darker elements of the "icon" itself appear - the basis of Ockeghem's musical work. This is the concept of my work.
Marina Syomina:
And what is the name of the work?
Klaus Lang:
"Риза" (Riza)
Marina Syomina:
Tonight there will be a contemporary music Ensemble called Klangforum Wien . I know you are working very closely together. Please tell us about this team and your work with the Ensemble.
Klaus Lang:
The music group Klangforum Wien was founded in Vienna some thirty years ago by Beat Furrer, who conducts today. It is one of the best ensembles in the world performing modern classical music. It is called "Ensemble", but it is actually ten or fifteen soloists performing a piece together. I used to play a lot with this great group as an organist. Therefore, it is a great pleasure and honor for me that we are together again today for the first time after a rather long break. By the way, the name "Klangforum" speaks for itself: one of the strengths of the ensemble is the highest sound quality as such, which is particularly important to me personally as a composer.
Marina Syomina:
How important do you think it is for a composer to perform his own work?
Klaus Lang:
Traditionally, composers have performed their own music. And the process of total division of musicians into composer:s and performer:s that took place in the 20th century and that we are experiencing now, I find really strange. I strive to perform my own music. I like to live it myself, experience it, understand it. It's important to me to have that opportunity. I don't want to be a composer who just writes notes. I want to be a composer who can play his own compositions.
Marina Syomina:
Tell us briefly about your impressions of Moscow. Do you like coming here? How do you like the atmosphere here?
Klaus Lang:
I often come to Russia. For example, in June this year I was in St. Petersburg at the music festival ReMusik.org. I know many colleagues there - both composers and performers. Regarding the Russian musical spirit, I see that culture is preserved and present in people's lives, and that music is not only a means of entertainment, but also an integral part of culture. And this is very important.
Marina Syomina:
Klaus, I would like to ask you about the composition we are about to record. Tell us about this work and its genesis.
Klaus Lang:
I wrote this work in the Beethoven Year, commissioned by the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra. As we know, Beethoven was practically deaf in the later years of his life. He communicated through diaries, in which he wrote sentences and showed them to his interlocutors. He wrote them down in pencil. For composers, hearing is the central element of creativity. In my work, I wanted to reflect the phenomenon that contact with the world of music and the ability to communicate depend on what the composer:in writes, not on what he/she hears. In essence, it all boils down to a thin line - a pencil line in a diary. The work is structured so that at the beginning we hear only a "thin line" played by the viola. At the end, the musical fabric is also drawn together in the violin's "thin line." And in the middle of it, a whole world of sound unfolds in its inexhaustible variety. Actually, "Linea mundi" is translated as "line of the world". One can say that this is a thin line that leads into the world, or that it is even the border of this world.
Text and interview: Radio Orpheus, Marina Syomina
Translated from Russian
-> To the interview on Radio Orpheus
