Search - Huber, Maier, Stochl :: Cantiones De Circulo Gyrante

Poweful overall effect.

01/27/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I don't usually like modern works that use a speaker to recite poetry to music. Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon works, I think, but Berio's Laborintus II doesn't, nor have many others, until this work by Huber. He has a male speaker, accompanied by double bass, recite Heinrich Boll's bitter and angry poem about the destruction the Germans wrought on their victims and ultimately brought upon themselves (when their cities were bombed). This is set against the background of choral settings of Hildegaard of Bingen's mystical accounts of visions, with music drawing on modern serialism as well as early music. The overall effect is stunning, putting the listener into a sort of double time-frame, of eternity (with visions of love overflowing the universe) as a backdrop to modern horror. This work is a powerful attempt by a modern German composer to come to terms with the awful legacy of 20th-Century German history."