Search - Killmayer, Bavarian Radio, Munich Radio :: Yolimba

Just wunderbar!

Wayne A. | Belfast, Northern Ireland | 03/31/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In a just and proper world Wilhelm Killmayer's "Yolimba" would be as well-known as West Side Story. This is a "show' by one of the greatest composers around (that's one of the best kept secrets around!)full of great tunes, zany fun, and utterly amazing music that somehow manages to successfully blend together Broadway, Vaudeville, Cabaret, Kurt Weill, Orff, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg. Plus you get a big non sequitur production number celebrating the efficiencies of the postal service. It's all about a mad scientist who creates--Frankenstein-like-- an irresistibly beautiful woman who shoots to death any man who utters the word "love." How can you resist?!



Killmayer is an enigma. He comes from the "people's music" school of Orff (in fact I think he studied with him) and went on to become a member of what's sometimes known as the Third Vienna School--a populist neo-hippie group that included other worth-looking-into composers HK Gruber and Kurt Schwertzig. In a nutshell, these were guys who got very tired of the Second School and wanted to write music most everyone would enjoy.



Killmayer is perhaps the most talented of the bunch and he's composed far more interesting music, some of it not so accessible. His dazzling off-beat-ly post-modern settings of poems by Holderlin just might be the great song cycle of the latter part of the last century (out of print, natch). It sounds vaguely like Strauss if he'd lived to see 1995. Killmayer's music has an effortless, unselfconscious post-modern poly-stylist quality that causes one to seriously worry about the likes of Bolcolm and even Schnittke. I suspect he is a true musical genius who feels little need to force profundity on people, especially during the last quarter of the last century. Sometimes I suspect he might be an all-time great who has decided to lay low a bit.



This work here is also just great fun but hardly fluff--every time I hear it I uncover ironic references and cute jokes that slid by me before. The singing and performance overall are breathtaking. Highly recommended, especially for its "Jeez, why isn't this better known!" quality. One of my desert island discs."