Customer Reviews

Karlheinz Stockhausen: Gruppen / Punkte

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I can only discuss "Gruppen", and do so because I know this piece well, and am displeased with 2 of the other reviews offered. Most of the latter I cannot make any sense of at all, and I will not make any pretense at doing so. This music is for the listener sitting before his Hi Fi, and not a mathematician, or an analyst trying to follow with a copy of the score. A roller coaster ride is enjoyable merely for the experience itself - the mathematics of the angles and bends and speed versus gradient etc are irrelevant to this entertainment. I enjoy "Gruppen" because it is a fascinating dialogue between groups or soloists of a large ensemble of musicians. There is one section, for instance, where a trombone and piano seem to be trying to imitate each other. It is exciting, playfull, humorous at times, colourfull, and the experience is on a grand scale! It doesn't seem to be trying to say anything; no moods and certainly no gloom and doom, and no pointless gaps of silence or meditation. It's just a wonderfull concert of orchestral chatter in which you cannot guess what's going to happen next. You don't have to have any special training to be able to enjoy this experience!

To get to the point: (1) this is one of Stockhausen's best pieces; it influenced Boulez' own orchestral writing (in Pli selon pli and Figures/Doubles/Prismes, for instance), and was ripped off by Berio (in Tempo e Tempi, I think); it superimposes different tempi, as did Zeitmasse for wind quintet, although in much denser form (and is thus comparable to Carter's orchestral work from the Orchestra Variations onwards). Robin Maconie, author of the definitive book on Stockhausen, thinks "Gruppen" was influenced by the dense textures and spatial experiments of American orchestral music (Ives, Brant). (2) Peter Eotvos is a veteran who has been working with Stockhausen for at least 40 years or so (he was part of the Stockhausen Ensemble in the 1960s, together with Kontarsky, Johannes Fritsch, perhaps Christoph Caskel). (3) One of the reviewers is slightly wrong about "Punkte," which is an earlier piece (1952) than Gruppen (1955-57), not later (although it was revised in 1962). (4) There is another CD performance of this piece by Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic, but Eotvos is very worth having. (5) This music is indeed unjustly neglected, as reviewer notes. It may be hard going, but is also quite spectacular (as in the build-up to the climax, which comes fairly near the beginning, and is led up to with plucked strings and percussion from all three orchestras). The way the orchestras throw long held wind chords around the space points straight ahead to "Carre" and to parts of "Pli selon pli" (first movement, "Don"), as noted. You will rarely hear this live, since it requires many more rehearsal hours than anyone but a European state-subsidized orchestral can afford (i.e. the Suedwestfunk, once upon a time...).

When I started listening to contemporary classical music (aka Neuemusik, or New Music) in 2000, the name Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) loomed large over that soundscape. It was quite frustrating to find that very little of his extensive output was widely available. At that time he had asserted copyright control and most of the recordings of his music were available only from his own Stockhausen-Verlag company in Germany by airmail, with astronomical handling charges. What little Stockhausen I heard was not at all impressive, and I decided to move on to other sounds.

The situation dramatically changed with the release of this Budapest Music Center disc in 2006. These are superb recordings of "Gruppen" and "Punkte," two major Stockhausen compositions for orchestra, with Peter Eotvos leading the WDR Sinfonieorchester Koln, recorded in 1997 and 2004. Eotvos (b. 1944), the Hungarian composer and conductor, was a regular member of the Stockhausen Ensemble from 1968 to 1976, and so has an intimate working knowledge of Stockhausen's scores and thinking about how they should be performed. Stockhausen was long based in Koln (Cologne), and "Gruppen" was commissioned by, first performed by, and first recorded by the WDR, so clearly this is the most authoritative orchestra to perform the legendary work. (WDR stands for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, or West German Radio.)

"Gruppen (Groups) for 3 orchestras" (1955-57 -- 24'30) is written for an orchestra of 108 players, divided into three groups of 36. Each group is about half strings and the other half equal numbers of woodwinds, brass, and percussion, the percussion both pitched and unpitched. "Gruppen" was pathbreaking in many ways. Theoretically it was an example of total serialism, an attempt to rigorously structure every aspect of the composition. The instrumentation is unorthodox, emphasizing percussion and deemphasizing strings. Spatialization is central to the sound, with the three groups placed to the front, left and right of the audience, with sounds moving dynamically, leaping, sometimes hurtling, from one group to another. The three groups play simultaneously at different tempos, requiring three conductors. Of course much of this is lost on record, but Stockhausen himself thought this Eotvos recording was the best yet when released in 2006, and made it available through his own mail order website. Contrary to what one might imagine, "Gruppen" is actually a quite delicate tracery of sound, not a massive onslaught. According to Stockhausen, it is actually a synthesis of orchestral, chamber and solo music. Lacking melody, repetition, sonata form, and other recognizable features, "Gruppen" is a journey into unknown terrain. One way to think of it is Webern's "Symphony (Op. 21)" expanded in every dimension.

"Punkte for orchestra" (1952/62/94 -- 26'24), as Richard Toop notes in the liner notes, "is both earlier and later than 'Gruppen'." The first version was composed in 1952, but Stockhausen replaced it with the chamber work "Kontra-Punkte," and did not publish it until ten years later. It premiered at Donaueschingen in 1963. More changes were made in 1966, and the version here was finalized in 1993. While not as pathbreaking as "Kontra-Punkte," "Gruppen," or "Gesang der Junglinge," in its own right "Punkte" is a powerful, radical work. In fact I find it to be more immediately gripping than "Gruppen," which requires more concentration. Using a unified orchestra and longer tones, it has a greater sense of purpose and momentum.

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Here is a list of extant recordings of "Gruppen" along with a recent and a forthcoming performance:

FIRST RECORDING (1965)
WDR -- Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Maderna & Michael Gielen conducting
This is the recording found on Stockhausen Edition No. 5 available from Stockhausen-Verlag. (And perhaps available on vinyl...) The premiere performance was by the WDR on March 24, 1958 with Stockhausen, Maderna, and Pierre Boulez conducting.

ABBADO & the BERLIN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA (1994)
The BPO is led by Claudio Abbado, Friedrich Goldmann and Marcus Creed in this recording. It seems generally acknowledged that it is not as authoritative an account as those by the WDR.

RATTLE & the CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (mid-1990s)
Simon Rattle, John Carewe and Daniel Harding are the conductors of this performance, available as Volume 6 in the DVD series "Leaving Home: Orchestral Music in the 20th Century." It was recorded in Birmingham as part of the CBSO's Toward the Millennium Series. This is a stealth version that I only just discovered, and I haven't come across any reviews, but apparently Stockhausen himself knew of it, and thought this Eotvos recording to be better.

Now of course leading the Berlin Philharmonic, Rattle led a live performance of "Gruppen" in the Fall of 2008 at the close of the Berlin Festival, along with Daniel Harding and Michael Boder. They performed in Hangar 2 of Tempelhof Airport shortly before it closed, a 45 thousand-square-foot space in the massive, now largely abandoned structure in central Berlin. Despite the fact that it really doesn't seem like his cup of tea, Alex Ross wrote a glowing review.

And finally, "Gruppen" is going to be performed in NYC for the first time since 1965! The NY Philharmonic's music director Alan Gilbert has scheduled it for June 29-30, 2012, at the Park Avenue Armory at E25th St. He will lead it along with two neumusik composers, Magnus Lindberg of Finland and Matthias Pintscher of Germany, in a program also including spatial works by Boulez, Ives and Mozart (!).

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This disc was seemingly unavailable for some time shortly after its release. It seems to be quite accessible now, but who knows how long that will last? This is The Quintessential Stockhausen Orchestral Disc, with far-out psychedelic cover art, so act accordingly.

And if you're looking for more Stockhausen, check out The Quintessential Stockhausen Chamber Music Disc with four seminal 1950s pieces performed and recorded in 2008 and 2009 with panache by the ensemble recherche.

I've listened to this CD almost every day for the couple of weeks I've had it so far. I'm truely stunned by the clarity of the recording and the snap and crispness of the timbres, so well captured here. Gruppen is a very demanding piece, as we all know, for 3 orchestras. It would be easy to just drop a couple of mics in front of these ensembles and let them have at it. This was clearly a labor of love on the part of the conductor, the members of the ensembles and the sound technicians. I have to say that there is nothing left to be desired here in this recording. There is the problem of 2 channel sound with 3 orchestras, and sometimes I found it hard to tell exacly which instrument was playing in which orchestra just from listening to the recording. I would love to be able to do that, but as we are still in a 2 channel world on most CD's that is something that we'll have to live with. With that said, I can say that there is a good deal of stereo separation. You can hear it from the very beginning. Most passages are rendered very clearly, almost like you are standing in the hall and able to move about a bit. It's easy for a work like this to sound quite congested and muddy. I recall some Varese I heard that sounded that way, and I almost expected that same phemonena here. Luckliy for us, we have this CD available and we can finally hear Gruppen (and Punkte) in a definitive recording. I do think that the chances we will get a multi-channel recording is very small, so you might consider investing in this CD.

you read Jean Baudrillard with his negativisms of the state of the "object" the neo-liberal order, corruption, hyperealizations, our obsessions with(misunderstood) history(s), scandels,mounting world debt and you might as well become anoymous,for as an individual subject where does this reality place one? you might simply forget everything, or virtually everything, and perhaps begin again.(If that is possible) So where does the post-war avant-garde fit into to all this new paradigm? where can important works be contemplated if at all, Should we merely forget such works even exist?
Adorno in his "Philosophy of Modern Music" came to place more empahsis on the "materials" of art, of composition rather than on on what a particular composer represented. The "materials" will tell you all you need to know, like "fragments" unearthed from your unconscious self.I suspect however Adorno's more Marxist strain,placed more relevance to what is real, the "materials" of music, rather than on what is said through theories and ideologies of movements.Adorno while teaching at Darmstadt in the Fifties, had said this avant-garde exhibited a sportslike quality to the products in churns out, the "for the first time" "novum",had a "libidinal charge" simply to do it because it was never done before, Certainly a dark work for three orchestras has its points of interests, so what do we simply forget it? or look at Stockhausen's incredible work(materials) in a new light?
Conductor Peter Eotvos certainly knows this music very well, he has conducted entire swabs of LICHT Stockhausen's 29 Hour mythical astrological romp-opera through the languages of modernity and the World Spirit. "Gruppen" however had much more modest objectives,gleaned from new perspectives of working in electronics; the three orchestras need three conductors, who rehearse by themselves to get the coordinated super-meta-rhythms Karlheinz has in the work. You have then a rhythmic and textural situations for modulations of these dimensions, fast slow transformations of pulse and pointillistic textures distributed over now a wide canvas surface of the orcehstra. You also have linear ideas and timbres that "travel" through and "above" the three orchestras; the stereophonic agendas at work;of "Gruppen" "Hot-Stuff" for the late Fifties.Today(for some) this is difficult music to experience,if incomprehensible, which is why this work will inhabit one of Baudrillard's "cultural warps""vuota""Voids" it demands much from the listener, the poor short-time span dyslexic listener of the current scene, who has been conditioned for short bursts of musical stimulants for contemplations, Give me a 3 minute piece anyday they will tell you, "Well worked out with melodies and harmonies I can sing" and where I can turn my brain off for the most part. Well I do not subscribe to this "breeze=easy" escapism.Or give me hours long pieces where I can simply "Fall-in" the work without much disruption to my listening sensibility.

After Baudrillard I think it is better first to study this work sitting down at a desk, look at the score, and see the complexities Stockhausen has constructed. I suspect you will get more from that experience than listening.Or perhaps just listen one time. This is the best recording of this work I have heard in quite some time. The old original DGG avant-garde series has Boulez and Maderna as conductors, you cannot find better hands than Eotvos. Also "Punkte" is a breathtaking work much later, but if you are students of orchestration both these works are well worth a flatter.Arthur Tamayo is also well-versed in these complex languages.