Piano Music [Import]

Karlheinz Stockhausen (Composer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Composer: Karlheinz Stockhausen
• Audio CD (May 4, 2006)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Scandinavian Classic
• ASIN: B000092R49
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #471,044 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spellbinding, May 25, 2011

By 

Dean R. Brierly (Studio City, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Piano Music (Audio CD)

Most of Stockhausen's music was conceived in terms of abstract sound patterns and textures that are full of volatility and challenge. His piano pieces, on the other hand, are relatively transparent, melodic and accessible. They articulate a terse lyricism and autumnal mood that has much in common with the second Viennese school of Schonberg, Berg and Webern. Stockhausen used space differently from most other composers. He was unafraid to expand the gaps between notes, creating enigmatic modulations of time and tempo. One might also note the emotional modulation inherent in these compositions, which is both bracing and affecting. The late Elisabeth Klein was ideally suited to interpret this music, having played it for three decades and having been aesthetically and conceptually in tune with other modernist masters like Pierre Boulez and Per Norgard. She is not as aggressive as other pianists from a percussive standpoint, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, and accounts for the open sound feeling she evokes. And while she respects the icy contours of Stockhausen's precisely notated works, she also lets in a touch of contrapuntal warmth. Hers is an original and effective take on these seminal piano pieces.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stockhausen Piano Music -Elisabeth Klein/Piano--Scandinavian Classics, May 21, 2011

By 

Mike Maguire - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stockhausen: Piano Music (MP3 Download)

This CD's spanning of the Stockhausen piano oeuvre, underscores his struggles with the most fundamental aspects of music--his simultaneous obsession with completely determined and aleatoric structures, pitted against very simple and direct melodies and harmonies.

The first piece, Tierkreis, is a collection of 12 pieces, each representing a sign of the Zodiac. This work clearly falls in the post `Aus den Sieben Tagen' style that is general regarded as his New Simplicity Period (1970s). Without getting into its formulaic construction--let's just talk about how it sounds. The piano is pretty much limited to right hand melody and left hand chordal accompaniment, with all of the pitched being above middle C. Lots of the harmonic resonances ring over at the end of phrases, giving it an ambient quality one often associated with spirituality or timelessness. The over all effect is like a chromatized, outer-worldly, Satie's Gymopedie, inside the haunting, rotating modal spheres of a slow-motion Messiaen.

The next piece, Klavierstuck 9, opens with a thick repeated chord--a sound far removed from the chaotic serial era that was raging all around him at the time. Stark verticality's and harsh Stravinsky-like juxtapositions followed by occasional bits of whimsical melody (often thrown in towards the end of phrases), eventually build towards the more traditional serialist palette of the time.

The 3rd piece is A fascinating 13 min adaptation/ variations /fragments of the earlier piano piece `plus-minus `(1968). It clearly shows the pianist deep understanding of Stockhausens' work and illustrate the depth of the scholarship undertaken to bring this project to fruition.

The next early piece, Klavierstuck 5, is very much part of the international Webern/ Boulez serial world--big paused, fat strident chords, arpeggiated flourishes, and the single note languishing all alone. A music history analogy would be Debussy gestures meets Chopinesque chromaticism put through a paper shredder.

The later Klavierstuck 11 1st / 2nd version share many similarities with Klavierstuck 5 only it has a faster harmonic rhythm, combined with a Cage/Feldman-influenced, mobile structure. This sound world definitely leads into the Feldmanesque world that swept music of the late 20th C.

The final work, Aus den Sieben Tagen, consists of collage fragments from the time of him moving towards his new simplicity style -an inevitable crisis created by confliction between his earlier serial work and the new intuitive or modular mobile works. Here, Stockhausen also unintentionally preempts the post-modernists quoting of other historical styles.

Ms. Klien is obviously a sincere a dedicated emissary of Stockhausen, having a deep understanding of the dynamics, gestures and phrasings of the music, as well is able to clearly articulating formal demarcations. A `must own' for all Stockhausen fans.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars nice- different KS, July 6, 2008

By 

scarecrow "scarecrow" (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Piano Music (Audio CD)

this is a nice CD on Stockhausen's(KS) piano music, Ms.Klein even includes here quite interestingly items in his galaxy-ian ouevre you would never usually encounter, like a reading of an early Sixties process work "Plus-Minus", here you need to make your own score to perform from, from Stockhausen's(KS) graphic score with instructions, you can even utilize electronics to render the "other" timbres" necessary or herein simply a different pitch configuration(s). The piece is realizable for any instrument(s). Also Ms. Klein develops a solo from the Zodiac pieces here "Tiekreis"(1975-1977) she likes tremoli in her freedom, how she plays, sometimes for my taste she is a bit too timid, tepid, more feline than canine, which I beleive (KS) requires most of the time, you need to "bite" and "crush" "Bark-at" & "devour" the timbres with your in this instance piano hands, as in the indeterminate "Piano Piece 11", given here in two versions. This is a large page of fragments where the pianist works their way through these fragements but again with some intervention from the composer, where you cannot go backwards, or repeat a line. She does quite well with "Piano Piece 5"here more spatially beautifully deployed events-moments, more straight, less encumbered with concept, more with music,the piece isolates regions of the piano timbre, here interested in "punkte" "points", again I could have done with a bit more violence. Without it the more "quasi-spiritual" works of Karlheinz works in congruence with Ms. Klein's performing abilities, constitution, one page from the "Word" Music, quasi-inprovisational "Aus den Sieben Tagen"(1968), "From the Seven Last Days", here you can deposit an image in your playing, and she does with a major Seventh in the basso regions to kick things off.What you do here is read a poem-like instruction, like "follow another's sound as far as you can" such abstraktion(s) is open enough to make music.But was intended for group therapy music making, with his group Joahnnes Fritsch, Rolf Gelhaard, Aloys Kontarsky and KS himself etc; Again it is fascinating to fine this approach to these "materials" you seldom encounter in STockhausen.