COMPOSITIONS
CDs
Mechthild
New Focus Recordings
Catalog No. FCR369
What excites us most about the composer Reiko Füting are his interests: the sound architecture of the piece, the division of the whole into parts, its proportions, its interrelationships and its meanings. Füting, born in 1970 in Königs Wusterhausen (German Democratic Republic), usually publishes his works mainly on the label New Focus Recordings in New York City, published exclusively by Verlag Neue Musik in Berlin. On May 5, the New Focus label launches its chamber opera in two acts, Mechthild, with a libretto by the poet and theologian Christian Lehnert, which is inspired by the mystical work of the medieval Christian saint from Magdeburg (Germany) . Mechthild's criticism of Church dignitaries and her claims to theological understanding earned her fierce opposition, to the point that some called for her writings to be burned. One of his most relevant phrases was: "How many times do we sacrifice freedom and truthfulness in exchange for security?". Füting composes music for a minimally informed general audience who can be drawn to the story of a nun who has become one of the most impressive examples of German female mysticism. The composer, based in New York, discreetly hints at a certain density in the sound textures. In this sense, the sequential passages and his exploration of the psychological nature of memory through the use of musical quotations—from Pérotin, Guillaume de Machaut and Neidhart von Reuental—to connect different eras of artistic expression, as well as the his musical connections—which appear as fleeting memories of musical themes—whether based on pre-existing musical structures or referring to non-musical ones, are, to be precise, the axis of his writing. The distinguished vocal ensemble AuditivVokal Dresden, rigorous, disciplined and perfectionist in its interpretations with extended vocal techniques, puts its experience at the service of this work with soloists of a high international level, such as the enchanting voice of soprano Hanna Herfurtner, the expressive Olivia Stahn and the excellent narrator Susi Wirth, all under the direction of Olaf Katzer. The instrumental part is performed by Ensemble Adapter, a prodigious experimental music group based in Berlin and Reykjavík. Choir director Olaf Katzer's contributions rest on wide-ranging readings, resolved with admirable mastery. Füting, who has dedicated Mechthild to his father, Dieter Füting, is the architect of a meticulous work that reflects on current music and contemporary art.
The chamber opera Mechthild by Reiko Füting (born 1972) asks more of listeners and is less likely to resonate with a wide audience. This is partly a matter of the topic, partly the reality of contemporary opera’s appeal or lack thereof, and partly tied to Füting’s compositional techniques. The title refers to Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207-c. 1282), the first mystic to write in German: her book Das fließende Licht der Gottheit (“The Flowing Light of Divinity”) contains prayers, visions and dialogues. Theologian Christian Lehnert created for Füting a libretto about faith, the ascetic life, and the balancing act between freedom and security. These are weighty topics, to be sure. But here they are tackled in bits and pieces rather than head-on. The Middle and High German words, which will scarcely be familiar to most audiences, are often given in pieces rather than their entirety: much of Mechthild is a work of fragments. Common contemporary vocal techniques – whispering, electronic modification, the use of breathing as vocalise, the layering of voices on a kind of cloudlike background sound – are integral to the opera, as is extensive repetition. The work is in three acts and a total of nine scenes, some of whose titles may help guide listeners to and through what would otherwise be obscure sounds: “In the Room of Divinity,” “Dumped,” “Where Will You Be Then?” Melisma, Sprechstimme and Sprechgesangcreate a sonic environment from which occasional individual words emerge with surprising clarity, their meaning and the purpose of their clarity, however, not always being clear. Readily audible narration above a choral background is used from time to time, as in “Descent into Hell,” and there are occasional touches of lyricism, whose presence contrasts strongly with the material surrounding them. In truth, the score is a very rich one stylistically, and certainly Füting capably uses a wide variety of vocal and instrumental techniques to highlight different elements of Lehnert’s libretto. But the philosophical and frequently obscure elements of Mechthild’s writings and their presentation here, along with the requirement that the audience in effect know everything in the opera’s purview before hearing it (since the presentation itself is far from straightforward), make this (+++) CD a frequently fascinating but equally frequently frustrating listening experience. A staged version with surtitles would make some of the material easier to follow and understand, but not all of it. This is a piece on which the librettist and composer clearly worked diligently and with appreciation of Mechthild’s visions and the language in which she communicated them. But the piece is fraught with more weight than it is really able to bear, and more than it is reasonable to ask most listeners to bear on its behalf. It is a very rarefied experience, something of a contemporary Passion Play for an audience that is highly committed both to the subject matter and to the verbal and musical techniques used to explore it.
As many times as I’ve listened to this musical theater piece about the 13th Century mystic, Mechthild von Magdeburg, I continue to be unable to penetrate its craft. Obviously, composer Füting and his collaborators, most notably librettist and theologian Christian Lehnert, brought a tremendous amount of skill, talent, research, and passion to the project. As did those who bring it to vivid life on this stunning recording, including sopranos Hanna Herfurtner and Olive Stahn, who embody Mechthild’s soul and body respectively, narrator Susie Wirth, the singers of AuditivVokal Dresden, the musicians of Ensemble Adapter, and conductor Olaf Katzer. But the piece just seems to exist, as wondrous and impenetrable as the carved stone of the church where it premiered. The instrumentation is spare - flute, clarinet, celli, harp, percussion, and organ - and every sound is perfectly placed in relation to the vocals, sometimes doubling long vowel sounds or providing points of juxtaposition or emphasis. The vocal writing is layered, those gleaming sopranos weaving around the whispers of the chorus, the occasional baritone cutting in like a presiding judge. In some ways Füting’s combination of Medieval and modern not only unmoors Mechthild from time but makes a nearly alien past more present. Maybe one day I’ll search up the libretto but somehow I think the feelings and conflicts are as clear to me as they need to be, leaving me content to immerse myself in it like a dimly recalled ritual made bright, sharp, and new once again. From whatever angle I observe it, Mechthild is a flat-out masterpiece.
Jeremy Shatan, AnEarful
Mechthild von Magdeburg was a 13th-century mystic whose writing was the first to favour vernacular German over Latin, underlining the relevance to ordinary people of her ecstatic spiritual vision. For theologian-librettist Christian Lehnert, that relevance extends to modern times. Adapting texts from her volume The Flowing Light of the Divinity, he and composer Reiko Füting bring her life and struggle vividly into the present, questioning our capacity today to undergo such truth-seeking. Sound, language, memory – and spaces internal and external, structural and philosophical: Mechthild explores these themes and more through three acts highlighting different stages of her journey. Each is intense, combining to extraordinary, often radiant, effect fragments of material by Perotin, Machaut, JS Bach and others with a post-modern, softly percussive dissonance. Füting rises astutely to the challenge of stripping yet enlarging language in order to interrogate meaning – without compromising ritualistic eloquence or directness of expression. Indeed there are passages of breathtaking beauty, the whole elegantly rendered in fractured vocal utterances and sung sounds interwoven with softly breathy instrumental clacks and shuffles, thumps, chords and melodic motifs. Most potent are Act I ‘Verwunden, vereint’ (Wound, United) and Act II ‘Die Gottesfremde’ (The Alienated), in which Mechthild fends off illness, lust and demonic accusers – while Act III ‘Nacht Gott’ (After God) sees her embracing the paradox of ‘The God who does not exist’. With an excellent cast including Olivia Stahn and Hanna Herfurtner as Mechthild’s body and soul respectively, AuditivVokal Dresden and Ensemble Adapter prove eloquent collaborators under conductor Olaf Katzer.
Steph Power, BBC Music Magazine
The music of Reiko Füting is far from being easily accessible. If anything, his self-declared aim to “explore the psychological nature of memory” makes the music seem more cryptic or, conversely, less ascribable to a given style or even school. There are in fact a lot of isms: punctualism, serialism, minimalism, etc. which fit under the postmodernist umbrella. Each describe elements of Füting’s music and wide-ranging oeuvre, from his chamber music to a cappella compositions and operatic hybrids.
His latest release, “Mechthild,” on New Focus Recordings, falls into the latter category. Based on the life and writings of the Beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg, it is neither an oratorio nor an opera, properly speaking. I would rather call it a cantata in the vein of the Medieval Mysterienspiel or mystery play. It is almost liturgic in its repetitive nature and involving non-musical constituents like dance and art installations which, naturally, are not transferable to CD.
This brings me to my only regret. “Mechthild,” which premiered at the Monastery of Our Lady in Magdeburg in 2022, is missing some of its potential by being confined to music only. For even a cursory glance at the documentary to its Magdeburg premiere, available on YouTube, reveals the piece’s overall conception as some sort of a Gesamtkunstwerk. Heaven and Hell “Mechthild” is divided into three acts retracing the spiritual growth and the tribulations of its title-giving character.
In his libretto, Lehnert relies on the historical Mechthild’s own words. He uses text passages from the seven books of “The Flowing Light of Divinity,” a hallmark of 13th century mysticism with its tortuous visions of Hell and the embrace of the Divine. The main role is doubled, with Olivia Stahn and Hanna Herfurtner singing the parts of her Body and Soul. The narrator’s spoken lines create some sort of commentary or meta-level to Mechthild’s inner drama. Susi Wirth, as the narrator, is haunting and for who understands German the third scene from Act two will prove even more terrifying thanks to the sternness with which she narrates Mechthild’s experience of Hell.
It is, however, hard to judge the performances individually. For the most part, they are built around a central pitch which is repeated extensively and with only small variations. As contemporary mystery play, this is how the fragmentary character of “Mechthild” has an effect. The “psychological nature of memory,” as mentioned before, may best be understood as a mnemonic rehashing of phrases or parts. Whether individually or with the chorus, they form a soundscape of ethereal, yet also challenging beauty. The inclusion of material attributed to Pérotin and Machaut, both active in the 13th and 14th centuries respectively, further bridges the gap between the experimental and slightly dissonant harmonies of postmodernism. The Medieval context of Christian worship. Füting, in the press release, more ambitiously calls this melodic palimpsest a “compositional device of musical quotation (…) in the entire musical spectrum of assimilation, integration, dissimilation, disintegration, and segregation.” No doubt this intellectualist approach, Füting teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, translates to his compositional language which very much owes to semiotic theory and semantics.
“Mechthild” transpires as a feeling of awe for the spiritual legacy of Mechthild of Magdeburg. Both in the music and in Lehnert’s libretto, this is “Mechthild’s” spirituality. However, we are indeed far away from the late Romantic gestures of Dvořak, in “Ludmila,” or Respighi in “Maria Egiziaca.” The harmonic texture, at times, seems almost diaphanous and might vaguely remind one of Olivier Messiaen’s “Saint François d’Assise.” Conceived as a multimedia experience, however, “Mechthild” stands unique. It has moments of near-transcendent beauty, contrasted with the disquieting pulse of the percussion which, among its very reduced orchestra, has all the characteristics of physical weight or gravity when dragging the protagonist into her vision of Hell.
In short, “Mechthild” requires some preparation in order for its music to unfold its tantalizing effect. It is not a casual listen, but it is well produced. Both the soloists and the ensemble, under conductor Olaf Katzer, deliver a flawless performance. Aficionados with a taste for the scarce will hopefully find plenty to cherish.
Bob Dieschburg, Operawire
Das Musiktheaterstück Mechthild ist ein Werk von sakraler Eindringlichkeit und Schönheit. Eine einzigartige Musik, einzigartig vorgetragen, atemberaubend arrangiert - ein Meisterwerk.
Doch es ist auch ein Stück weit wie eine Parabel auf eine zerfallene Gesellschaft. Hierin besteht der Bezug zur Aktualität.
Ich benutze berühmte Worte, um die Wirkung, um die Einzigartigkeit, um den Erfolg zu beschreiben: Es ist vollbracht.Aber was genau ist vollbracht?
Ein Konstruktionsprinzip ist gefunden, musste gefunden werden. Das Konstruktionsprinzip: Die Erweiterung des Raumes, welche für diese Oper entdeckt werden musste.
Zugrunde liegt das doppelte Ordnungsprinzip einer kreisförmigen Rückkehr zum Ausgangspunkt und zu einer sich steigenden Erzählung, die zu einer überhistorischen Erzählung wird.
Die Entdeckungsreise in das Leben von Mechthild ist eine Reise des Ungewissen ihrer eigenen Existenz, in die Untiefen des Unterbewusstseins, aber auch in das finstere Labyrinth von Phantasie, Lüge und Schuld.
Das Leben von Mechthild ist wie ein Bild, das zerschnitten und in falscher Ordnung zusammengesetzt worden war. Sie lebte das Ideal und das Antiideal. Beide sind weit entfernt von der Wahrheit, aber beide bearbeiten eine Sehnsucht.
Es war ein Leben von den Werten, die sie zu verabscheuen vorgab: Heimat, Natur, Lektüre, ihre Aura, ihr eigener Körper.
Es war gerade deshalb ein beeindruckendes Leben.
Man kann Mechthild nur bewundern, man kann das Musiktheaterstück Mechthild nur bewundern.
Es ist ein Meisterwerk.
distantSong
New Focus Recordings
Catalog No. FCR216
A mesmerizing response to the music of Schütz, fractured glimpses half-remembered in a haze: ‘in allem frieden” shines the light of modern scrunity on the Baroque in a new release from Reiko Fueting on New Focus Recordings.
– Dan Harding
Reiko Fueting/Distant Song: An egghead deluxe set of contemporary classical featuring commissioned works by Futing and played by various ensembles. Often taking minimalism to extremes, this set is not for the contemporary classical tourist or snarkers who like to say "my kid could do that". This is a journey into art with a capital A as he explores the effect of memory in music. (New Focus 216)
– Midwest Record
A faculty member at Manhattan School of Music, Reiko Füting’s distant song features performers who are MSM alumni as well as European ensembles. An amalgam of various styles and materials notwithstanding, Füting displays a strong hand and clear-eyed perspective throughout.
After an introduction of thunderous drum thwacks, AuditiVokal Dresden and Art D’Echo perform “als ein licht”/extensio and “in allem frieden” – wie der Tag – wie das Licht with marvelous close-tuned harmonies and suspense-filled pacing. Gradually the percussion is reintroduced at varying intervals to provide a foil for the singers.
loadbang and the Byrne:Kozar Duo, the aforementioned MSM contingent, perform Mo(nu)ment and Eternal Return (Passacaglia), two pieces featuring microtones and extended techniques alongside Füting’s penchant for off-kilter repetition. The Dutch ensemble Oerknal performs Weg, Lied der Schwäne, in which both spectralism and quotation (of a madrigal by Arcadelt) are explored: yet two more facets of the composer’s palette. Versinkend, versingend, verklingend adds the vocal group Damask to Oerknal for a piece that combines still more quotations, ranging from Debussy’s piano music to a Fifteenth century German folksong.
– Sequenza21
Reiko Füting Juxtaposes Musical Antecedents in distantSong
What’s particularly impressive about distantSong, six compositions by Reiko Füting, is that so many references converge in music that still has a strong sense of itself.
Füting, who was born in 1970 and is on faculty at Manhattan School of Music, here explores many themes: timbre, quotation, memory. The title track — sinking, singing, sounding: distant song, for vocal quartet and ensemble — has a slow and multilayered ceremonialism that reminds me of Anna Thorvaldsdottir. In another work, Füting’s combination of Baroque period instruments with 21st-century techniques cleverly mirrors the opposing choirs in the Heinrich Schütz piece on which it’s based.
This music also features text by Hannah Arendt and others, in whisperings that pan in and out of earshot. Other tracks reference Debussy and the Renaissance composer Jacques Arcadelt. There’s a lot of “why” behind each piece, and the listening experience is rarely light.
For me, the most immediate work is mo(nu)ment for C, for the ensemble loadbang (baritone, trumpet, trombone, and bass clarinet). Terse oscillating motifs create a vibrant ostinato for fragments, in English, German, and French, that reference the rallying cry for freedom of the press after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack. But there’s no Charlie here — only endless, playfully self-conscious iterations of “I am.”
At the ends of several pieces, source material — or something like it — finally reveals itself. Are these Baroque-sounding polyphonies a culmination, a return? Füting’s work doesn’t suggest a single reading.
Take the crooning, capricious eternal return (Passacaglia). The unexpected duo of soprano (Corrine Byrne) and trumpet (Andrew Kozar) play in taunting heterophony, one voice just slightly behind the other. The text, from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, can read as demoralizing: All human actions are destined only to repeat, ad infinitum. But the music is cheerful in its resignation.
– Rebecca Wishnia, San Francisco Classical Voice
Combining elements of early music with contemporary techniques in a postmodern approach to appropriation and assimilation, Reiko Füting has created works that defy easy categorization, yet intrigue with their inventiveness and spontaneity. His 2018 release on New Focus Recordings, Distant Song, demonstrates an abiding interest in the music of the past, particularly the music of Heinrich Schütz, yet shows an equal concern with the diversity and challenges of music in the present. Employing vocal ensembles, a percussion quartet, a viol da gamba quintet, and a duo of soprano and trumpet, Füting conveys unsettling, fragmented soundscapes that comment on societal and political issues through verbal references, startling stylistic juxtapositions, and extended techniques, and the subjects of the program range from appeals for peace to protests against political violence. The roster of artists includes the American Byrne-Kozar Duo (soprano Corrine Byrne and trumpeter Andy Kozar), the German vocal ensemble AuditivVokal Dresden with the gamba consort Art d'Echo, the American chamber group Loadbang, and the Dutch percussionists Oerknal with the vocal ensemble Damask, who are all fluent in Füting's hybrid language and skilled to handle his demanding writing. While a description of this album may suggest a disjointed welter of sounds, there are many spare textures and silences in Füting's music that give it room to breathe and make the music somewhat more accessible, despite its occasionally confrontational content. Recommended for adventurous listeners.
– Blair Sanderson, AllMusic
Füting’s Present Reflections on “Distant Songs”
At the end of last year, New Focus Recordings released its second album of works by German composer Reiko Füting. The title of the album is distant song, which refers to the composer’s technique of drawing upon sources from the past and “transplanting” them in the “soil” of his own grammatical and rhetorical techniques. In our “brave new world” of distribution, Amazon.com is currently making the album available only for digital download; but those who prefer the physical medium can purchase the CD through Naxos Direct.
Füting tends to draw upon pre-Baroque composers for much of his source material. The first two compositions on distant song, “‘als ein licht’/extensio” (as a light) and “‘in allem frieden’” (in all peace), appropriate from the choral music of Heinrich Schütz; and the source of “Weg, Lied der Schwäne” (journey, song of the swans) is a madrigal by Jacques Arcadelt. On the other hand, the final selection, “versinkend, versingend, verklingend: fernes Lied” (sinking, singing, sounding: distant song), from which the album takes its title, draws upon both a fifteenth-century German folk song and Claude Debussy’s piano prelude, “La cathédrale engloutie.”
Performing resources are similarly diverse. The vocal selections involve both solo singing and part songs. Instrumental resources are kept on a chamber scale but with a tendency to include diverse passages for percussion. On the other hand the two pieces that appropriate Schütz draw upon the resources of the Art d’Echo consort of four viol players joined by Klaus Eichhorn on positive organ. Both of those pieces involves settings of texts by the poet Kathleen Furthmann.
The accompanying booklet provides Furthmann’s poems. One quickly discovers that the very layout of her words is a significant element of her capacity for poetic expression. This is particularly the case in “‘in allem frieden,” where the layout encourages an indeterminate approach to reading that can be either horizontal or vertical. In a similar manner Füting’s instrumental music tends to be organized as a constellation of moments, allowing for an interplay of simultaneities and sequences embedded within the flow of “real time.”
From a rhetorical point of view, one might be inclined to approach the music of Arvo Pärt as an “orienting point of reference.” However, Füting’s overall strategy tends to reflect some of the approaches to indeterminacy that one can find in the music of John Cage. In other words, no matter how many sources may provide context for Füting’s music, each of his compositions definitely speaks to the listener in is own voice, as unique in its expressiveness as it is in its syntactic foundations.
– Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio
Composer Reiko Füting created these works as an exploration of memory, shot through the lens of musical quotation. Some works are built from fragments of early music pieces, or, in the case of “versinkend, versingend, verklingend: fernes Lied,” a Debussy piano prelude. Despite such diverse materials, the music never feels like pastiche. The album opens with “‘als ein licht’/extensio,” where the words of contemporary poet Kathleen Furthmann are gorgeously shaped by the haunting early music singing of AuditivVokal Dresden. It’s set to a melody based on a motet by 17th century composer Heinrich Schütz, and situated within passages of austere percussion, as well as alternately elliptical and swelling figures from Art d’Echo, a viola da gamba quartet. “Eternal return (Passacaglia)” embraces far more contemporary language. The lines sung by soprano Corrine Byrne toggle between fluid and jagged, lyric and wordless, as she runs through sonic permutations of Nietzsche quotes. Trumpeter Andrew Kozar accompanies her with unpitched snorts, upper register cries, and vocalic extended techniques. “I am,” the quotation in “mo(nu)ment for C,” sung by loadbang baritone Jeffrey Gavett in English, French, and German, responds to the 2015 attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, while the lovely polyphony of Kozar’s trumpet, William Lang’s trombone, and Carlos Cordeiro’s bass clarinet sounds both ancient and modern.
– Peter Margasak, Bandcamp
With the vocal and instrumental compositions featured on this recording, Reiko Füting seeks to “explore the psychological nature of memory, as it is projected onto the compositional device of musical quotation. By realizing this device in the entire musical spectrum of assimilation, integration, disintegration, and segregation, while moving freely between clear borders and gradual transitions, quotation and memory may function as a means to reflect upon contemporary artists, cultural, social, and political phenomena.” That’s a pretty full conceptual agenda, and as is always the case with such music, that agenda begs a fundamental question: is the music itself (as opposed to its philosophical/conceptual foundation) worth your attention? The answer in this case is yes. Several of these works constitute contemporary responses to pieces by baroque composer Heinrich Schütz, while another is based on the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and another is a piece for vocal quartet and instrumental ensemble that takes a Debussy piano prelude as its source material. All of this music is challenging and academic; most of it is also both interesting and compelling.
– Rick Anderson, CD HotList/New Releases for Libraries
Music for percussion, for small vocal ensemble, for the two together, for chamber groups with voice, ever shifting, Distant Song (New Focus Recordings 216) gives us Reiko Futing at length and in focus. The composer in the liner states that this series of works express his "continuing compositional interest in time and space." How that works out is complicated. Aural memory is piqued or activated by musical quotations in various ways, bringing in, breaking apart, isolating. We are called upon to experience borders and slow change. It is the sort of thing where we do not say to ourselves, "hey, that's the first bar of Beethoven's Fifth!" It is a great deal more subtle than that. In fact I listened a number of times without reading the liners and failed to notice the constructive process, except that Early Music permeates things at times as an underlying force. So it in a way is an "inside baseball" kind of thing. You enjoy the game if you know something others might not, but you enjoy the game too if you do not catch every nuance.
So the opening work "'als ein licht'/extensio" relies as text on a poem by Kathleen Furthmann and a Heinrich Schutz motet as the "basis" for the work. The vocal ensemble has the lion's share of recognizable work to do in making us feel the "early" basis of the music. The viola da gamba quintet, percussion quartet and positive organ stretch our sensibilities. Notably at times the percussion quartet sounds with dramatic outbursts not unlike a taiko drumming ensemble minus the periodicity. The album is dedicated to musicologist Wolfram Steude (1931-2006), who suggested to Futing when he was his student years ago that he write a work in response to Schutz. What matters to our ears is that the Modernist outlook prevails at the same time as the Schutzian zeitgeist is, once you know, very much present.
The program moves through another five works, "in allem frieden" with another poem by Furthmann and the same vocal and instrumental forces, again with a Schutz work as the underpinning for the musical proceedings. "Wie der Tag - wie das Licht" acts as an epilogue with parts for soprano and bass gamba.
The works that follow on the heels of the compositions described above each feature a different configuration--soprano and trumpet; baritone, trumpet. trombone and bass clarinet; chamber ensemble; and chamber ensemble and vocal quartet, respectively.
All have specific aims or structural parameters, quotational/appropriative dimensions that set them into a special place. If you grab this music you can follow along in the liners of course. It is not necessary to map it all out here. There are cyclic-repetitive moments in the works that spell us from the linear Modernisms and linear earlier music quotations we experience throughout. The past mediates the present at times, the present mediates the past. And that perhaps is the point of memory, time and space as motoring factors in the musical universe(s) we occupy daily? Futing wakes us up in good ways to the experiential possibilities while providing us with a musical art program we can appreciate and love.
Suffice to say that the music is distinctive, individual, inventive and very imaginative. That in the end is the best reason to hear the album. That Reiko Futing creates his works in original ways is a fact. To understand his music it is very much a key to hear how the results are constructed, of course. That the results are striking aurally is confirmation that he is on the right path. Very recommended.
– Grego Applegate Edwards/Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
Composer Reiko Füting (Germany b. 1970), a faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music, offers an intriguing study of a juxtaposition of ancient and modern practice. The first two pieces on Distant Song, performed by AuditiVokal Dresden and Art D’Echo are als ein licht/extensio and in allem frieden/wie der Tag, wie das Licht, based on works by Heinrich Schütz. The motet Verleih Uns Frieden Gnädiglich is framed by dynamic percussion, spoken word and lush, dissonant vocalizations meant to illustrate, in the composer’s own words, a “continuing compositional interest in time and space.” Meant as an epilogue to the first two pieces, eternal return (Passacaglia) features the Byrne:Kozar:Duo, in an alarmingly engaging duet for soprano and trumpet using text from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Next is mo(nu)ment for C, on the 2015 attack on Charlie Hebdo in which the ensemble loadbang reiterates “Je suis,” “Ich bin” and “I Am.” Dutch ensemble Oerknal performs Weg, Lied der Schwäne, a “swan song” on the subject of euthanasia based on Arcadelt’s renaissance madrigal, Il bianco e dolce cigno. The same ensemble backs vocal quartet Damask in versinkend, versingend, verklingend which recalls Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutieLa cathédrale engloutie and quotes the 15th-century German folk song Gesegn dich Laub.
In listening to Füting’s compositions, it becomes clear that while focusing on contemporary issues, he brilliantly incorporates musical fragments of memory which bridge present and past.
– Dianne Wells/The Whole Note
Is tonality fragile but dissonance strong? Does tonality reassure whereas dissonance suggests chaos? Here are five elegantly crafted pieces for voices and instruments, and one instrumental septet. Within the monumental “als ein licht” / extensio Füting enfolds Heinrich Schütz to create a plasma of haunting texture. To voices and a gamba quintet are added a positiv organ and four percussionists. The drums shake us into the new, the 17th-century chorus disintegrates and fails, and we try to hold on to words or an evaporating gesture. Texts are by Kathleen Furthmann whose poems are also used in the related “in allem frieden”, wie der Tag – wie das Licht for the same forces. Eternal return (Passacaglia) is a remarkable duet for trumpet and soprano using Nietzsche’s words. Despite distinct timbres, both players may overlap, soon escaping the pattern of variation. Equally arresting is a quartet for baritone, bass clarinet, trumpet and trombone, mo(nu)ment for C, which warbles and pulses as the singer and musicians work with the briefest phrases, “Je suis,” “Ich bin,” and “I am.” The septet Weg, Lied der Schwäne (flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello) hunkers down within a specific tonality as if locked in a strongbox. Slowly repeated notes and fluttering percussion yield to nostalgia and incorporation of a madrigal by Jakob Arcadelt. The decidedly modern Debussy Prélude, "La cathédrale engloutie", similarly supplies the compost for versinkend, versingend, verklingend: fernes Lied (vocal quartet, clarinet, piano, violin, cello).
- Grant Chu Covell/La Folia
namesErased
New Focus Recordings
Catalog No. FCR152
At first, listening to the remarkably original music of German composer Reiko Füting is somewhat akin to eavesdropping on a conversation in a foreign language; a general sense of the thrust of the discussion emerges via changes in pitch and gesture, and an occasional cognate or familiar phrase sneaks out to fill in gaps. But ultimately one must learn the language, even if just in an elemental way, to comprehend the full story. My use of this literary metaphor for Füting’s music follows from the structure and pacing of this recording, which consists of thirteen numbers of varied length (47 seconds to fifteen plus minutes) for solo instruments and voice, duos, and finally, voice and string quartet. It comes across as a kind of song cycle, and yet, these are all individually conceived works, written across a fourteen-year span (the oldest piece is from 2000). Further, Füting employs a variety of harmonic styles and instrumental techniques. So what makes this such a cohesive package? First of all, there is a distinct voice to be heard that is consistently curious and experimental, although not in the brazen manner of a Ligeti or a Stockhausen. This is a kind of gentle experimentation, with tweaks to cello technique, or vocal tics, added not as a novelty, but as a means to an expressive end. Repeated listening enhances the meaning of the music, much as continued exposure to a foreign language leads to comprehension of the words.
– Peter Burwasser, Fanfare
Born in 1970 in Königs Wusterhausen, Reiko Füting studied composition and piano at the Dresden Conservatory before moving to America (Rice University and the Manhattan School of Music) before moving again, this time to Korea (Seoul National University).
I had only previously come across Füting once before via a disc of folksong arrangements in which he was pianist and, for six of the folksongs, arranger (Twisted Folk, available from CD Baby, where there are samples available: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/paynefuting). The present disc provides a fuller picture of a questing mind and spirit. The 2014 piece for cello and piano, Kaddish: The Art of Losing (Kaddisch: Die Kunst des Verlierens) is based in formal terms on Imre Kertesz’s novel Kaddish for a Child Unborn. It is also influenced by the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and includes, as its final section, an in memoriam. The piece is fragile throughout, with bare textures and fragmentary statements from both instrumentalists punctuated by tension-laden silences. The performance is staggeringly good, hypnotic and inward-looking. The occasional use of vocal noises is subtly done, a natural part of the soundscape rather than effect for effect’s sake.
Five pieces for solo voice intersperse instrumental pieces for the main body of this disc. Korean mezzo Nani Füting is the expressive singer in these aphoristic statements from “…gesammeltes Schweigen” (Collected Silence). The first refers to “distant violin playing” (the vocal lines seem to point to Kurtág), and so it is entirely apposite that the very next piece is indeed for solo violin, tanz.tanz. The lines of “Das alte Weingut …” seem more allied to Webern. Vocal effects are used to great effect. When it comes to the final micro-song, “Hoch im Gebirge …”, one feels a sense of loss that one has heard the last “insertion”, surely an indicator of success in the programming here.
Violinist Miranda Cuckson clearly has an affinity for contemporary music, having recorded pieces by Nono, Xenakis, Carter and Shapey, amongst others. No doubting her sterling, in fact rock solid, technique in tanz.tanz, a work based on an analysis of Bach’s Chaconne (from the D-Minor Partita) by Helga Thoene, who is actually the work’s dedicatee. Again, the work’s title comes from a novel, this time Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Marakumi. Cuckson finds drama as well as that same fragile delicacy previously encountered in Kaddish.
The 2006 piece leaving without/palimpsest for piano and clarinet is based on the 2002 solo piano piece leaving. Based on a German folk tune, it is aphoristic in nature; the instrumentarium of “piano with clarinet”, and not the other way around, is significant as it is indeed the piano that bears the brunt of the argument. The clarinet does not enter until after four minutes in. The excellent cellist John Popham, whose tone is like velvet and whose technique is remarkable, takes on names, erased of 2012. This work quotes Bach, Berg and Ligeti, while also including self-quotations. Taking its basis as the Preludes from the Bach Solo Cello Suites (and the link is easily audible), Füting effectively takes Bach for a walk into the half-lit world of contemporary solo cello.
The present disc brackets together two pieces: ist – Mensch – geworden and land – haus – berg. Both use quotation extensively. The first is for flute and piano and quotes Josquin, Bach, Schumann, and Debussy plus making reference to flute and piano works by Boulez, Feldman, Furrer, Jo Kondo, Murail and Füting’s teacher, Nils Vigeland. This is a most mysterious piece: perhaps the extensive quotations themselves point to hidden, underlying, secrets. The solo piano land – haus – berg (2009) is where one encounters the ghosts of Beethoven, Schumann and Wolf’s settings of Goethe’s Kennst du das Land?. Such a deconstructed surface allows for only slight shadows though, the type one might catch out of the corner of an eye (or, in this case, an ear); one becomes more aware of the loneliness encapsulated here.
Originally taking a 1649 song by Heinrich Albert and Simon Dach as a starting point, light, asleep in its first version of 2002, this 2010 revision again puts the quotation way in the background (“I found that he source material was reflected only in the title and general atmosphere of my composition”, says Füting in the booklet). There is something of a black processional about this piece for violin and piano. Olivia de Prato is the fine, sweet-toned violinist who, alas, is the only performer on the disc not to be given a biography in the booklet, perhaps because she is lead violinist of the Mivos Quartet. As soloist of this caliber, though, she deserves one.
Scored for alto flute, cello and piano, the short 2003 piece (revised 2011) finden – suchen is a concisely-written occasional birthday piece for a former teacher, Jörg Herchet. Finally, “… und ich bin Dein Spiegel” (2002, revised 2012) for mezzo and string quartet. The literary inspiration this time is Mechthild von Magdeburg (died 1282), while musical sources act as what the composer calls “time witnesses”: the Minnelied Meie, din liehter schin by Neidhart von Reuental and the medieval sequence Laudes cruces attollamus. The melding of the new and the very old is highly effective, with Füting’s aphoristic style acting as a sort of distorting mirror to the source material. The piece begins with unaccompanied voice. Nani Füting has the perfect sound for the purity of the opening. The Mivos String Quartet plays superbly, and the climactic cries of both voice and violin between six and seven minutes in carry appreciable emotional weight.
Taking its title from a variant of the title of the piece names, erased (Prélude) (so it becomes namesErased), this disc is about as stimulating as they get. We need to hear more of Reiko Füting’s individual compositional voice. Of that, there is no doubt.
– Colin Clarke, Fanfare
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Born in 1970 in the German Democratic Republic, Reiko Füting studied composition and piano at the Dresden Conservatory, Rice University, Manhattan School of Music, and Seoul National University. Since 2000, he has served on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music, where he teaches theory and composition, and continues to perform around the world as pianist as well. As far as I can tell, the present disc is the first CD devoted entirely to his work. The formatting of the CD is a bit unusual in that it intersperses individual songs from Füting’s cycle, “…gesammeltes Schweigen” between the instrumental pieces.
The disc opens with Kaddish: The Art of Losing, a work for cello and piano. The cello has a rather extended opening monolog, the notes of which are largely derived from open strings and their natural harmonics. Eventually the piano joins in, at first subtly, and then more prominently so. The cello part continues senza vibrato throughout, giving the entire piece an evocatively mysterious quality. Although the work cannot be considered in any sense folk music, some of the gestures seem to me to be drawn from that world, and perhaps the rather static tonal centers (primarily on D) contribute to that feeling. Füting doesn’t eschew advanced techniques in this work; these include jeté (a technique of throwing the bow onto the string such that it quickly bounces a number of times) and sul ponticello.
After a movement from the song cycle (a one-minute unaccompanied plaintive setting with a wandering melodic line), we hear tanz.tanz for solo violin. This is a very busy work, with many interjections of pizzicato and other special effects, but the tonal center is again on D, in particular the note of the open D-string on the violin. Somewhere near the end, I heard a brief quote from the Chaconne of Bach’s unaccompanied D Minor Partita. It turns out (once I read the notes), that the entire work springs out of an analysis of that work by German musicologist Helga Thoene, but you need not have read her analysis to enjoy this intriguing piece.
With the beginning of leaving without/palimpsest for clarinet and piano, I began to see the logic of interspersing the vocal brevities in between the much longer instrumental works. These function similarly to the cheese that separates courses of a French meal for the purpose of cleansing the palate. None of the songs is remotely centered on the tonality of D as the larger pieces are. D, especially D Minor therefore seems to be an idée fixe in the music of Füting, but I don’t mean to imply that he never diverges from this tonal center. The disc would wear out its welcome very quickly were that the case. The way he constructs his pieces seems an attempt to draw an otherwise almost atonal work into a tonality centered around D. This is a fascinating principle for the construction of a piece of music, and one I’ve seldom encountered in the music of other composers.
The first four minutes of leaving are for solo piano, but the ideas utilized in this extended introduction show up in the following half of the piece that includes the clarinet. The latter part sounds as if it includes microtones: clarinetist Joshua Rubin plays far too skillfully for me to believe that he’s simply playing out of tune. The range of the work often takes the clarinetist into its altissimo register, some notes so high that they are almost in the “dog whistle” range. Well, maybe I exaggerate, but they come close to exceed the attenuated range of my hearing, at least.
This is highly imaginative and innovative music that is not difficult to listen to for those whose ears have not been attuned to more advanced musical styles. The composer has a very intimate knowledge of the technical capabilities of the instruments he employs here, such that all of these pieces sound. They are likewise played and sung with superlative skill by their respective performers. The sonics on this disc are simply spectacular, so present and lifelike are all the instruments and voice. If CDs had sounded this good upon their initial arrival back in the 1980s, much of the controversy regarding their sound would have been foregone. Recommended then, especially to the adventurous.
– David DeBoor Canfield, Fanfare
First impressions, as we all know, can be wrong: presented with Reiko Füting’s namesErased, I immediately thought it might in some way be connected to the events of 9/11, given its glass skyscraper cover photo and elegiac title. In such a scenario, one imagines the German-born composer (b. 1970), like others before him, honouring the memory of those whose lives were taken on that sunny September morn fourteen years ago. Though Füting has taught composition and theory at the Manhattan School of Music since 2000, his debut full-length turns out to be a more straightforward affair in being a collection of contemporary chamber music that’s neither overtly conceptual in nature nor weighted down by tragedy. If there is an overall theme, it has do with the processes of memory as well as the manner by which past works of art affect the form later works assume. It’s clearly not insignificant that the Robert Rauschenberg work referenced by Füting in the titular work is the infamous 1953 piece Erased de Kooning Drawing, a choice that suggests Füting too has wrestled with the impact on his own compositional process by those who preceded him.
namesErased is a family affair too, with his wife, mezzo-soprano Nani Füting a recurring presence on the recording, and one piece dedicated to presumably the young couple's son. Not only does namesErased provide a comprehensive account of Füting’s breadth and interests as a composer, it’s also an in-depth reflection of the cultural world he inhabits, with Bach, Berg, Boulez, Feldman, Debussy, Schumann, and Ligeti referenced in the music, as well as non-musical figures such as Rauschenberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Haruki Marukami, and Goethe. The sound world as presented is remarkably rich, with Nani Füting joined on the recording by the Mivos Quartet, violinist Miranda Cuckson, and cellist John Popham, among others. The settings range from unaccompanied vocal, violin, and cello performances to piano duets involving clarinet, flute, and violin as well as an album-closing vocal-and-string quartet combination.
One of the album’s most appealing aspects has to do with structure and sequence. In “…gesammeltes Schweigen” (“…collected silence”), five solo vocal settings of haikus (by Reiner Bonack) appear as single-minute vignettes in amongst the longer works, a strategy that allows for a refreshing degree of contrast in duration and sonority; in addition, the short piece offers a refreshing opportunity to catch one’s breath after the sustained intensity of a longer work such as the cello-and-piano meditation Kaddish: The Art of Losing. Stylistically, Füting’s compositions fit comfortably within the contemporary classical sphere; at the same time, they’re profoundly informed by the work Bach and others produced, as shown by direct references to their works that Füting threads into his own.
The performances by all concerned are stellar throughout, but the playing of pianist Yegor Shevtsov, who provides sterling accompaniment in separate pieces to clarinetist Joshua Rubin, alto flutist Eric Lamb, and cellist John Popham, merits singling out. tanz.tanz (dance.dance), which is based on an analysis of Bach’s Chaconne, is enlivened by violinist Miranda Cuckson in a standout performance, and flutist Luna Kang elevates ist – Mensch – geworden (was – made – man) with a similarly memorable display. Still, highlighting individual pieces seems a tad misguided, given how much one experiences namesErased as a cumulative whole. In weaving solo and chamber settings into an encompassing whole, the collection presents as in-depth an introduction to Füting’s world as could possibly be imagined.
– Ron Schepper, Textura
Reiko Füting was born in 1970 in Königs Wusterhausen in the German Democratic Republic, studying composition and piano at the Dresden Conservatory; Rice University, Houston; the Manhattan School of Music and Seoul National University, South Korea. As well as composition, Füting has performed throughout Europe, Asia and the USA. He teaches composition and theory at the Manhattan School of Music and has appeared as guest faculty and lecturer at universities and conservatories in China, Colombia, Germany, Italy, Russia, South Korea and the USA. He has written instrumental, chamber and orchestral works as well as choral and vocal works.
Now from New Focus Recordings comes a new release of solo, chamber and vocal works by Reiko Füting entitled namesErased. This new CD features members of New York City’s most celebrated contemporary ensembles, including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Either/Or Ensemble, and the Mivos String Quartet performing works written by Füting over the past thirteen years.
In Kaddish: The Art of Losing (2008) the cello of John Popham opens bringing some quite distinctive ruminations, played remarkably. Soon the piano of Yegor Shevtsov enters quietly as the cello weaves its way ahead, a little theme showing through as it develops. The music grows in tension with a more strident, dissonant piano part and some very fine chords from the cello creating some wonderful textures and timbres. Incisive bowing from the cellist leads into a quieter passage before falling to a halt. The cello and piano slowly lead off again more gently before growing more agitated before another momentary pause. As they slowly move ahead again there is a sense of a heavy burden. Hushed vocal sounds are heard then the piano appears, leading slowly to the quiet coda that ends on a repeated single piano note.
Mezzo-soprano Nani Füting enters high up to open “Leises Geigenspiel…” (“Distant violin playing”) (2004), slowly extracting some highly characterised vocal shapes in this, the first extract on this disc from Füting’s “…gesammeltes Schweigen”. (“…collected silence”) a setting of texts by Reiner Bonack.
tanz.tanz (dance.dance) (2010) for solo violin is based on the choral tunes in Bach’s Chaconne that were discovered by the German musicologist Helga Thoene. These choral tunes are woven throughout the Chaconne and serve as the source material for Füting. The soloist Miranda Cuckson opens, winding a line of textures, slowly adding bolder, more vibrant chords. She weaves a remarkable texture creating some very fine moments, with absolutely terrific playing. There is always a distinguishable forward line as this violinist reveals some finely shaped phrases. Throughout, a broader theme seems to be lurking. This is a formidable challenge for any violinist; here Cuckson is terrific.
Mezzo Nani Füting brings another extract from “…gesammeltes Schweigen”, “Fiel ein Stück Himmel…” (“Did a piece of the sky…(fall)”) in which she combines vocal sounds, sung text and occasional sprechgesang, very finely controlled.
leaving without/palimpsest(2006) is based on the old German folk tune Gesegn dich Laub (Bless you leaves) and brings clarinetist Joshua Rubin and pianist Yegor Shevtsov who opens slowly suggesting a little theme, rising in dynamics occasionally as it develops before falling to a brief halt. The music picks up slowly but halts again as the clarinet joins, bringing some finely tongued sounds between the melody. Füting often stretches the tonal abilities of the clarinet, verging on the shrill, not necessarily capitalising on the mellower aspects of the clarinet. Nevertheless, some remarkable sounds are produced as the theme moves along, Füting showing how he always manages to hold an overall musical line before ending on a simple hushed piano note.
The third extract from “…gesammeltes Schweigen” is “Das alte Weingut…” (“The old vineyard”) where Nani Füting brings a lower range as she carefully delivers some very finely shaped text, vocally quite superb.
The title work, names, erased (Prélude) (2012) features cellist John Popham and uses musical material from Bach, Berg, and Ligeti, compositionally treated to reflect the erasing process of Robert Rauschenberg in his famous Erased de Kooning drawing. The cello opens by ruminating on a motif. Here again this soloist proves to be a very fine artist, allowing a theme to emerge from the closely woven texture of the opening. It is fascinating to follow the suggested musical lines that subtly emerge. There are many little subtleties in this piece that bear repeated listening before we are led to a hushed coda.
The fourth extract from “…gesammeltes Schweigen” is “Die Teiche im Dunst…” (“The Ponds in Mist”) where mezzo-soprano Nani Füting rises from a lower pitch as she slowly allows the music to unfold in this remarkable, if short, piece.
ist – Mensch – geworden (was – made – man) (2014) is based on quotations from such diverse composers as Josquin, Bach, Schumann and Debussy with additional material from Boulez, Morton Feldman, Beat Furrer, Jo Kondo, Tristan Murail and Nils Vigeland. Flautist Luna Kang and pianist Jing Yang leap out suddenly as strident flute and piano chords are heard. The flute slowly subsides in more subtle textures before leading ahead with drooping notes and piano accompaniment. There are some lovely flute arabesques within a rather fragmentary line. As the flute develops the melodic theme, there are varying tempi with more strident, staccato passages. Flautist Luna Kang intersperses occasional breath and vocal sounds before repeated shrill flute phrases.
land – haus – berg (land – house – mountain) (2009) is for solo piano and takes settings of Goethe’s poem Kennst du das Land, wo die Citronen blühen (Do you know the land where the lemons blossom) by Beethoven, Schumann and Wolf. Yegor Shevtsov brings a rolling theme that is nevertheless broken by rests. It is rhythmically varied, the pianist bringing a really lovely feel to the music through his fine phrasing. Later there is a repeated note like a drip, drip before the music increases in flow yet still with occasional pauses. The lovely coda arrives with a single note. This is rather a lovely piece.
The fifth and final extract from “…gesammeltes Schweigen” is “Hoch im Gebirge…” (“High in the mountains”) where mezzo Nani Füting brings some intense phrases as she moves around to a hushed coda.
light, asleep (2002) for violin and piano opens with pianist David Broome introducing a broadly fragmented theme. Violinist Olivia de Prato enters quietly bringing a longer musical line, developing the theme with some fine textures and timbres. Later there is a dissonant piano passage that develops the theme before the violin re-joins with some lovely phrases that burst out in little surges. The music moves through some very fine passages for solo violin before the coda.
finden – suchen (to find, to search) (2002) was written for a concert of works by former students of Jörg Herchet on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Here the alto flute of Eric Lamb is soon joined by cellist John Popham and pianist Yegor Shevtsov in a tentative theme, finely phrased with some lovely sonorities. Little flute trills rise out as the music is taken slowly and gently forward, building moments of more decisiveness before the flute brings the gentle end.
“…und ich bin Dein Spiegel” (“and I am Your reflection”) (2002) for mezzo-soprano and string quartet was a commission for the Festival Magdeburgisches Concert and is based on excerpts from the fragmentary writing of Mechthild von Magdeburg (c.1207-1282). Mezzo-soprano Nani Füting is joined by the Mivos String Quartet (Olivia de Prato and Josh Modney (violin), Victor Lowrie (viola) and Mariel Roberts (cello). This work gives Nani Füting a more sustained opportunity to bring her considerable vocal skills to a more extended piece. She enters alone with a simple little melody, showing her very fine voice, musical, flexible and melodic. She then varies the melody, bringing a variety of vocal techniques, moving around vocally, often showing a terrific ability to suddenly rise up high. The quartet enters slowly, picking over the theme in fragmented chords before rising in passion and developing some very fine moments with terrific textures and sonorities. When Füting reenters she brings some declamatory phrases that complement the quartet, showing terrific control in her dynamic leaps. There is a vibrant, volatile passage for swirling string quartet strings bringing a terrific outflow of textures before Füting returns along with quieter, yet still strident, quartet textures leading to this mezzo’s final outburst at the end. This is a terrific conclusion to this disc.
It is Füting’s ability to subtly develop themes within a richer and often quite complex texture that is so attractive. The recording is detailed, revealing every texture and timbre and there are useful notes as well as full texts and English translations. This is a most welcome release.
– Bruce Reader, The Classical Reviewer
My friend and former Manhattan School of Music colleague Reiko Fueting has had a portrait CD released on New Focus Recordings. The program is very thoughtfully constructed, with chamber pieces for varying forces interspersed with solo vocal pieces from the song cycle “…gesammeltes Schweigen.” The latter are performed with affecting poise by Nani Fueting. The CD also includes performances by Mivos Quartet, clarinetist Joshua Rubin, flutists Eric Lamb and Luna Kang, violinist Miranda Cuckson, cellist John Popham and pianists David Broome, Yegor Shevstov, and Jing Yang.
– Christian B. Carey
Reiko Füting manages to write music that is quite busy and yet sounds barren (in a good way). The surface of the instrumental portions of the music is composed of scratches and scrapes, quick alternation between pitches, brief glimpses of harmonics as the fingers slide up the strings. There are very few gaps in the sound and almost no long held tones. Still, I sense an empty or hollow affect that I think comes from the lack of clear harmonic rhythm or traceable thematic arcs. Without a sense of progress or motion, even active music can sound static. This works well with Füting’s inspiration for many of his pieces. He lists composers from several centuries as sources for pieces like names, erased. Bach, Debussy, Ligeti, Berg, Josquin, Schumann, and Boulez all find their way into his work. Füting’s use of these musical ancestors irrespective of historical position runs counter to narratives of progress that many modernists espouse. The apparent lack of desire to move beyond the musical past parallels the lack of forward motion on the music’s surface. This style does become repetitive after several pieces in a row, but the music is easy to appreciate.
– George Adams, American Record Guide
The composer Reiko Füting was a name new to me. He was born in the DDR in 1970 and studied at Dresden Conservatory, Rice University, Manhattan School of Music, and Seoul National University. He currently teaches at Manhattan School of Music where he is chair of the theory department. This disc, namesErased, from New Focus Recordings presents us with a selection of Füting’s recent vocal and instrumental music.
So we have Kaddish: The Art of Losing played by cellist John Popham and pianist Yegor Shevtsov, tanz.tanz played by violinist Miranda Cuckson, leaving without/palimpsest played by Joshua Rubin (clarinet) and Yegor Shevtsov (piano), names, erased (Prélude) played by John Popham (cello), ist – Mensch – geworden played by Luna Kang (flutes) and Jing Yang (piano), land – haus – berg played by Yegor Shevtsov (piano), light, asleep played by Olivia de Prato (violin) and David Broome (piano), finden – suchen played by Eric Lamb (alto flute), John Popham (cello), Yegor Shevtsov (piano), and “…und ich bin Dein Spiegel” performed by Nani Füting (mezzo-soprano), the Mivos Quartet (Olivia de Prato, Joshua Modney, Victor Lowrie, Mariel Roberts), interspersed with movements from “…gesammeltes Schweigen” sung by Nani Füting.
Most of the pieces on the disc seem to have extra-musical or musical connections, either building on pre-existing musical structures of referring to non-musical ones. This might be inferred perhaps from the epigrammatic nature of the title, but there is nothing pastiche-like about Reiko Füting’s work, he speaks with a very definite and rather striking music accent.
Kaddish: The Art of Losing for cello and piano was an 80th birthday gift to a German musicologist. The piece is based on the novel, Kaddish for a Child Unborn by Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz, though the title also refers to a poem by Elizabeth Bishop. We start with just a solo cello playing a sequence of motifs, all harmonic heavy; in a technique which crops up a lot on the disc, the cello and then cello and piano explore the opening motifs repeating and varying. The tone is serious and thoughtful, there is an evocative piano postlude which recapitulates the material.
tanz.tanz for solo violin is based on German musicologist Helga Thoene’s analysis of Bach’s Chaconne with its structure of chorales woven into it. Though the title also refers to the novel Dance Dance Dance by Japanese writer Haruki Marakami. There are hints of the original in the piece as the violin incessantly explores a group of motifs using a variety of playing techniques (arco, pizzicato, marcato, harmonics).
leaving without/palimpsest, for clarinet and piano, based on an earlier composition for piano, leaving without, which in turn had a German folk-tune Gesegn dich Laub (Bless you leaves). The piano plays note clusters which seem based on intervals always rising or falling. The style is austere and spare despite the harmonic clusters, and when the clarinet joins it uses a number of advanced techniques and the two instruments seem to re-visit the piano’s material but in a different way.
names, erased (Prélude) is based on quotations from Bach, Berg, Ligeti and Füting’s own compositions, and is related to the solo cello suites by Bach, and to Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning. It uses a lot of string crossing, a la Bach, but with harmonics and orther interesting effects. There is a magical sound world which is light and evocative, as if the lower part of the music had been erased.
ist – Mensch – geworden for flute and piano is based on fragmented quotes from Josquin, Bach, Schumann, Debussy, Boulez, Feldmann, Tristan Murail, as well as the importance of the number three (three flutes, three words, three main pitches, three sections). Using advanced flute techniques, the fragments interact in dialogue between the instruments cycling round the various motifs. The texture is transparent, and the overall feel thoughtful, though I did not really detect any of the quotations. It leads straight to the thoughtful piano solo land – haus – berg which is based on Beethoven’s, Schumann’s and Wolf’s setting of Goethe’s poem Kennst du das Land.
light, asleep, for violin and piano, was originally based on a 17th century song, though by the time the work was finished Füting feels that only the title and general atmosphere reflect the source material. It is a spare and evocative with the two instruments intersecting rather than accompanying each other.
finden – suchen, for alto flute, cello and piano, again has this sense of sparseness, with the three instruments cycling round the material, and a sense of lines intersecting in space rather than creative dialogue.
The works are interspersed with movements from “…gesammeltes Schweigen”, setting poems from the collection Gespannte Stille by Reiner Bonack set originally for baritone and piano and here heard in a version for unaccompanied mezzo-soprano. Each movement is quite short and the style expressive, the jagged intervals making the piece uneasy feeling.
The final work on the disc, “…und ich bin Dein Spiegel” for mezzo-soprano and string quartet is based on excerpts from writings of Mechthild von Magdeburg (c1207-1282), as well as a Minnelied and a medieval Latin sequence. It opens with mezzo-soprano Nani Füting singing unaccompanied, a rather chant-like medieval melody which she then proceeds to de-construct, the quartet takes over examining the material in intense fashion before all five performers join together to create something rather intense as Füting develops the material and then suddenly ends mid-air.
The performances on the disc are exemplary, and all convey the strong impression of Reiko Füting’s voice. His style of composition is one which does not take prisoners, but within its severity, intensity and logic is a sense of magic too. This is music which repays listening.
– Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill
Reiko Füting (1970- ) is the chair of the music department at the Manhattan School of Music. The present album is actually my introduction to this man and his work. It consists of a series of 15 works written between 2000 and 2014.
These works tend to emphasize brevity especially the solo vocal pieces (tracks 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10). These, originally for baritone and piano are here rendered very effectively as solo vocal pieces. They are used as a sort of punctuation in this recording of mostly brief pieces which remind this listener of Webern at times. They are in fact the movements of a collection called, “…gesammeltes Schweigen” (2004/2011, translated as Collected Silence). It is worth the trouble to listen to these in order as a complete set.
The first track here is also the longest piece on the album at 15:43. Kaddish: The Art of Losing (2014) for cello and piano is an elegiac piece inspired by several people and seems to be about both loss and remembrance. The writing in this powerful and affecting piece is of an almost symphonic quality in which both instruments are completely interdependent as they share notes and phrases. The cello is called upon to use a variety of extended techniques and the piano part is so fully integrated as to make this seem like a single instrument rather than solo with accompaniment. It has a nostalgic quality and is a stunning start to this collection of highly original compositions.
tanz.tanz (dance.dance) (2010) is a sort of Bachian exegesis of the Chaconne from the D minor violin partita. This sort of homage is not uncommon especially in the 20th/21st century and this is a fascinating example of this genre. The writing is similar to what was heard in the cello writing in the first track. This piece is challenging and highly demanding of the performer. It is a delicate though complex piece but those complexities do not make for difficult listening.
leaving without/palimpsest (2006) for clarinet and piano begins with a piano introduction after which the clarinet enters in almost pointillistic fashion as it becomes integrated to the structure initiated by the piano. Again, the composer is fond of delicate sounds and a very close relationship between the musicians.
names, erased (Prélude) (2012) is for solo cello and is, similar to the solo violin piece tanz.tanz, a Bach homage. The performer executes the composer’s signature delicate textures which utilize quotes from various sources including the composer himself. And again the complexities and extended techniques challenge the performer far more than the listener in this lovely piece.
Track 9 contains two pieces: ist – Mensch – geworden (was – made – man, 2014) for flute and piano and land – haus – berg (land – house – mountain, 2008) for piano. Both pieces involve quotation from other music in this composer’s compact and unique style. Here he includes references to Morton Feldman, J.S. Bach, Alban Berg, György Ligeti, Schumann, Debussy, Nils Vigeland, Beat Furrer, Jo Kondo and Tristan Murail.
light, asleep (2002/2010) for violin and piano apparently began its life as a piece based on quotation but, as the liner notes say, lost those actual quotes in the process of revision.
finden – suchen (to find-to search, 2003/2011) for alto flute, cello and piano is a lyrical piece with the same interdependent writing that seems to be characteristic of this composer’s style.
“…und ich bin Dein Spiegel” (“…and I am Your Reflection”, 2000/2012) is a setting of fragments by a medieval mystic Mechthild von Magdeburg for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. This is deeply introspective music.
All of Füting’s compositions have a very personal quality with deeply embedded references. His aesthetic seems to be derived from his roots in the German Democratic Republic having been born into that unique nation state both separate from the West German state and still deeply connected to it. He is of a generation distant from the historical events that gave birth to that artificially separate German nation but, no doubt, affected by its atmosphere.
The musicians on this recording include David Broome, piano; Miranda Cuckson, violin; Nani Füting (the composer’s wife), mezzo-soprano; Luna Cholong Kang, flutes; Eric Lamb, flutes; Joshua Rubin, clarinet; John Popham, cello; Yegor Shevtsov, piano; Jing Yang, piano; and the Mivos Quartet. All are dedicated and thoughtful performances executed effortlessly.
The recording is the composer’s production engineered by Ryan Streber. This is a very original set of compositions which benefit from multiple hearings.
– New Music Buff
Der Name Reiko Füting wird bei einigen Dresdner Konzertbesuchern Erinnerungen wecken – der 1970 in Königs Wusterhausen geborene Komponist hat in den 90-er Jahren an der Dresdner Musikhochschule seine Ausbildung genossen und diese sehr bald in den USA fortgesetzt, wo er heute noch lebt und an der renommierten Manhattan School of Music in New York eine Professur für Theorie und Komposition innehat. Musikalisch hat er jedoch immer wieder Spuren in Dresden hinterlassen und für hiesige Ensembles und Chöre neue Werke komponiert, zuletzt etwa “höhen – stufen”, 2014 von der Singakademie aufgeführt.
Jetzt ist unter dem Namen “namesErased” eine CD mit Solowerken, Kammermusik und Vokalwerken beim Label New Focus Recordings erschienen. Herausragend in ihrer Konzentration wirken die Interpretationen der versierten Instrumentalisten, die nahezu alle von renommierten Neue-Musik-Ensembles aus New York stammen. Wenn Füting selbst über seine Absicht zu schreiben sagt, er möchte “Erfahrungen von Form – Zeit – Raum” im Komponieren verwirklichen, so ist diese CD besonders dazu geeignet, sich mit diesen Themen hörend auseinanderzusetzen und dabei Füting als sehr klangsinnlichen, aber eben auch formbedachten Tonschöpfer kennenzulernen.
Vielen der eher in kleineren Zeit-Formen geschriebenen und auf der CD auch mit kurzen Solo-Vokalsätzen verschränkten Stücke merkt man ein suchendes Vortasten an. Da werden Töne und Harmonien etwa im namengebenden “names, erased” für Cello Solo sorgsam erkundet, ihr Ausdruckspotenzial erforscht, bevor man sich auf die Reise zum nächsten Ton oder Ausdrucksraum gibt. Eine solche Herangehensweise schafft viel Ruhe und so sind wenige aktionsgeladene Passagen der Musik (etwa in “tanz.tanz” für Violine Solo) schon fast überraschend, wirken aber ebenso behutsam in den Kontext gesetzt. Wenn Füting sich im letzten Stück der CD “…und ich bin dein Spiegel” dann mit Texten und Gedanken der Mechthild von Magdeburg aus dem 13. Jahrhundert befasst, erscheint die Zeit nicht mehr existent oder relevant: die Worte liegen im Fluss der Musik.
– Alexander Keuk, mehr licht