*2022 Stock.* The magic of works by Stockhausen is their inherent possibility for new interpretations. There is a richness of expression hidden inside these works, which has to bloom in different instrumental and interpretational guises for it to realize its own charged splendor. There is no way you can exhaust this music’s inherent goldmine of musical and existential aspects through one version and one version alone. The version of “Oberlippentanz” which opens this CD is a reduced version of approximately 14 minutes, scored for piccolo trumpet, euphonium, 4 horns and 2 percussionists. On stage, at a live performance of the piece, it looks quite different from this reviewer’s vision, since Stockhausen has thrown in some performance instructions into the score too, and right about this stage of the performance the instructions read: “kneel, sit on heels”, “lie down on back and continue to play”, “sit on heels again” and “stand up”. This possibly makes watching a live staging and the listening to the CD quite different experiences, but the message I want to get across to anyone in doubt is the power of imagination inherent in Stockhausen’s music, right from the first pieces on the first CD up to the composer’s intense activities this day of today.

“Ave” for basset-horn and alto flute is a piece that Stockhausen composed in Africa, in Kenya. In an introductory text from 1987 Stockhausen lets on that he spent several hours each day for three months experimenting with new micro-scales for “Ave”, “voiced and voiceless (‘rushing’) consonant timbres”, with his two musicians; Kathinka Pasveer and Suzanne Stephens. He explains that the piece contains “numerically indefinable intervals of up to 26 steps within a major third (quasi ‘13th-tones’)”. Stockhausen especially puts our attention to “the indescribable timbre changes” which occur in “Ave”. “Tierkreis” (“Zodiac”) is one of the most widely known of Stockhausen’s works, even among people who normally are indifferent to modern music or art, and perhaps only “Hymnen” (Stockhausen Edition no. 10) can rival “Tierkreis” in a wider sense of popularity. On this CD – Stockhausen Edition no. 35 - we hear the Trio version of “Tierkreis”, scored for clarinet, flute and piccolo, trumpet and piano. This may seem like a strange trio, with five instruments, but only three at a time are in action. Suzanne Stephens plays the clarinet, Kathinka Pasveer plays flute and piccolo and Markus Stockhausen plays trumpet and piano. The structures of these different melodies in this trio version are palpable. The sounding result rising out of these spiderweb structures of perfectly ordered connections is overflowing with brilliance and beauty; sheer spring breeze and aspen slopes, the air fresh to breath – a feast for the senses! This trio version of “Tierkreis” is one of the sunlit summits of 20th century music; a treasure of the arts. - Sonoloco.com