Hans Zender (1936-)
¿Adónde? Wohin?, pour soprano, violon et instruments
Oh bosques, pour soprano, chœur mixte et petit orchestre
¿Por qué? Warum?, pour chœur mixte a cappella en 2 groupes
Oh cristalina, pour 3 groupes de vocalistes et instruments

Angelika Luz, soprano
Priska Eser, écho-soprano
Ernst Kovacic, violon
Chœur de la radio de Bavière
Orchestre Symphonique de la radio de Bavière
Susanna Mälkki, direction
Ensemble vocal de la radio de Stuttgart
Marcus Creed, direction
Orchestre Symphonique de la radio de Baden-Baden et Fribourg
Emilio Pomarico, direction
Klangforum Wien
Sylvain Cambreling, direction

Zender has worked to give the central category of “harmony” a special “oppositional” character. Out of his growing dissatisfaction with the equal tempered tuning system, he pushed the treatment of microintonation to the point of dividing the octave into 72 microintervals. It requires enormous vocal and instrumental mastery to make this microtonality seem an unanticipated enrichment. The four compositions on this CD, presented here for the first time as a cycle, are steeped in these complex and subtle harmonic ideas, rich in possibilities yet extremely fragile. The pieces, with different performing combinations, function as a cycle primarily because of the poet chosen. ‘St. John of the Cross’ a great Spanish mystic of the 16th century. His “Cántico spiritual” is counted among the literary high points of the Spanish Golden Age. Zender set the first 14 of the complete 40 verses in a manner “entirely like Mozart”; this easily fits into Zender’s sophisticated and pluralistic musical and literary view of the world, which mediates between Hölderlin and Joyce, Shakespeare and Michaux, Dada and the Bible, and which discovers closer connections between Surrealism and Zen philosophy, or Master Eckart and Master Ikkyu, “than are dreamt of in our philosophy”.