Peter Ablinger:
ANFANGEN (:AUFHÖREN)
für Violine in Bratschenstimmung (1991), ca.22',
vl in va-tuning
Anfangen (:Aufhören), sketch of the 6 sections, indicating the layer of hard attacks only
Anfangen (:Aufhören) for a violin in viola-tuning is a twenty minute long piece. The main theme of the piece, at least the layer of the piece one might recognize as its main one, is a single tone played by the viola player with a sharp attack. This tone appears again and again, played as though there was never another before it. It’s the paradox of a constant beginning: that each of these repeated tones be played with the energy and surprise of the aggressive opener of a piece. You may have seen the famous Akira Kurosawa film "The Seven Samurai". Before the night of the showdown one of the samurai is doing his exercises: again and again—and exclusively—pulling his sword from its hilt, just this one (opening) movement. He makes no successive stroke, the idea being that the first pull is, in any case, at the same time the last one. So again and again he makes this one initial movement, unsheathing his sword. It’s always the same and of course it’s not the same even twice.
This is exactly the idea of these, so-to-speak, repeated tones in Anfangen (:Aufhören). And obviously—once again—the performance of this piece requires much more than being able to play an instrument the way one is taught a music-academy. Yet it does not require acting either—instead, it is exactly this idea of attitude or pose or carriage that makes the piece conveyable to an audience. And it’s in this sense that some of Ablinger's pieces are almost theatrical. Anfangen (: Aufhören) combines the idea of the onenote-piece with the importance of ‘attitude’ and— as another element —a whole variety of small, mostly low-volume, dirty-sounding, fast, irregular, tissue-like sounds—virtuosically played, though they sound almost unintentional. (Christian Scheib)
> one page from the score
> full score (pdf 1,5MB)
> preface deutsch/english (pdf 2,1MB)
> listen to the beginning (violin: Dimitrios Polisoidis)
> listen to another detail (violin: Dimitrios Polisoidis)
> youtube link with score-follower (violin: Dimitrios Polisoidis)
> CD 1 (violin: Dimitrios Polisoidis)
> CD 2 (violin: Sabine Akiko Ahrendt)
> Text zum Stück
> eine Anmerkung von Caroline Naujocks 2015
> Gespräch mit Karl-Heinz Dicht 1993
> Christian Scheib über Stücke 1987-91
