Heiner Goebbels Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten (Avant Garde/Modern Classical, 2007)

Heiner Goebbels - Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten

David Bennent voice
Georg Nigl baritone
Ensemble Modern
Deutscher Kammerchor
Franck Ollu conductor



Opera for soloists, choir and ensemble with texts by Gertrude Stein, Giordano Bruno, Henri Michaux, T.S. Eliot, Leonardo da Vinci and Nicolas Poussin

Part One
Il y a des jours
Non sta
The Sirens
Ove è dunque
Les Inachevés
Tanz der Derwische
Emplie de
In the 19th Century
Triumphal March
Homme-bombe
Schlachtenbeschreibung
Well Anyway
Did It Really Happen?
Kehna hi kya
Et c’est toujours

Part Two

Il y a des jours
La Fronde à hommes
Just Like That
Bild der Städte
Ich leugne nicht die Unterscheidung
Krieg der Städte
On the Road
And We Said Good Bye
On the Radio
Different Nations
Out Where The West Begins
Train Travelling
Je ne voyage plus
Freight Train
Principes

Recorded live October 2004
ECM New Series 1811

‘Soundtrack’ of Heiner Goebbels’ massive music theatre piece, “Landscape With Distant Relatives” – ‘an opera in the full sense of the term’ - recorded at Paris’s Festival d’Automne, incorporating texts by Gertrude Stein, Giordano Bruno, Henri Michaux, T.S. Eliot and Nicolas Poussin, and drawing on the services of actor-speaker David Bennett, baritone Georg Nigl, 16 further singers and 19 instrumentalists. The non-linear storyline embraces the ambiguous relationship between art and reality and the nature of political conflict. “The consistently gripping score runs the gamut of styles from Renaissance tonal tapestry (incorporating early instruments) to teeth-baring aggression – including an army of drummers raising merry hell.” (Rob Cowan, The Independent)

Heiner Goebbels has produced a succession of distinctive stage works over the last two decades or so, some of which rank among the most dazzling fusions of images, text and music in our time, but Landscape With Distant Relatives, first seen in Geneva in 2002, is the first of them he has specifically labelled as an "opera". Landscape With Distant Relatives uses a patchwork of texts - by authors including Giordano Bruno, Leonardo, TS Eliot, Henri Michaux and Gertrude Stein - which make up the "landscape" of the title, and through which Goebbels' music then travels. There is no narrative threading the 80-minute work; the texts are arranged almost like museum exhibits in the space mapped out by Goebbels' score, with the spotlight falling on each in turn, drawing parallels and creating unexpected connections and collisions between different historical eras and cultural traditions. To establish those links, Goebbels employs a typically vast range of musical styles - from Bollywood film music to country, from samples and jazzy improvisation to period-instrument renaissance pastiche - all of which the peerless Ensemble Modern, playing a bewildering variety of instruments, take entirely in their stride. On disc, of course, only the words and music can be conveyed, and the visual element, always a primary ingredient in Goebbels' scores, is absent. So the part the Ensemble plays in the onstage drama remains unseen, just as the way in which the other performers, two solo vocalists and a chamber choir, are integrated into Goebbels' production is missing too. This, then, can only be a partial glimpse into a work that is far wider-ranging, but even as a soundtrack it is totally absorbing, and carries its own special dramatic charge.
Andrew Clements (The Guardian (GB), 7 December 2007)

mp3, 256 kbps