FRANC KOSEM: REFLECTIONS

Classical and Modern Music

Format: CD

Code: 114397

EAN: 3838898114397

The trumpet is one of the characteristic instruments of Western music due to its bright intensity, which has always seemed highly appropriate for expressing solemn sentiments. It is partly for this reason that the instrument was often included in representative music: we need think only of the town pipers of the 15th and 16th centuries, military brass fanfares or other brass ensembles in the service of the ruling institutions. On the other hand, due to its specific construction (especially instruments without valves), the trumpet was rather slow to establish itself as a concertante instrument, and it only really emerged as a solo instrument in the 20th century, as evidenced by the selected repertoire on the present compact disc.
In part, this revival is associated with the altered musical-historical situation after the First World War. This was a time of momentous change. Schoenberg and his disciples continued the chromaticisation of harmonic technique and the emphasis on expressiveness. This led to the abandonment of traditional tonality, which can be seen as the final stage of the shifts commenced in the 19th century by Richard Wagner. It was, however, precisely this emphasised, overextended expressiveness that became questionable for the generation of composers whose first works surfaced in the 1930s, and who witnessed the great economic and hence political crisis that engulfed Europe at that time and led to the emergence of totalitarian regimes and the Second World War. The composers who committed themselves to the so-called Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) therefore no longer wanted to sing the praises of major world view narratives, nor did they trust the heightened expressiveness or extreme complexity of musical technique. Instead, they sought to regain the listener, and therefore opened themselves to the influence of popular music of the time, as well as to the music of earlier historical periods, especially the Baroque. They were no longer interested in the great forms of symphonic music, but instead turned their attention to choral music, various chamber ensembles and, due to their interest in virtuosity, solo music. The central advocate of these efforts was Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), who, in the twenties and thirties, gained the status of the most important German composer, a herald of the new. With the rise of Nazism, however, his role became increasingly controversial, and when Hitler’s regime came to power Hindemith found himself on the so-called list of degenerate artists (entartete Kunst). He no longer received commissions and therefore withdrew from creative work and focused his attention on theoretical issues, the result of which was the influential work The Craft of Musical Composition.
It was precisely during this period, from 1935 through to his emigration to the United States in 1940, that Hindemith began creating sonatas for virtually all of the orchestral instruments. The Sonata for Trumpet and Piano (1939) is a typical example of Hindemith’s music that seeks to place the soloist in the foreground. However, the Sonata not only demonstrates virtuoso features, but also reveals more internalised, reflective content, as is indicated by the sequence of movements, while the harmonic language is characterised by findings from Hindemith’s theoretical work. The first movement is introduced by a powerful statement of the solo trumpet, which is then repeated twice. In between, march rhythms dominate, perhaps even foretelling the terrible advance of war. More sophisticated motivic working marks the second movement, in which more innocent gestures can be detected, while the final movement, funeral music, can be understood as the emotional core of the composition. The trumpet laments and becomes embroiled in angry outbursts, followed by a loss of hope, until the movement concludes with a chorale by Johann Georg Albinus, which had been used earlier by J. S. Bach in his works.
Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (1892–1955) spent the most important years of his life in Paris, where he joined the group of composers known as Les Six, whose father figure was Erik Satie. Like Hindemith, the members of Les Six endeavoured to re-establish communication with the audience, although they rarely engaged with social issues, preferring instead to indulge in café merriment or avant-garde absurdity. The greatest “seriousness” and fidelity to the German tradition was demonstrated by Honegger, who nonetheless “transgressed” in certain compositions, which could be understood in the context of functional music. This applies to his Intrada for Trumpet and Piano, written in 1947 for a competition at the Paris Conservatoire, enabling the graduates to demonstrate their virtuosity and musical skill. In the work, the composer exploits the entire ambit of the instrument, but at the same time does not forget to establish a strong formal structure. Thus, Honegger’s Intrada, solemn entrance music, has a tripartite conception, with the outer sections being dominated by a strident fanfare theme, while the central section withdraws to a more dancelike emotion, with invigorating rhythms and jazz syncopation.
Swiss composer Heinrich Sutermeister (1910–1995), whose life and work was disrupted by the Second World War, belonged to the next generation of composers. Before the war, he studied in Basel and Paris, and later at the Academy in Munich, where his mentors included the celebrated Hans Pfitzner and Carl Orff. He gained the attention of the broader public in the 1930s with his Divertimento for String Orchestra and his radio opera The Black Widow. The distinctly accented rhythms and melodic-harmonic simplicity of his language is reminiscent of Orff, but one should not overlook the fact that Sutermeister’s stylistic development was strongly marked by his experience of Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande and Verdi’s late opera oeuvre. These traditional models themselves indicate that Sutermeister rejected modernism in favour of a more intelligible musical “language”. He was therefore much more acceptable to the Nazi regime than Hindemith, and it is not surprising that important commissions soon arrived. His opera Romeo and Juliet was performed in Dresden in 1940 and soon appeared on a number of German opera stages (after the war, it even reached Ljubljana). With its stage suppleness and melodic agility, the opera suited Goebbels’ desire for new works that enabled the audience to forget the hard reality.
After the war, Sutermeister did not enjoy any further notable successes on the opera stage, although he did achieve greater popularity in Switzerland with his choral works. The composition Gavotte de concert was written in 1950, at a time when Sutermeister was enjoying his last important successes with his operas (performances at Milan’s La Scala, a premiere conducted by Herbert von Karajan). The work is dedicated to the Belgian composer and conductor Franz Wangermée. Stylistically, Sutermeister is connected to traditional expression, but he demanded a high level of technical competence and diversity from soloists.
The career of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959) was also affected by the maelstrom of war, as he was forced to emigrate to the United States, from where he never returned home. Much like in the case of his Hungarian counterpart Bartók, Martinů’s beginnings in the new country were difficult, but a solution arose in a similar manner, in the form of a commission from conductor Serge Koussevitzky. Martinů’s activities as a composer for chamber ensembles were especially fruitful. The Sonatina for Trumpet and Piano was written in 1956, when the composer was living in a New York hotel and negotiating with the leadership of the renowned Curtis Institute, who had offered him a professorship. The composition is conceived in a free form and is imbued with catchy melodies and elements of folk music, jazz and chorale, brought together in a common neoclassical spirit.
Paths by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (1930–1996) belongs to an entirely different time. Takemitsu successfully combined Eastern and Western musical traditions, resulting in a unique musical language characterised by the subtle treatment of sonority and the suspension of dramatic temporality. To some extent, this is also true of the composition Paths, which was written in 1994 to mark the passing of Polish composer Witold Lutosławski the same year. In Takemitsu’s oeuvre, we find a number of similar musical epitaphs (M. Feldman, M. Vyner, O. Messiaen, A. Tarkovsky), in which the composer engages with the fundamental question of human mortality. Paths consists of a set of phrases that are associated with each other and characterised very by minute rhythmic segmentation (the composer’s description of this is very precise). This “conversation” is supplemented with a constant interplay of the sound of the open and muted trumpet.

It was only after the Second World War that Slovenian composers began to contribute a more significant number of works for solo trumpet. Pavel Mihelčič (b. 1937) is one of the most prominent Slovenian composers. He has left his mark on Slovenian musical culture not only as a composer but also as a public servant: he worked as a music critic for almost forty years, he was the head of symphonic music at Radio Slovenia for many years, as the Slovenian representative of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) he successfully brought the prestigious World Music Days to Slovenia on two occasions, and he is familiar to young musicians as the author of a textbook on the theory of music. He was also an important professor of composition and served as the dean of the Ljubljana Academy of Music. It is therefore no wonder that he earned the title Professor Emeritus of the University of Ljubljana. For his activities and achievements, he has received the Prešeren Fund Prize (1979), the Župančič Award of the City of Ljubljana (1984), the Order of Merit of the Republic of Slovenia (2006), and the Kozina Award of the Society of Slovene Composers.
Pavel Mihelčič received his own musical education in Ljubljana, in the composition class of Matija Bravničar, but before that he had been drawn to jazz and improvisation. In the 1960s, when he graduated and completed his postgraduate studies, he took on a modernist sonic language, but in the 1980s he followed the twists and turns of musical development and his compositional language was “softened” by impressionist colouring and cloaking, while also opening to folk music, especially motifs from the White Carniola region of Slovenia.
Peter Kopač (b. 1949) graduated from the Ljubljana Academy of Music in composition and advanced piano. Between 1980 and 2007, he worked as a piano teacher, répétiteur and librarian at the Škofja Loka Music School, from 1996 to 2003 he taught music theory at the intermediate level of the Celje Music School, and since 2007 he has served as the director of the Škofja Loka Music School. The song Matin is based on a rhythmic motif in the accompanying piano, above which the trumpet rises with a melodic idea. In terms of dynamics, the composition outlines an arch that leads from the initial reverie to a climax and back again.
Dušan Bavdek (b. 1971) studied composition with Alojz Srebotnjak at the Ljubljana Academy of Music, where he completed his postgraduate studies in 2000 with Marijan Gabrijelčič and Dane Škerl. He furthered his studies abroad with János Vajda and Helmut Lachenmann. After graduating, he first taught music theory at the Ljubljana Conservatory of Music and Ballet, and in 2002 he began lecturing at the Ljubljana Academy of Music. He is also active in various organisations: he is a member of the executive boards of SAZAS, the European Composers Forum and the Society of Slovene Composers, and he served as the Secretary General of the World Music Days Slovenia 2003. His poetics draw from the tension between loyalty to traditional musical technique and an affinity with the modernist experience of the 20th century. In its own way, this is revealed in the composition Dark Memory, in which the composer touches on contemporary issues and thus, in his own words, introduces “a feeling of anger and helplessness due to the pride of various emperors and their courtiers, who, despite their nakedness, continue to persuade us of the colourfulness and spotlessness of their clothes”. In Dark Memory, Bavdek thus “wanted to capture the feeling of restlessness aroused by the attempt to suppress unpleasant memories of inappropriate behaviour, and by the pricking conscience that prevents this”.
After completing her studies of composition and music theory at the Ljubljana Academy of Music in the class of Prof. Pavel Mihelčič, Nina Šenk (1982) undertook postgraduate studies in composition at the University of Music Carl Maria von Weber Dresden under Prof. Lothar Voigtländer. In 2008, she completed her masters studies at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts in the class of Prof. Matthias Pintscher. While studying, she received several awards, including the European Award for the best composition at the festival Young Euro Classic for her Violin Concerto (2004), the Prešeren Prize of the Ljubljana Academy of Music, and first prize in the Festival of Contemporary Music in Weimar. In the 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 seasons, she was the resident composer of the Orchestra of the State Theatre of Cottbus, Germany. Her compositions have been performed at important festivals both in Slovenia and abroad (New York, Salzburg, Kassel, Munich, Frankfurt, Weimar, Heidelberg). In her works, she remains faithful to modernism and seeks ever new instrumental and structural solutions for the sonically free material. In the composition Reflections, “elements and colours that appear in the trumpet influence the piano, that is, the piano ‘reflects’ them and vice versa. The composition begins with noises, which gradually evolve into tones, initially veiled with the use of various mutes. The trumpet then withdraws from the audience and is involved intimately only with the piano. Only later is the intimacy broken, transforming into an open and virtuosic rhythmic game”.
Dr Gregor Pompe

Franc Kosem (b. 1982) comes from the excellent Ljubljana brass school. He graduated from the Ljubljana Academy of Music in 2005 in the trumpet class of A. Grčar, completing his graduate studies three years later, in 2008. He then furthered his studies in Karlsruhe, Germany, graduating from the class of R. Friedrich in 2010. He has demonstrated his abilities as an orchestral musician (as the principal trumpeter of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra since 2004), as a soloist and chamber musician (as a member of the Slovenian Philharmonic Brass Ensemble and the brass quintet SiBrass), and as a teacher (at the Ljubljana Academy of Music). His debut solo album was released by the Slovenian Philharmonic in 2011 and includes trumpet concertos by Leopold Mozart, Haydn and Hummel. For his work and successes to date, he has received numerous prizes and awards, including the highest Slovenian state award, the Prešeren Fund Prize (2012; for his creative and interpretive work in music over the preceding two years). In addition to giving the premiere performances of over 30 works by Slovenian composers, he is also active in music education at the Ljubljana Academy of Music (from 2011 to 2015 as an assistant, and since 2015 as an assistant professor of trumpet and chamber music). Trumpet virtuoso Franc Kosem “belongs to the younger generation of artists, but he is already passing on his knowledge to younger generations as a teacher, mentor and organiser of trumpet masterclasses ... with his playing, he has enthused both younger and older listeners. His playing is distinguished by a beautiful tone, superb technique and expression, attracting even the most demanding listener” (Alojz Ajdič in the argumentation of the Prešeren Fund Prize, 2012).

Pianists:
Klemen Golner (b. 1973) graduated from the Ljubljana Academy of Music in the class of A. Bertoncelj, after which he furthered his studies abroad, receiving several awards and commendations. He is a permanent collaborator of the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, a sought-after répétiteur, and a permanent piano accompanist for renowned Slovenian artists, including those of the Ljubljana Academy of Music. He also performs in various chamber ensembles.
Hinko Haas (b. 1956) is one of the most prominent Slovenian pianists. After beginning his music studies in Celje, he undertook undergraduate and postgraduate studies of the piano at the Ljubljana Academy of Music in the class of D. Tomšič Srebotnjak. He then furthered his studies in Weimar, Brussels and Bern. As a soloist, with orchestras, as an accompanist and as a member of chamber ensembles, he regularly performs and records both in Slovenia and abroad. For his performances, recordings and educational achievements, he has received numerous awards in Slovenia and abroad, while at the same time serving as a teacher at the Ljubljana Academy of Music, most recently as a full professor.
Miha Haas (b. 1983) graduated from the Ljubljana Academy of Music in the class of D. Tomšič Srebotnjak and later completed his postgraduate studies with A. Madžar in Brussels. He has received numerous awards for his many solo and chamber music performances, as well as for his appearances with orchestras. He is employed as an assistant professor of chamber music, piano duo and piano repertoire at the Ljubljana Academy of Music (as an assistant from 2008 and an assistant professor since 2013).
Pianist and musicologist Nina Prešiček (b. 1976) was educated mostly abroad but is currently based in Slovenia and works a teacher at the Ljubljana Conservatory of Music and Ballet. The bold and imaginative projects that she undertakes have established her above all as one of the leading performers of contemporary music in Slovenia.
Dr Franc Križnar

TRACKS:
1          A. Honegger: Intrada                                                          4:15
2          D. Bavdek: Dark Memory    (listen!)            6:03
3          P. Kopač: Matin                                            7:14
4          P. Mihelčič: Scorpion                                  4:06
5          H. Sutermeister: Gavotte de concert                            5:28
6          B. Martinů: Sonatine                                                           7:48

              P. Hindemith: Sonate
7          I. Mit kraft                                                                               5:45
8          II. Mässig bewegt                                                                 2:37
9          III. Trauermusik. Sehr langsam                                       7:30

10        T. Takemicu: Paths                                                  5:29
11        N. Šenk: Reflections                                       10:14

Franc Kosem – trumpet
Klemen Golner – piano (1, 3, 4, 7-9)
Hinko Haas – piano (2)
Miha Haas – piano (5, 6)
Nina Prešiček – piano (11)