Description
Of Love and Life brings together selected songs and song cycles by composer Hans Christian Detlefsen, whose work blends influences from the European avant-garde with non-European soundscapes. Encounters with composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgy Ligeti, as well as studies of Javanese gamelan music, shaped his musical language, which is characterized by flexible rhythms and harmonies influenced by Olivier Messiaen. The selected cycles combine texts from different eras and linguistic regions. French poetry by Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine meets Spanish poetry by Luis de Gongora, Federico Garcia Lorca, and John of the Cross, as well as English-language authors such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Edward Lear, and E. E. Cummings. The musical settings consistently follow the linguistic structure, unfolding from it a distinct musical dramaturgy that balances intimacy, expressiveness, and tonal color. The voices featured include those of Anna Sophia Theil, Feride Buyukdenktas, Zacharias Galaviz-Guerra, Vincent Kusters, and Ulf Bastlein, who, as the project's guiding spirit, once again demonstrates his expertise in rare song repertoire. They represent a new generation of lieder performers who devote themselves with particular intensity to the contemporary repertoire. The piano accompaniment was provided by Charlie Bo Meijering, Martijn van Sas, Clara Sophia Murnig, and Hedayet Jonas Djeddikar.
