NEW CDS in the beginning of 2021

NEW CDS in 2021

In January 2021, a Beethoven homage ONLY WHO KNOWS LONGING will be released by the label Ambiente Audio in my "Chamber Music Series" CMS Vol. 2. It was my dream project in the Beethoven Year 2020 to invite friends to compose something around Beethoven's "Mignon" setting (text: J.W. von Goethe) NUR WER DIE SEHNSUCHT KENNT (ONLY WHO KNOWS THE LONGING)... that happened, recorded in November with a lot of intelligent creativity.... and has received positive feedback from critics and has been nominated by the jury of the "Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik" (German Record Critics' Prize) for the 2nd Quarterly List 2021. Incidentally, with an exemplary female share, as five of the seven composers as well as the Greek conductor are female... I am also very happy about the compositions dedicated to me and I myself have contributed two novelties myself: the trio SEHNSUCHT for soprano, clarinet and piano as well as the piano piece DESPAIR & LONGING. WITH BEETHOVEN...BEYOND ALL TIME. Thanks to the many creative minds involved, all of whom I cannot name here.

              Recorded in spring and released in May by Ambiente Audio as CMS 3: MOMENTS OF SILENCE "Hackbrett in Concert". Quiet music, music of silence of a very special flair, because the CD contains 70 minutes of music for the intimate bell-like dulcimer sound, - played by Birgit Stolzenburg, who leads into unknown listening worlds with changing chamber music partners: Hackbrett with clarinet (Slava Cernavca), with flauto dolce (Iris Lichtinger), with soprano vocalise (Gabriele Steck), with String Quartet (Seraphin Quartet), with organ (Harald Feller) and with second duo dulcimer (Lisa Schöttl). - Exploring the power of silence compositionally has been my focus for many months, for example in 2020 already in the piano quintet "Callarse" - Silence (after Pablo Neruda) or in the "Silent Preludes" for organ and electronics. 

    In the world of silence, the sensitive sound world of the dulcimer is unsurpassed. Not for nothing was this instrument called "dulce melos" (sweet sound, sweet song), which is still recognisable in the French term "doulcemèr" or in the English-Irish "dulcimer". The hammered dulcimer can be found in all cultures: from the medieval or baroque psaltery, the Italian salterio to the delicate Finnish kantele, the Hungarian-Eastern European cymbalon, the Ukrainian bandura, the Persian santur, the Chinese yangqin or the Thai khim.

    I have been working with the soloist Birgit Stolzenburg, professor at the Munich University of Music and Theatre, for a long time. Her goal is to remove the image of the Hackbrett from the context of alpine folk music and return it to musical art music, where it was once at home in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

    As a retrospective of my film music work, in March 2021 the Alhambra label released a 3CD set MUSIC IN DOCUMENTARY FILMS. LISTENING JOURNEYS TO THE STRANGE WORLDS AND THE UNKNOWN, composed, conducted and produced by Enjott Schneider. Writing music for documentary films is a greater challenge for me than for feature films: there, the scripts and subjects are quite conventional and cliché-like. But Documentaries, on the other hand, require research and sound experiments - especially in encounters with foreign cultures - which are inspiring. Thematically, the films set to music lead in heterogeneous directions: scenically across the globe in the FÄHRPASSAGEN - famous waterways, to SARDINIA, to a newly discovered Germany in the series HESSEN VON OBEN or BAYERN!.... In ARMAGEDDON, in the film EVOLUTION OF NETWORKS of the Seville World's Fair and in and in 2057 - THE WORLD IN 50 YEARS we look into the future, whereas in two films about AUSCHWITZ we look into a dark and very emotionally evoked past.