Love, Nietzsche… and a laundry basket got lost
Helmut Lachenmann: Got Lost
Robert Schumann: Dichterkreis
Lachenmann’s recent work for piano and soprano is typical of his incredible attentiveness to microscopic variations in tone and timbre.
Texts drawn from the works of Nietzsche, Pessoa and an anonymous person seeking his lost laundry basket on a handwritten note, are stripped of their pathos and diction, and broken down into 18 wildly varied categories of phonetic sound. These noises are echoed by the piano part which incorporates a range of extended techniques and refined pedalling.
As a complement to Lachenmann’s intensity, the duo of soprano Elizabeth Holmertz (soprano) and Kenneth Karlsson (piano) have also chosen a selection of Lieder from the songbook of German Romantic composer Robert Schumann.
