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| The present CD features pieces for small ensembles composed by Stefan Wolpe between 1929 and 1969. Born in Berlin in 1902, Wolpe has always kept an open mind for new developments and incorporated them into his music in his own distinctive way. As the instrumentation already suggests, his quartet for trumpet, tenor saxophone, percussion, and piano combines various sounds and musical elements from jazz. But it also reminded Wolpe of compositions from his youth. “The Quartet is one of my best pieces of ‘battle music’, as it has so dreadfully been called in Germany,” he wrote in a letter to his editor. The short Trio Musik zu Hamlet was composed for a Berlin production of the play 1929. Seven years later, Wolpe had already escaped Germany for Israel, where he composed, among other pieces, his Suite im Hexachord, in which he makes forays into less-explored fringes of compositional and playing techniques. Similarly, in his Music for any Instruments, Wolpe allows for sharpest contrasts while almost exhausting instrumental possibilities. His love of experimentation notwithstanding, the pieces assembled on this CD testify to Wolpe’s highly distinctive and fully developed musical language. |
1CD | Contemporary | Special Offers |
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| Recommendation |
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Even Hector Berlioz praised the sound of the, then newly invented, saxophone, likening it to the “mysterious vibrations of a bell, long a er it has been struck.”  |
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| And: The feast is in full progress – Judgment Day as an intense cello concerto. And as an encore: Ten Preludes for cello solo. |
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| Bill Hopkins died far too early. The very few compositions he left behind bear witness to individual beauty and melodious aesthesia. |
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