Bernd Alois Zimmermann – Sonata for Solo Cello (1960)

I wonder how much bad performances have contributed to contemporary classical music’s bad rep.  I just listened to Siegfried Palm’s recording of Zimmermann’s Sonata and afterward I had no idea what I had just listened to.  Five movements, each consisting of a set of short numbered phrases — but why these phrases, in this order?  It just felt like a bunch of stuff, a fulfillment of all the worst stereotypes about new music:  abstruse, incomprehensible, emotionless, meaningless.

Then I discovered that multiple Amazon customer reviews cited Thomas Demenga’s recording as the only one that really brought life to the piece, so I checked it out — and they were right.  All of a sudden the phrases were connected into larger wholes.  Parts that had previously seemed arbitrary now had a sense of tension and weight and gravitas, and parts that had previously seemed rhythmic-and-kinda-cool now came across as violent and intense.  I noticed phrases recurring between different movements:  a slow oscillating figure descending microtonally, a wild and virtuosic series of pizzicati, a long silence punctuated by repeated Bbs.  I won’t lie, the piece is still dense and difficult and very far from my aesthetic orientation.  I certainly don’t fully understand it, and I don’t have time to delve further into it right now;  actually, in all honesty, there’s enough music out there that’s a higher priority for me that I may never wind up giving this piece the time and energy that it deserves.  But at least I now have an inkling of why someone with a different aesthetic sensibility might be really into the piece.

This has happened to me before, going from Pierre Amoyal’s recording of the Schoenberg Violin Concerto (1936) to Zvi Zeitlin’s, and going from the London Sinfonietta recording of Stockhausen’s Kontra-Punkte (1953) to the Ensemble Recherche one.  In neither case did I totally fall in love with the piece, but in both cases what had previously seemed dry, technical and confusing suddenly sprang to life as music, art for the soul as well as the brain.  It’s terrible to think how many people must hear the dry recordings and dismiss these pieces — or worse, the composers, or even worse, an entire century of notated music — on that basis.

Anyway, gotta move on, especially since the Zimmermann Sonata isn’t particularly relevant to this paper, except insofar as it’s a fairly early (as far as I know) example of a piece with a bunch of extended techniques in it.  Namely:  sul pont, sul tasto, left-hand pizz, Bartók pizz, harmonics, microtones.  If anyone’s reading, thank you for your patience in this time of intense writer-centricity!