Renowned composer York Höller (1944, Germany) is the source of the first work on this very interesting and rewarding (especially interpretingly speaking…) solo cello album by Friedrich Gauwerky, native of Cologne in the land of Stockhausen… This CD concentrates on contemporary repertoire, but the gifted cellist plays any other idiom. He always travels with Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas in his suitcase (or backpack?), and at the time of recording these pieces Max Reger means a lot to him at present, and you can hear him perform Bach, Beethoven and Brahms as well as pieces with the ink of the scores (from the computer print-outs…) barely dried!

The wonderful quality of the sound amazes me right off from the beginning of the Höller piece; “Sonata for Cello Solo” (1968). The feel of the revolutionary year of 1968 (Rudi Dutschke, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the Red Army Faction [Baader-Meinhof] seeds) can be detected, but also the free flow of spiritual tendencies and new cosmologies (Stockhausen’s “Aus den sieben Tagen”) seep through this composition, in the way it integrates violent staccato attacks with surging strokes of the bow, horizon-like, visionary.
The last part of the piece emerges like a sad reminiscence of the 19th Century, in an introspective romanticism. Bernd-Alois Zimmermann is remembered in a formula at the end.

Volker Heyn (1938, Germany) is represented by his “Blues in B-flat”, which drags on in heavy strokes of the bow, almost getting down to the nitty-gritty of Iancu Dumitrescu and his spectrals, but not quite. This is a short bagatelle-type of piece, with a lurking, stalking kind of feeling, as if it lies around like a murderous cat with tail whisking, just before it jumps for the mouse in the ditch behind the barn… but then it just slowly dies out, and it’s hard to know really what happened…

Tristram Cary (1925, UK) is next. This émigré to Australia talks through his “Messages” (1993), but it’s uncertain what he is saying… This composer is a little older than his fellow craftsmen on the CD, but I doubt if this is noticeable. Maybe he has a more delicate stylistic sense than some of the others, and possibly he is a bit more intricate in his expression. There is something captivating about this relatively new piece – not yet ten years of age. In evokes a sense of timelessness, leading further and ahead – which is no bad score for a piece just five minutes long. It would be interesting to hear more of this composer.

Klaus H. Hübler (1956, Germany) hops in momentarily (1:26) in a short, sketchy piece (“Opus breve” [1987]) just whisking a few short strokes of the bow across the canvas. Then he’s gone… Didn’t say much – and left…

Kaija Saariaho (1952, Finland) is held in high esteem amongst the electroacoustic craftsmen and traditionalists of the orchestra as well. She has produced some of the most interesting pieces of the late 20th Century. “Petals” (1988) was written in just a few days, but after a long mental preparation. She has carved the material out of “Nymphea” (for string quartet & electronics), so it can either be a side effect of that piece, or an essence of it. She says she wants to stretch the interpreter’s sensibility, but I don’t think the cellist of this CD needs to be sensitized. Friedrich Gauwerky is a master of his instrument, and fully justifies Saariaho’s twist of fate…

Richard Barrett (1959, UK) concludes this interesting – but uneven – solo cello CD with “Von hinter dem Schmerz” (1992 – 96), and one might wonder what this fantasy inducing title hints at. Could it be the forlorn morphinistic bliss of a man with a terminate cancer, or is it the land of numbness after a grief over lost love… In fact, the title comes from a poem by Paul Celan, which ends: “All is less than it is, all is more”.

The compositions here are uneven – some very interesting, a couple maybe sort of unnecessary – but the playing is great. Hopefully we will here more from the cello of Friedrich Gauwerky.