Knut Sønstevold is one of my old instrumentalist heroes, and how I comprehend Stockhausen might be obvious from my reviews of the music out of Cologne and Kürten that can be read elsewhere on this reviewing site…

On this CD from Nosag the two are combined; the demon bassoonist and the angel composer – and the result is radiant!

Stockhausen composed “Solo for melodic instrument with feed-back” (“Solo für ein Melodieinstrument mit Rück-kopplung”) on a commission from the Japanese Radio in 1966. Stockhausen was there on two commissions from the Japanese Radio, and the other work he composed at that time was “Telemusik”, the famous electronic piece with inter-woven sounds from music from all over the world as well as the recorded sounds of Japanese temple bells, some of which Stockhausen recorded himself on location. While in Japan he also met up with the famous Zen master Daisetsu T. Suzuki, then in his 90s, who ridded Stockhausen of some of the apprehension he was feeling about using “artificial” means to create sound. The Zen master told Stockhausen that it would be artificial only if it went against Stockhausen’s inner convictions, and Stockhausen immediately understood that Suzuki was quite right.

The basis for the composition was an idea to have an instrumentalist play polyphonically with himself in a live performance. This is achieved by way of electronic devices that are commonplace now, but had to be invented back in 1966, at the time of composition. The player can react to what is being played by himself, comment on it, stack sounding fragments on top of each other and so on, at will – but of course in this case adhering to the instructions that Stockhausen laid down. As has been amply demonstrated in many of Stockhausen’s works, like Momente, Refrain, Mixtur etcetera, the composer allows for a freedom within the framework to arrive at almost totally different results, which is one of the beauties of Stockhausen’s methods of composition. At the time of composition, in the 1960s, the soloist’s bassoon was recorded on tape as he was playing, and played back over loud speakers after a short time-delay, when the player improvises chords, blocks or a polyphonic counter-voice to his playing. I suppose the delay these days is achieved digitally, but in 1966 it was analog tape-delay, which proved very popular with composers and improvisers of dream-like, repetitive music, like Terry Riley. “Solo” really instigates a freak situation, where the player can get totally lost in a hall of mirrors, where he only sees himself everywhere, multiplied and ridiculed – but Sønstevold carries through without a glitch, as the master instrumentalist that he is.

The second piece on the CD is “In Freundschaft”, which Stockhausen composed in 1977. It can be performed by a number of instruments, but bassoon was originally not one of them. The bassoon version was added in cooperation with the bassoonist Kim Walker in 1982. Stockhausen had a vision, during rehearsals, of a teddy bear – just like the one he had when he was little – playing bassoon, which is why the score now includes a teddy bear costume… and also some choreography! Costumes and choreography has become a rather common occurrence in Stockhausen’s scores, especially in his solo music.
“In Freundschaft” is quite demanding of the performer. The structure of the piece calls for contrasting fragments (limbs), little nucleus of sound, which gradually converge around a common, repeated element – the formula. The fragments are played in all registers and all dynamics. Each time the formula is played the high limbs get lower, the low higher, until they all circle a near-constant trill on F sharp / G natural. Many more evolutions emerge as the piece progresses, but in the end all limbs are played together as one melody line.
Circular breathing is suggested in the score a few times, with optional breath-marks indicated for those who don’t use the method.

Like in so many of Stockhausen’s works – even the small-scale ones – there is a meticulously worked-out plan behind the music, or very intricate ideas, spanning the compositional process. Stockhausen is a workaholic who immensely enjoys hard work, and the result of all this mental and physical exertion is brilliant music, which you can enjoy without the slightest idea of the construction. Sønstevold makes due justice to Stockhausen’s efforts in his expertise interpretation!

The third Stockhausen piece on this CD is “Spiral for a soloist” (“Spiral für einen Solisten”) from 1968. Here the player reacts to short-wave transmissions, imitating and transforming the random sounds that occur out of the radio. The piece allows for a lot of improvisational freedom. For this particular recorded performance Sønstevold pre-programmed five short-wave stations, which seemed to transmit noises that he liked. Sønstevold’s bassoon was outfitted with a contact microphone, placed inside the instrument. The radio transmissions and the bassoon sound is then fed through loudspeakers and a so called “Bohlin tone board” and a “Svensson box”, both handling and to varying degrees distorting the signals that are fed through them. The distorted sounds are fed through the loudspeakers together with the original sounds from the five short wave radios and the bassoon, which results in a very exciting mix of different characteristics. In this particular recording Sønstevold also allowed himself the sparse use of digital delay. Brilliant recording! It’s a great pleasure to listen to how Sønstevold mingles with the sometimes very beautiful, ringing sounds that bubble up out of the short-wave bands. Sometimes vague, dreamy voices rise out of the static too, transforming the piece into some kind of “otherworldliness”.

The last entry on the CD is the famous and repeatedly recorded “Tierkries” from 1975/76, which contains twelve melodies for the star constellations of the Zodiac. Stockhausen indicates that the melodies can be played in any order, even allowing for the exclusion of certain signs, making a vast number of versions possible. Stockhausen had one person in mind for each of the twelve melodies, and they can be said to portray certain characteristics of these persons, all adhering to his own sign in the Zodiac. The original version was written for music boxes, and that is the way these pieces appear on issue number 24 in the Stockhausen Edition on his own label. Here Kina Sønstevold plays the piano.

This is an important CD with innovative works by the most important composer of the 20th century – Karlheinz Stockhausen -, interpreted by one of the foremost virtuosos of the bassoon; Knut Sønstevold.