Radu Malftatti
Zeitschatten
For clarinet and violoncello -
electronic version by Radu Malfatti
"2004's
zeitschatten for clarinet and cello is also heard in an electronic
realisation made two years later, but 2005's friedrichschofquartett
features the instruments it was written for – flute, clarinet, trombone and
contrabass recorder – played by Malfatti's colleagues from the Wandelweiser
Group, Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey and Eva Reiter. Even so a degree of
post-production remains evident in the recording as the silences in the music
are inserted digitally, depriving the recording of any Cageian room noise and
creating a confusing, unnatural feel to the piece that further challenges the
listener's ideas of what music is and how it should sound. The score calls for
subtle changes in the individual sounding events, but these remain barely
noticeable as the extended silences cause the mind to re-evaluate its memory
of the preceding events. Appropriately, several of the b-boim discs come with
brief koan-like quotations from Malfatti's old friend Francis Brown. "If no
sound is being created, can the memory of previous sound be interrupted?" "How
many dimensions does sound have?" "Does the mind stop listening between sounds?""
| Richard Pinnell, Paris Tranatlantic