Jacob van Eyck (1590–1657)
Onse Vader in Hemelryck
from Der Fluyten Lust-Hof (1644)

Erik Satie (1866–1925)
Choral hypocrite
from Choses vues à droit et à gauche sans lunettes (1914)

Georg Böhm (1661–1733)
Vater unser im Himmelreich IGB 24

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
from the Partita No. 2 BWV 1004
Allemande – Corrente – Sarabande – Gigue

Klaus Lang (*1971)
splendor stellarum

Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757)
Sonata in D minor K. 32
Aria

Sonata in D minor K. 1
Allegro

Intermission

Thomas Koppel (1944–2006)
from Nele’s Dances
I Know You're Crossing the Border Somewhere
And I Know You’re Remembering, You Distant Boy

Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz (1626–c. 1677)
Xacaras

Thomas Koppel
And I’m Still Feeling You in My Arms

Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz
Folias

Thomas Koppel
There I Dance My Dance on Black Feet
In a Symphony of Galloping Hooves

Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Syrinx (1913)

José María Sánchez-Verdú (*1968)
Ariadne (2023)

Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992)
Oblivion (1982)

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787)
Balletto
from Orfeo ed Euridice (1762)

Carl Scheindienst (c. 1800)
Gestern Abend war Vetter Mikkel da

Timeless Tales
Stefan Temmingh and Margret Koell Explore “Sound Stories”


Jürgen Ostmann


It is an attractive sonic combination, but a rather unconventional mix stylistically. Looking at the duo program performed by Stefan Temmingh and Margret Koell, these two aspects immediately stand out. Reason enough to talk to the recorder player about the idea behind this concert: did it spring from the personal acquaintance with the harpist? Or did it start with the idea of combining these two instruments? And are there role models for this combination?

Historical sources are scare, says Temmingh, but obviously recorder players and harpists must have performed together in earlier centuries, in London for example, where both instruments were popular at the same time. For Temmingh, however, the personal aspect was more important: he has known Margret Koell for about two decades, and the two have collaborated on his program “Inspired by Love” (joined by the soprano Dorothee Mields) and as a duo as well. But since this combination of instruments left so few traces in music history, the two of them had to go in search of shared repertoire. Therefore, their current program developed quite gradually, over the course of several years.

One obvious route would be to arrange existing compositions for their own instruments—more on this later. Another possibility would be to commission new works. One such pice, for example, was commissioned by Temmingh’s colleague Michala Petri from her Danish compatriot Thomas Koppel. Played on recorder and harp, Nele’s Dances sounds almost original—Petri’s partner Lars Hannibal played his part on an archlute. Tonight’s program, however, also contains original commissions—in addition to José Maria Sánchez-Verdú’s Ariadne for solo harp, there is the duo splendor stellarum by the Austrian composer and improviser Klaus Lang. Its title, which translates as “Splendor of the Stars,” evokes associations with the universe, and indeed, Temmingh describes the music as having “a floating, suspended aspect from beginning to end, especially in its tempo and harmonies. If done well, it conveys a feeling of timelessness.”


Chorales of the Unusual Kind

Another aspect of their programming is described by Temmingh and Koell in the title “Sound Stories.” Music tells stories, evoking individual, more or less specific actions or images in listeners’ minds; but sometimes the music has an interesting anecdotal background of its own. This applies not only to individual works, but in this case to entire program sections as well. The opening group, for instance, consists of three chorales, two of which are based on the same melody by Martin Luther. On top of this foundation, the blind Dutch recorder virtuoso Jacob van Eyck and the Northern German organist Georg Böhm tell the same story in different ways. Between the two, Temmingh and Koell have interpolated a short piece by the French composer Erik Satie, originally written for violin and piano. As its title, Choral hypocrite, implies, this is an anti-chorale, if not even a protest work. “My chorales are equal to Bach’s, except that they are more rare and less pretentious,” the composer explained. Indeed, there are several more chorales in Satie’s work, one of which even claims to be “unappetizing”: this Choral inappétissant from the cycle Sports et divertissements was dedicated by Satie “to those who dislike me,” because, he said, it attempts to express everything he knew about boredom. Whichever way one chooses to look at the rather entertaining Chorale hypocrite—it certainly is an excellent example of how the duo of Temmingh and Koell uses interpolations to challenge and heighten the audience’s open-mindedness towards different styles and stories.

Three more sections of pieces by different composers make up the second half of the program. The first consists of works with a programmatic background—opening with Claude Debussy’s classic flute solo Syrinx, which gives a star turn to the instrument itself. In Greek mythology, Syrinx was a nymph who was fleeing Pan, the god of forests and shepherds, and had herself transformed into a reed, from which Pan in turn fashioned the instrument known as syrinx or panpipe. The following piece by José Maria Sánchez-Verdú is based on the story of the Cretan princess Ariadne, who helped her lover Theseus defeat the Minotaur, was later abandoned by him on the island of Naxos, and consoled herself with Dionysus, the god of wine. Listeners may try to guess which part of the tale inspired the Spanish composer… Oblivion, finally, is the title of one of Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla’s most famous tangos. The wonderfully nostalgic melody became known as part of his score for Marco Bellocchio’s film version of Pirandello’s play Enrico IV. It tells the story of an Italian country nobleman in the 20th century whose surroundings support his delusion of being the medieval Emperor Henry IV.


Street Music and Operatic Ballet

Thomas Koppel and Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz, the protagonists of the following program group, at first glance make for an unequal pair—but Temmingh and Koell have put both their works under the title “Street Music.” Koppel, also known as co-founder of the rock band Savage Rose, was an unconventional free spirit with a keen interest in social justice. Inspired by Ulenspiegel, Charles de Coster’s novel about the Flemish struggle against Spanish rule in the 16th century, he wrote a poem whose individual lines became the movement titles of Nele’s Dances. The 17th-century Spanish theologian, composer, and harpist Ruiz de Ribayaz spent some formative years in Peru, then a Spanish colony. His folk-like, rousing Xácaras and Folias presumably also reflect Latin American influences.

A famous and an entirely obscure composer come face to face in the final part of tonight’s concert. Reacting to the works of his predecessors, which had become trapped in convention, the operatic reformer Christoph Willibald Gluck wrote music whose naturalness and straightforward emotion speak directly to the heart—as in the touchingly simple ballet music from Orfeo ed Euridice. A folk song that seems almost silly in its simplicity, on the other hand, became the basis of the only work associated with the name Carl Scheindienst, a set of virtuoso and rather original variations on “Gestern Abend war Vetter Mikkel da” (Last Night Cousin Michel Called). It was intended for the csakan, a type of recorder that flourished in the (otherwise almost fluteless) 19th century. In Germany, it was also known as a Stockflöte, or stick flute, as simpler versions of the instrument were often built into a walking stick. This curio enabled people to go walking and be inspired by idyllic landscapes to heartfelt on-the-spot musical outpourings. The model played by Stefan Temmingh, however, would hardly have been suitable for use as a walking stick, as it has a sophisticated and fragile system of mechanical keys. After the fashion for countryside rambles waned, this version of the instrument, called a “complicated csakan,” was built in a shape resembling an oboe or clarinet.


Music Has the Answer

We finally come back to two program groups in the first part of the concert, each dedicated to one composer—and the question of arrangements. Connected by Lang’s splendor stellarum, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Violin Partita BWV 1004 (without its final chaconne) is heard in combination with two harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. Why would Temmingh and Koell perform these solo works as duets? Most likely because it works well. After all, Bach himself always imagined a continuo bass, even in his compositions with a single melodic line, as was the general custom in the Baroque era—and what is implied is easy to spell out. In Scarlatti’s sonatas, on the other hand, melody and harmonic foundation are explicitly juxtaposed—even if they were originally performed by one person and often closely intertwined. Asked once again about the overall issues of original and arrangement, authenticity and falsification (or even forgery), Temmingh gives an answer that seems to begin evasively, but then becomes quite telling and ends with what might be considered a personal creed: “Those are questions that have tormented me for almost my entirely life (and I very consciously say ‘tormented’), because their answers might be found in musicology—which is not quite my field, for I am a performer first and foremost. I would say the answers are found in my music, not my words. I’ve also noticed that the new generation of musicologists, music educators, and scholars considers these questions of legitimacy yesterday’s issues. Today, the point is to preserve classical music as a living culture, which it always has been. There used to be many debates about arrangements and authenticity, and people like Richard Taruskin, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and almost all members of the first generation of historically informed performance practice would talk till they were blue in the face. Today we understand that the question of the original simply wasn’t a question in the old days.” Temmingh adds: “Recently, the art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi came to visit us at the Freiburg Musikhochschule to discuss questions of originals, arrangements, and forgery with the musicologists. Georg Böhm’s Vater unser im Himmelreich, which Margret and I will play at this concert, was formerly considered to be a work by Bach—does that change anything about our emotions when we hear it?”

Translation: Alexa Nieschlag


Jürgen Ostmann studied musicology and orchestral performance (cello). Based in Cologne, he works as a freelance music journalist and dramaturg for various concert halls, radio stations, orchestras, record labels, and music festivals.