The six-part composition My Melodies for eight horns and orchestra was composed between 2016 and 2018, revised for the first time in 2019, and then again in 2023 as the musica viva Munich version. It was commissioned by Bavarian Radio’s musica viva with the support of the Friends of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra e.V. This is a live recording of the premiere of the Munich 2023 version of June 23, 2023 from the Herkulessaal, again as part of BR's musica viva concert series, with the horn section and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Matthias Hermann.
Helmut Lachenmann, born in Stuttgart in 1935, is one of the most renowned German composers of contemporary music. He studied piano, music theory and counterpoint in Stuttgart and composition with Luigi Nono in Venice. The first public performances of his works took place in 1962 at the Venice Biennale and at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. He taught composition in Hanover (1976-1981) and in Stuttgart (1981-1999), and gave numerous master classes in Germany and abroad. His works are performed by internationally renowned players and orchestras all over the world. Helmut Lachenmann has received numerous awards, most recently the GEMA German Music Authors' Prize for his life's work (2015).
The phenomenon of melody has long preoccupied Helmut Lachenmann. He went to study in Venice at the end of the 1950s with Luigi Nono, a teacher who strictly insisted on a critically reflective approach to musical material. Nono had objected to any trace of linear progression in Lachenmann's compositional sketches as a "tonal cell" – a melodic object that was seen as a recourse to a romanticising tonal language that had to be overcome. The impetus for the scoring of My Melodies came from a rehearsal of Lachenmann's opera The Little Match Girl in Madrid in 2008: eight horns forming a homogeneous yet at the same time complex instrument. The premiere took place ten years later. In 2023, My Melodies was extended by 77 additional bars since that first performance, with Lachenmann drawing on further sketch material. It is rare for the composer to alter his own works after their premiere - but the sound ideas for the eight horns seem to have retained a special fascination for him. The bonus tracks offer short excerpts from this concert recording of My Melodies. They present characteristic passages of the work, inviting listeners to detect specific noises or sequences and to familiarise themselves with Lachenmann's world of sound.
Extra material for download
