i wish i could remember who once said to me that composing was like a form of time travel. The finished composition has a certain duration, but while working on the piece, the composer can move freely, forwards and backwards through what we might call the “compositional spacetime”, in the process experiencing a unique perspective on the passage of musical time, its inner relationships and structural narrative. Swiss composer Dieter Ammann must know that experience quite well, as his particular approach to composition, by his own admission, is a very slow one, beginning with what he has called an “aural vision”, which is then worked on intuitively. As such, Ammann’s output is relatively small (evidently fewer than 25 works), dominated by an orchestral triptych comprising Core, Turn and Boost, composed over a ten-year period.
To celebrate Ammann’s 60th birthday last year, the Basel Sinfonietta, conducted by Baldur Brönnimann, performed all three works in the triptych together with his violin concerto unbalanced instability, featuring Simone Zgraggen as soloist. The complete recording of this concert has been released on Naxos, and taken as a whole it is one of the most explosive albums you’re ever likely to encounter. It really needs to be heard to be believed.
Even though it’s the most recent of the four works, composed in 2013, it makes sense for the disc to open with unbalanced instability, as it establishes the basic paradigm of Ammann’s musical language and attitude. There’s the distinct sense, through the work’s opening minutes, of the soloist, the orchestra and the music itself all gradually getting going. Everything begins from minutiae, tiny gestural motes put out by the violin, for which the orchestra provides a context that, from the outset, seems to be shining. Before two minutes have elapsed there’s already a beautiful richness developing, though it’s that initial staccato energy that clearly still dominates. And it’s this that feels that it’s at the heart of the turbulence that ensues, flare-ups splashed with plunky glitter, punchy and rude, as the music drives onward, still in the process of finding itself.
It’s abundantly clear by this stage that the work’s title is a literal description of its fundamental state. What makes this so compelling in unbalanced instability is that its effect is to undermine our expectations and even countermand the music’s apparent sense of narrative direction. This is not a work of well-defined sections but a fluid structure continually slip-sliding between contrasting energies and motivations. Momentum gets the rug pulled out from under it; rapid runs inexplicably find themselves arriving at a dronal sequence; lyrical threads continually make their presence felt in what increasingly seems to be an entirely incongruous context. Yet one starts to appreciate that the idea of an “unbalanced instability” can broadly be regarded as a kind of behavioural equilibrium, in at least the sense of being able to expect the unexpected. If music can be said to inhabit a certain kind of ‘landscape’, here it’s as if that environment doesn’t exist a priori but is being smashed out by the orchestra in real time, its crude contours taking shape before our ears. A little over halfway through we somehow arrive at a plateau, energised and elevated, pushing beyond it into a broad suspended vista with melodic shapes in the air, while the violin presses on at speed. Yet the unexpected continues to manifest: Ammann cancels it all out, redirecting things into a solo cadenza, ending up, via a microtonal dialogue with the strings, in a surprisingly contemplative conclusion. How did we get here? Come to that: where the hell are we?!
It’s no exaggeration to say that the concerto, for all its exuberant caprice, has only hinted at what’s to come. i referred before to the fact that Ammann’s modest output is dominated by the triptych of Core, Turn and Boost, and that seems entirely the right word for these works, not only due to their scale and duration, but also, more significantly, due to their frankly astonishing levels of full force, intense volatility. To describe these as “unbalanced instability” would be to put it extremely mildly.
Despite being composed some years apart – Boost in 2001, Core in 2002 and Turn in 2010 – there’s a symphonic consistency to the triptych that makes listening to it as a 40-minute entity a deeply satisfying and cohesive experience. Some aspects of the concerto return in Core; it too takes some time to get going, but its music is rooted in much more indistinct sounds. A strange noisy kind of melody appears, made more tangible on the strings, but the volatile language immediately makes its presence felt. Things become grumbly and vague, there’s a distant trace of bells, and the music shines a bit like it did in unbalanced instability though constantly being broken up. Massive uproarious clamour breaks out, which we might think is another expected bit of the unexpected, yet it turns out to be otherwise (unexpected unexpected?), as Ammann persists with it at length. The piece reveals itself as a fever pitch, relentless evolution, arriving at sustained moments of pitch brightness that burn through the texture to pierce our eardrums, heraldic brass notes breaking through, collapsing into tremulous rumble and aftershocks just as vociferous as the huge forces that caused them. Not surprisingly its end point feels blasted, faint and elusive yet even now with tiny traces of detail and even richnesss, finally crashing out into a softer, tremulous space, lightly glistening.
Ammann dials it down a notch in Turn, such that its vast reserves of energy tend to be more restrained. Again the music tends to shine, within which ambiguous ideas seem to be trying to get out, but become caught amidst the ongoing energetic burbling. Uproar breaks out here too, though it recedes into obscure lyricism, entering a kind of glowing treading water where the orchestra veers betwen pushing on and becoming suspended. This tension typifies Turn, to the extent that, if one wants to view the triptych from a larger-scale structural perspective, it takes on some of the qualities of a contrasting central ‘slow movement’.
Boost returns us to the ferocity of earlier, though its clamourscape is fuelled by a palpable playfulness, though that doesn’t in any way diminish its intimidating enormity. Here too the impression of a hyperactive evolution, music in a constant state of (re)forming, something fanfarish pulled back into soft percussion, triggering a smeary response that switches to a rhythmic push that in turn peters out, all the while suggesting a gritty kind of opulence awesomely swelling from its centre. Continuing to thwart our expectations, Ammann doesn’t allow it to let rip, but channels it – referencing the work’s title – into an energy boost that propels things along while revelling in its luxuriance. The closing minutes are a full-on dithyramb, fractured but obsessively driving ever onwards, a triumphant tumult wilfully blowing itself apart, ending up as pulsed fragments dumping what remains of their still hot, residual energy.
This is extraordinary music, fearlessly, dazzlingly performed, a testament to the raw, dynamic power of Ammann’s slow, intuitive compositional process. It’s perhaps not for the faint-hearted, but for everyone else, you’ll want to crank this one up to the absolute max.
Core – Turn – Burst & Unbalanced Instability is available on CD and download.
Thank you for this diligent text – and your ability of really listening to music.