My experience with the music of Tilo
Medek had, until receiving this CD, only been in playing his Abfahrt
einer Dampflokomotive for flute ensemble – one performance of which
can be seen on YouTube. I’m the one with the biggest flute: excellent
for making steam train noises. That particular piece is full of smoky,
pictorial East-German proto-minimalism, but wasn’t really much in the
way of a preparation for the contents of this valuable new disc from
Cybele.
The works are not programmed in chronological
order, though that is the way they are dealt with in Martin Schmeding’s
fine and detailed booklet notes. Much as Medek resisted the repressive
regime of the German Democratic Republic, so his organ work often resists
the temptation to use the instrument in conventional ways, seeking new
colours and tunings - at times to startling effect. Think of the parts
in Keith Jarrett’s ‘Hymns and Spheres’ where he uses the stops pulled
out half way – which Medek’s work predates despite the claims on that
original 1976 ECM LP sleeve, or Ligeti’s Volumina or Etude
No.1, ‘Harmonies’, and you have some aural image of the way Medek
bends and teases the tones and chords in a most un-organ like way. He
also uses it almost percussively, with jabbed chords like a bed of nails,
and sometimes with a surprisingly graceful refinement, bowing to the
deep debt we all owe to musical history, and perhaps revealing aspects
of his own background in musicology.
Wandlungs-Passacaglia is such a work, breaking us in gently
with a surprisingly restrained gesture towards the past. The English
translation of the note on this piece has unfortunately been lost in
the layout behind a nice photo of Medek with Irina and Alfred Schnittke,
but from what I can tell it is a piece which had its origins as part
of a larger oratorio. The conventional, almost Karg-Elert style passacaglia
theme builds through several cycles, but doing little more than getting
our ears tuned up to the rich character of the Sauer organ. Sample
B-a-c-h, Vier Töne für Orgel is more ‘avant-garde’ and of its
time, being an anti-complex study on the four b-a-c-h tones, exploring
the tonal variety of the organ, as well as introducing morse code, Mozart’s
symphony in G minor, a funeral march and other elements. There is some
gorgeous bending of notes done by manipulating the stops, and magical
effects with the de-tuned notes of the final few minutes. Hearing a
Beethovenian development of four notes for nearly eight minutes may
not seem very digestible, but we do learn a great deal along the way.
Sample
Verschüttete Bauernflöte or ‘Buried rustic Flute’ was Tilo
Medek’s first piece for organ. Inspired by the sound and possibilities
of the large organ in Merseburg Cathederal, the composer uses extremes
of registration – high and low, to go against the conventional notions
of what an organ should sound like. There is a great deal of material
which draws in from the polarisation of the opening, but there is a
huge amount of ‘different’ colour in the sound, which gives the music
a juicy textural quality, even while the actual notes seem to verge
on tonal anarchy. Sample
- opening The final three minutes or so are quite sublime, with
the creepy slides of the gradually opening stops, stabbing chords and
gasps from the pipes giving up their ghostly presence to a sequence
of almost medieval timelessness.
Quatemberfeste für Orgel or ‘Ember Days’ is a four movement
cycle composed for the inauguration the new Karl Schuke organ of the
St. Lamberti parish church. This piece contains popular elements, such
as the surprisingly appealing set of songs and dances in the opening
movement, Lambertussingen. This is followed by a lyrical movement;
The Tower Horn, in which the organ plays a fictitious ‘duet’
with the warden of the tower. Echoes of Angels is another lyrical
piece, the title referring to a radar technologist’s term for atmospheric
interference. The real showstopper is the final Schnurrpfeifereien,
which throws all of the available effects of the instrument into the
melting pot. These include bells, ‘Vox celestis’, and various birdsong
elements such as cuckoos and nightingales. Even with the expected spectacle
of the conclusion the music is actually quite subtle and refined, and,
while the crowd-pleasing aspect of such a commissioned work has to be
a consideration it is good to hear the craftsmanship of a remarkable
and skilled composer at work on an instrument with which he clearly
felt a great affinity.
Sample - end of Schnurrpfeifereien.
One of the most incredible pieces
on this disc has to be Gebrochene Flügel or ‘Broken Wings’. It
is certainly the most extreme in terms of the use of half-pulled stops,
and the effects of the de-tuning this creates are both disorientating
and awe-inspiring at the same time. Sample
The running notes of the middle section are something like the soundtrack
of a pub space-invaders game played in a huge bath of honey-soaked ping-pong
balls, and the point at which the motor for the air pump is switched
off at around 6:20 creates one of the most unearthly and breathtakingly
marvellous musical sounds I have ever heard while in a waking state.
Sample
We end as we began, with a passacaglia.
Rückäufige Passacaglia or ‘Retrograde Passacaglia’ was one of
the pieces Medek wrote after being ejected from the GDR and welcomed
into the musical circles of West Germany. The ‘retrograde’ nature of
the piece inhabits its very material, and is not merely a mechanical
use of inversion techniques. There are also some remarkable colour effects
and plenty of drama in the climactic central section, making this a
strong piece with which to conclude a potent programme. Sample
I have but one complaint about this
CD, and it has nothing to do with music. If there’s one thing I can’t
stand about ‘design’ these days, it is the trend for not using capital
letters. The German language is very capital-letter specific, and the
inconsistency and troublesome flicking back and forth between the back
cover and referring to the correct usage in the booklet notes this reviewer
had to do while typing out the header at the top of this page will go
some way towards explaining my gripe. In any case it’s an unnecessary
distortion of language, and, no doubt doing the proverbial into a strong
head wind, I wish hereby to protest in the strongest possible terms
and cast my vote for the re-instatement of appropriate capitals for
Cybele CD covers, film credits and everything else.
Back to the music, and I have to say
this is one of the best organ CDs I’ve heard for some time. The SACD
quality is excellent, with some stunning spatial effects. Take the hocketing
between low pipes towards the end of the Retrograde Passacaglia
for instance. The sense of air and space in the church is something
in which one can become totally immersed, and Medek’s music never anything
less than absorbing, and more often than not staggeringly impressive.
Martin Schmeding’s playing is superlatively good – good enough to allow
you to forget there is someone working the instrument and providing
100% transparency for the music. If you are a fan of the 20th
century organ you owe it to yourself to own this disc.
Dominy
Clements
Martin Schmeding (organ) 
SACD 060.801 [72:21] 
