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Heinz Holliger Celebrates 70th Birthday

May. 06, 2009

"My entire relation to music is such that I always try to go to the limits," Heinz Holliger once said. The ever restless Swiss composer, oboist and internationally acclaimed conductor turns 70 on May 21. After studying composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez, Holliger found a truly personal language which includes extreme tonal areas and touches on existential experiences. His compositional oeuvre covers all genres, from stage works via orchestral, solo and chamber music works to many vocal compositions.

Numerous works such as Beiseit, the Scardanelli Cycle, Glühende Rätselor the opera Snow Whitetestify to Holliger's special relation to literature, especially to authors such as Samuel Beckett or to the poetry of Robert Walser, Friedrich Hölderlin, Nelly Sachs and Georg Trakl. The life and work of Robert Schumann has been a primary inspiration for Holliger's music as well and in many of his works the composer can be heard paying deference to the language and culture of his home country.

Holliger has received many awards and prizes, including the Frankfurt Musik Award in 1988, the Ernst von Siemens Music Award in 1991, the Prix de Composition Musicale de la Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco in 1994, the Zurich Festival Award in 2007 as well as the Rheingau Music Award in 2008.

Last month, New York City's 92nd Street Y honored the composer in two chamber music concerts featuring his String Quartet No. 2, performed by the Zehetmair Quartet, and additional chamber selections in which the composer joined the ensemble on stage as oboist. Allan Kozinn of the New York Times writes of Holliger's string quartet:

...an expansive, freely dissonant 25-minute score dedicated to [Eliot] Carter... In the long opening movement, the ensemble is so busy, and the juxtaposed lines are so varied–vigorous leaping themes, tremolandos and sliding figures are overlaid– that the textures sound more like those of a chamber orchestra than those of a quartet. But much of the work, including its ending, is quiet and eerily dreamlike, with themes unfolding in slow motion and sounding almost as if they were being played underwater. This was a work that did not reveal all its secrets in a single hearing.

On the occasion of Holliger's 70th birthday, ECM have just released the world premiere recording Romancendres and Gesänge der Frühe.

To learn more on the music of Heinz Holliger, visit www.schott-music.com.

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