The most surprising thing about Helmut Schäfer‘s final recording is how accessible it is: an experimental piece that teeters on the edge of modern composition. It’s so different from his “brutalist” output that it’s left to longtime collaborator Zbigniew Karkowski to tackle the recording and to restore some of his friend’s rough edges. Thought Provoking III operates as a dignified farewell to a visionary composer and a protest against formality: rage, rage against the dying of the light.
One would never imagine that this Austrian work was a quilt of three previous recordings, stitched into one. The first and third recordings took place in a church in Schäfer’s hometown, the second in Vienna. In the first outing, Schäfer introduced a hybrid hair dryer/organ pipe set, in which the air was blown through the pipes. In the second, he was joined by violinist Elisabeth Gmeiner; in the third, by percussionist Will Guthrie. After Schäfer’s death, Guthrie molded the performance into one grand composition, a dual exercise in restraint and release.
The hair dryer/organ pipe contraption provides the piece’s most exciting tones, from rumbles to trills, occasionally sounding like an oboe in heat. If this is the unfettered instrument, and the violin the avid pursuer, then the percussion imitates the unevenly beating heart. Bells and gongs, foghorn blasts, forlorn rustlings and single bowings produce a sense of agitated capture, of sounds crouched at a loose window, waiting for a sudden gust. When such a gust arrives, the rustlings turn to crashes and stomps; the hybrid host takes on the timbre of a subway train; the violin veers into the upper register; meter and measure fly through the pounding pane. Even in the coda, nothing is restored.
Karkowski begins his remix with a beat and a blast, as if to say, “No, this is Helmut Schäfer.” Yet adding the abrasive to the accessible is another way to say that both are Schäfer. It takes great sensitivity to produce noise that is not simply noise, but a commentary on sound and silence, which is where the pair typically excelled. Karkowski may be exorcising demons in his seven minute version with scrapes and whorls and electronic knots, but the effect seems therapeutic; in the final minutes, the tone turns thoughtful, reversing the order of the preliminary piece. Lest the listener be lulled, he concludes with a 15-second static snarl – a “Ha!” of dynamic proportions that honors the memory of a fallen friend by providing a final note, impossible to transpose. (Richard Allen)
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a closer listen 