s
Realtimearts.net
Issue
45 Nov-Dec,
2001 ’Celebrating Old Growth and New”
”The
American duo (Michael Fowler, piano, keyboards; Stuart Gerber,
percussion) play Stockhausen with a simple, elegant theatricality and a
bracing, lucid sonic intensity. They first gesure there way to their
instrument to perform 6 of the star sings from Tierekreis (Zodiac
1975). Nasenflügeltanz (1983/88) the engrossing duo version
for
percussion and synthesizer of part of the huge 7-opera cycle LICHT had
percussionist Gerber singing Lucifer’s lines punctuated with
orchestrated hand signalling. The best known work on the program,
Kontakte (Contacts 1959-60) sounded less familiar as a piano, tape and
percussion work than as an electronic score, but was nonetheless
riveting.”
Keith Gallasch
Sydney
Morning
Herald
September 18, 2001 ”Electronic Stockhausen sets off two
bright
sparks"
”In an age when so much of the rhetoric of contemporary art
music
had
become preoccupied with accessibility and appeasing the imperatives of
a profit-hungry entertainment market, it was refreshing to return to a
concept of artistic endeavor based on a quest for new forms of
aesthetic experience and knowledge. Of course, such a quest is
unbearably pretentious if the talent isn’t there. But pianist
Michael
Fowler and percussionist Stuart Gerber revealed Karlheinz Stockhausen
has a brilliant capacity to enliven avant-garde austerity. . . in terms
of their artistic concentration and their creativity, Fowler and Gerber
where outstanding”
Peter McCallum
21st
Century Music
October, 2001
”SummeR ContempoRaRy PeRforRmance”
”.
. .Two
small ensemble works by Stockhausen served as bookends. .
.The trio Refrain proved the more engaging, an enjoyable assembledge of
brief events surrounding the occasional larger flurry of activity,
spiced with vocal effect such as tongue clicks and Sprechstimme.
Nasenflügeltanz for synthesizer and drum kit, and sampled
sounds,
came
off as eccentric, satiric, . . . and theatrical . . . Ensemble Sirius
(Michael Fowler, piano and Stuart Gerber, percussion, later joined by
Catherine Woodard on celeste) put the music across in a fiery,
well-controlled fashion. ”
David Cleary