Still waters are not at all murky
Gerd Kühr - The composer of the 'Next Generation' 2000
Gerd Kühr, born in 1952 in Maria Luggau in Carinthia, is one of those rare figures in contemporary Austrian music who are also possessed of dramatic talent. That is not to say he is loud in any way, it is through his quietness that he is effective - and, for the same reason, the more lastingly so.
At home in chamber music
The number of his compositions for large orchestra is limited. Even though, together with Hans Werner Henze, David Graham, and Marcel Wengler, he did write the music for a film and that, not untypically, the film of Proust's Swann's Way. It is in chamber music that Kühr really feels at home. He may, as he has once, in Agaues Klage, write a piece for four percussion instruments, but when he does so he does not in any sense beat the big drum. That particular piece, written for dance performance, itself moves on tiptoe, as does so much of his music. The road by which Kühr arrived at musical composition was not a straight one and it has a greater connexion with Salzburg than one might think. At the first stage of his career he studied history at Salzburg University. He finally committed himself to a musical career only after he had taken his degree. The strongest formative influence upon him was exercised by two figures: Sergiu Celibidache and Hans Werner Henze. Kühr has learnt much from his teachers. From Hans Werner Henze he certainly derives his striving to make himself intelligible to his audience without any concessions in respect of taste. But, in no area, has he simply imitated. If, at the beginning, he had any sense of a need to 'catch up' with others, he learned through his apprenticeship with Henze (if no sooner) to have confidence in himself, to develop independently, to stake out new territory, and to exercise his capabilities, including the pedagogic ones, in a fruitful manner.
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Gerd Kühr is the composer of 'Next Generation' 2000 (Photo: Peter Manninger) |
Intricacies of sound
Much as his music is based on delicate and intricate patternings of sound, in spite of the discreet reserve with which he presents himself, he exhibits also genuine humour, a touch of subtle comedy which is sometimes observable even in his titles, as when he describes his Scala quasi unisona as 'A choral work for at least two female singers or, better, more'.
In recent years, fully occupied with work on his new opera, Tod und Teufel, he has only had time for 'a few trifles'. Now, he looks forward, he says, 'to concert pieces'. He is thinking, for instance, of working up the music of the opera's interludes into a suite.
First, however, he needs to complete a work with solo character for an ensemble of eighteen musicians, commissioned by the Salzburg Festival. He has two quite contradictory possibilities in mind: either to produce a large-scale single-movement piece, or one consisting of numerous small 'splinter' movements.
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