Helmut Lachenmann

The sovereign and immediate approach Lachenmann takes in his Fünf Variationen über ein Thema von F. Schubert (1956) lends Schubert's slight Deutsche Tanz D 643a special and almost heroic flavor. But only five years later, Lachenmann had already travelled a considerable distance since those days as his Echo Andante of 1961 shows. Like Wiegenmusik (1963), the piece has been shaped by Lachenmann's studies with Luigi Nono whose influence and inspiration are clearly audible. A perfect example of the “instrumental musique concrète” is Guero (1969), in which the traditional way of playing the instrument does not occur once. With this piece, all musical exercises and the entire classical training are a nonissue. In a sense, it is the complete negation of musical custom. The last of the three pieces, Ein Kinderspiel (1980), testifies to the return to a ‘normal’ treatment of the instrument – after a phase typified by sound distortion –, to familiar instrumentation and to robust functions in music. At the same time, Lachenmann finds a synthesis of his various expressive means on the piano in Ein Kinderspiel, which, in this special case, turns the spotlight on the playful element in music.