Hans Zender's Logos-Fragmente (Canto IX), for 32 voices and four orchestral groups, sets texts from the first and second centuries AD: passages from the New Testament, early Gnostic writings and apocryphal sources. This disc is the first complete recording of the nine fragments, performed by the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart and the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg under Emilio Pomàrico.
Zender was a German conductor and composer, born in Wiesbaden in 1936, who died in Meersburg in 2019. He studied composition with Wolfgang Fortner, led the radio symphony orchestra in Saarbrücken from 1971 to 1984 and the Hamburg Opera from 1984 to 1987, and taught composition at the Frankfurt Musikhochschule from 1988 to 2000. His reworking of Schubert's Winterreise (1993) and the earlier Canti are among his best-known works. The recording is a production of Südwestrundfunk, issued as an SACD.
Some of the texts are fragments of longer works, others survive only as aphorisms. Despite their differences of language and tone they share a spiritual atmosphere, and they deal with central human themes from the standpoint of faith: the origin of humanity, its life force, suffering and fate, the bond between body and spirit, and people's relations with one another. Zender matched that variety in the music. He made the nine pieces as different as possible in character, form and length, and deliberately avoided shared motifs, melodies or harmonies.
The fragments are not a cycle. Each can be performed alone, and their order is left open; the disc places Fragment II: Passion (Pirqe Abot) first. The longest pieces are Fragment I: Im Anfang, on the opening of John's Gospel, at thirteen and a half minutes, and Fragment VIII: Maria Magdalena (John 20) and Fragment VI: Thomas, both over twelve. Others are brief: Fragment III: Warum (John 10) lasts three minutes. The set ends with Fragment IX: Geist, which combines the Pentecost passage from the Acts of the Apostles with the apocryphal Acts of John. Zender wrote the fragments between 2006 and 2008. Fragments I, V and VI were first heard at Donaueschingen on 21 October 2007, and II and IV in Munich on 27 January 2008. The score, published by Breitkopf & Härtel, asks for eight voices in each register, with two pianos, guitar and accordion in the orchestra.
SACD, Wergo WER 6765 2, released in 2013, 77 minutes.
