Description

Undeniably, Feininger introduced formal elements of music into visual art and transformed them. Just think of the large variation cycle on the theme of Gelmeroda, his numerous motifs from other Thuringian villages which were subjected to a gigantic metamorphosis, to the scherzos of the Zitterbilder (quivering pictures) or the dominant colours which recall the use of brass instruments in the symphony orchestra. So the idea suggested itself of transposing visual elements devised and elaborated by the artist into the realm of music. this involved dissecting pre-images into linear patterns, triangles and plygons, reassembling them in new guise, “crystallising” them on a higher, poetic plane, and using colour and rhythm as structural elements. The present piano cycle is the result of many years of analytical and emotional wrestling with Lyonel Feininger’s pictures on the part of the composer Kurt Dietmar Richter.