Stockhausen: Samstag aus Licht |  | Artists: Karlheinz Stockhausen (composer & Conductor)), Markus Stockhausen (trumpet), University Of Michigan Symphony Band, Kollberg Percussion Ensemble
Label: Polygram Records
Category: Music
List Price: $64.98
Buy New: $49.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 321582
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 4
UPC: 028942359628
EAN: 0028942359628
ASIN: B00000E409
Release Date: October 25, 1990
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Like all late Stockhausen it's inconsistent and dramatically often quite silly, but moments here and there are magical February 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
SAMSTAG (Saturday) is the Xth installment in Karlheinz Stockhausen's LICHT, a cycle of seven operas for each day of the week which occupied the composer from 1977 to 2003. The world premiere of SAMSTAG was held in 1984 at La Scala in Milan. These 4 CDs contain studio recordings featuring the same performers as that staged production.
LICHT has three main characters, archetypes in Stockhausen's personal cosmology, who are played variously by actors, musicians, or dancers. Michael (the force of good) is sustained by Eve (representing creation), while Lucifer (evil and destruction) opposes them both. SAMSTAG is Lucifer's day, making this the darkest of all the LICHT operas. Musically the LICHT cycle is marked by so-called "formula composition", with its many hours of music being arcane expansions of fairly short melodies identified with each of the characters.
The opera opens with the 8-minute "Saturday Greeting" for 26 brass players and two percussionists. As the percussion and most of the brass play a complicated development of the Lucifer formula, six trombones play portions of the Eve formula, and four tubas make reference to the Michael formula. The system behind this all is somewhat complicated and based on Stockhausen's love of total chromaticism, but the audible result is an elegant (but very grim) canon. Here and in scene 3 the University of Michigan Symphony Band perform, a surprising change from the professional European ensembles that have often tackled Stockhausen's music.
The first scene proper is the "Lucifer's Dream" for bass voice and piano. Its alternate title is Klavierstueck XIII, making it an installment in the composer's series of piano works going back to the early 1950s. Stockhausen wrote the piano part for his daughter Majella--who performs here--and in future performances the pianist character is named Majella whoever the pianist might really be. In this 36-minute scene Lucifer, as represented by Matthias Holle, dreams a composition in 5 time-layers and then apparently dies. It is a pity that with the CD recording we miss out on the visual aspect, for Stockhausen intended it as a magic act, with smoke, mirrors, slow rotations of the piano podium, and reflective black costumes. The music itself is fairly standard piano music in the serialist tradition, though it has much more gestalt than Stockhausen's earlier Klavierstuecke.
Stockhausen did seem to go a little funny in the head over time, and with "Kathinka's Chant" a.k.a. "Lucifer's Requiem" we witness his bizarre tendency to confuse his creative production with the real world. Kathinka Pasveer is a Dutch flautist who moved into the Stockhausen compound in the early 1980s and became wife number four. In the programme notes Stockhausen claims that this act showcasing her skills "leads the souls of the dead, through listening, to clear consciousness." He goes on to write, "If LUCIFER'S REQUIEM is played in order to assist a deceased person, it should be performed at regular intervals, two, three, four times or more daily for 49 days after the occurance of physical death." Crazy stuff. The piece itself has some fascinating extended techniques, but at 32 minutes vastly outstays its welcome.
Lucifer comes back in the third scene, "Lucifer's Dance", this time as a giant face formed by the orchestra. Each part of the face performs a small dance-like piece of its own, and at once point Michael appears, played by a trumpeter (here Markus Stockhausen), and protests against Lucifer. There's a lot of music in this act, not all of it great, but some of which is quite entertaining, especially Michael's interlude. It all breaks up with a staged strike by the performers, and Stockhausen and an actor playing the director of La Scala plead with the orchestra to go on.
The final act, "Lucifer's Farewell", is meant to be performed in a church near the opera house. A male choir (here the Handel Collegium Koeln) sings Francis of Assisi's "Hymn to the Virtues" while performing outlandish actions with incense, a mystery bag, a coconut, and a caged bird. This all makes little sense, and it is unclear if Stockhausen is lauding Francis' simple piety and chastity, or condemning it. Springing from a commission by an Italian ensemble for the 800th anniversary of Francis of Assisi's birth, it all seems shoehorned into the opera.
This is an early classical CD release, so two of the CDs are only half as long as they could have been. CDs one (43 min.) and two (32 min.) would nowadays surely be put together, making this set three discs total instead of four. The liner notes, written by Stockhausen himself, are admirably informative, recounting in text and photos details of the La Scala premiere and explicating all of the complicated theory behind the music.
All in all, as interesting as parts of the work are, and though it is often fun to analyse Stockhausen's whole compositional scheme, there's nothing here that really blows me away. Plus, the dramatic content of the opera is highly inconsistent. If you are already dedicated to exploring Stockhausen's career, this recording is worth at least a listen. But Stockhausen's late works (with the possible exception of the often beautiful KLANG cycle) are very much a sideshow in 20th-century music, so you won't miss too much if you pass it by.
 First Recording of Premiere Performance January 22, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is the first recording of :Samstag: and the unrevised version simply unfolding in two Acts, Lucifer's Dream and Lucifer's Dance. Stockhausen always had an interest in cosmology,ancient myths,ancient spaces and processes looking at single tones on the piano as simply "particles" in the universe to be utilized in much larger,massive structures of the entire opera LICHT which is now complete.,or envisioning harmonies as "collectors" for other dusts from the unknown/known ether.LICHT An opera named after each day of the week,utilizes the entire edifice of the 20th CEntury in terms of timbral developments, textural modulations, antiphonal spatial dealings with the performance space.Solos. The principle characters are Lucifer, Michael (portrayed by, his Son a trumpeter with mutes in his belt, ready for action,much like St George or Siegfried, ready to slay the dragons of the universe, and Eve a Basset/Bass Clarinetist. Lucifer, well we all know about him, is represented via a Trombone. And this recording reveals the freedom under which Stockhausen writes his music; a wonderful display of free timbres floating, Schwebenklangen throughout the universe of listening, with a large interlude of solo trumpet. The Klaverstuck #13 on revision became the accompaniment to Lucifer's Dream,with the pianist also on stage moving around the piano while playing,not in the orchestral pit,and firing small child rockets into the performance space, Stockhasen devised a FORMULA( a series of informations) that helps control every aspect of the entire operas LICHT, and the function is more-or-less like a Tone Row, Die Reihe,that gives shape(s),colour(s), dimensions,melodic, chord(s), harmonic design(s), time(s) and temporalities, even choreography(s) to the proceedings that function along cosmological lines. It is indeed interesting although hearing the revision leaves this first original version as being merely a reading.. The University of Michigan Marching Band was in Germany I beleive at the time and in the premiere they come out to play about half an hour of the work,mostly brass. is heard these concoted walls of timbre,joining the forces of Lucifer. The work has a post0modern like affinity, re-doing re-visiting already devised musics from Stockhausen's past achievements. The LICHT operas have more an accessible bend to them much more than any Stockhausen who may have already have experienced.
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