Glacial alphorn deposits

The Hornroh modern alphorn quartet is featured in the first 30 of 38 tracks on the double CD Gletsc with traditional pieces and new compositions for silence and devotion. The last two pieces of the first part Choral des Alpes by Robert Scotton and Anton Wicky's alphorn arrangement after Schubert's Holy is the Lord unmistakably reveal this intention. In the booklet text entitled "Slow listening", Cécile Ohlshausen recommends that you take your time with this new release.

The slow exploration of the naturally toneless Alphorn tunes and Büchel calls, sometimes taken from the distant past, then adapted to modern listening habits by Hornroh, is suitable for meditation, for a personal mindfulness exercise. And when you have become calm during this patient listening, you are prepared for Misch Käser's glacial deposits for one alphorn each in A, G, E and E flat. This work, commissioned by the Lucerne Festival in 2009 for the Swiss composer born in 1959, bears the strange title Gletsc and sees itself as a "glacier", from which the last three letters have already symbolically melted away. Due to the different tuning of the four alphorns, it sounds "wrong" from the outset - unlike an alphorn quartet with instruments tuned to the same pitch. The six movements, titled with terms from glaciology, have not lost their painful topicality since the premiere and seem as eerie as the cover by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud from the video triptych that land. The percussive interludes are by the Aargau percussionist Pit Gutmann.

Among the 30 pieces of the prelude to Gletsc seven traditional Büchel calls from the canton of Schwyz have documentary significance. Balthasar Streiff compiled them from recordings and music and arranged them for horn reed. The German composer Georg Haider also refers to original Swiss music with the ten interspersed Marginalia Reference. The miniatures for two to three alphorns were written during a month's vacation in Prättigau and some of them were premiered with a local alphorn trio.

This remarkable recording, which presents the diversity of modern hornpipes and the alphorn tradition, sounds with Georg Haider's Lullaby overdubbed with three individually recorded and superimposed voices.