Aria

The Aria for strings composed in Aldeburgh in 2015 is an aria in the literal sense: the multiple divided strings give the impression of imaginary voices. Each part is separately developed in the fundamentally elegiac work – the radically conceived multiphonic texture places high demands on each individual musician as chamber music players from the first to the last desks. The roles of vocal protagonists are undertaken by the concertante violin and viola. The two instruments are at times balanced in stratospheric heights while also experiencing their limits at the bottom end of their range. The tonal texture of the other strings should never obscure the vocal protagonists in the foreground: for this purpose, they play with heavy metal mutes. The fading out of harmonics creates an effect which focuses in the potential of their song on the pure essence of tonal beauty. At the end of the Aria, all musical lines strive to ascend and waft away into the heights, but ultimately sink melancholically into the depths of the lowest strings. (Jörg Widmann, July 2016)