David Philip Hefti (CH/DE) – Resonanzen II
Recording for Download: Susanne Kessel, piano
David Philip Hefti about his piano piece “Resonanzen II”
“My third piano piece Resonances II is a highly fragmented, newly ordered version of my Piano Piece No. 2, Beethoven Resonances, which draws on the theme of the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The compositional means have been reduced in both piano pieces inasmuch as I have refrained from employing the extended playing techniques in the inside of the grand piano that I have liked to use in my other works. The use of all three pedals and different pedal effects, however, allows for a multi-layered palette of tone colours. Furthermore, a field of tension is created between passages that are free and those that are exactly notated, as also between incisive attacks and gently resonating echoes that time and again allow Beethoven’s music to be divined in diffuse sound structures.”
Sheet Music Vol. 3 – available here: SHOP
Piano piece “Resonanzen II” -in concert
10. December 2016 – world premiere – Bonner Kunstverein – Susanne Kessel, piano
David Philip Hefti
(*1975 in Switzerland) is one of the most fascinating composers on the continental scene today. His music belongs audibly to the Modernist tradition, but possesses a directness of emotional impact that elicits praise from performers, press and audiences alike and has made him one of the most often-performed Swiss composers of recent years. Critics have lauded the ‘sensuousness’ of his music and its ‘filigree’ instrumentation. Hefti attended the Music Academies of Zurich and Karlsruhe, studying composition with Rudolf Kelterborn, Wolfgang Rihm and Cristóbal Halffter. He today pursues a dual career as composer and conductor from his homes in Switzerland and Germany.
Hefti has composed some 50 works encompassing almost all genres, but focussing primarily on chamber and orchestral works. He has won many prizes, including the Gustav Mahler Competition, the Composer Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Foundation and the Hindemith Prize. His works are featured on a dozen CDs and are regularly programmed by the world’s great festivals, from Lucerne to Beijing. He is performed by orchestras such as the Zurich Tonhalle, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Bamberg Symphony, the Tokyo Sinfonietta and the Montreal Symphony under conductors ranging from Peter Eötvös to David Zinman and Kent Nagano and by soloists such as Viviane Hagner, Baiba Skride, Antje Weithaas, Hartmut Rohde and Jan Vogler.
Hefti’s conducting career is central to his composing. Both roles can be heard in perfect balance on his orchestral CD Changements, where he conducts the Ensemble Modern, the Viennese Radio Symphony Orchestra, the German Radio Symphony Orchestra of Saarbrücken and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in several large-scale orchestral works, and which was praised by the critics for his ‘mastery of the orchestral apparatus’ as composer and conductor alike.