Helena Winkelman World Premiere

Lucerne Festival
Lucerne
Switzerland
http://e.lucernefestival.ch

sCHpillit
Ghost Choir (Peter Siegwart chorus master)
Dani Mangisch speaker
Sylvia Nopper voice

Starting in the mid-1970s the group known as Oberwalliser Spillit became a sensation. With clarinet, hammered dulcimer, and such new-fangled instruments as the Tenundi Titschini (a tuned wooden drum), as well as plenty of wit, the “Oberwalliser Spielleute” (“the bandsmen from Valais”) devoted themselves to the old tunes and dances of the Swiss Confederation – but without a hint of old-fashioned stuffiness. And they proved that folk music and the avant-garde can get along by having contemporary composers write new works tailor-made for them. Composers like Heinz Holliger. In Alb-Chehr he set a Valais legend about two shepherds and a cantankerous dairyman who run into some music-making ghosts – with a fatal outcome for the dairyman. Shortly after Oberwalliser Spillit broke up in 2001, the clarinetist Elmar Schmid founded the ensemble sCHpillit, which is now coming together again to present not only Holliger’s classic but also a brand-new score by the composer and violinist Helena Winkelman.



Heinz Holliger : Fünf Kinderlieder
Heinz Holliger : Alb-Cher. “Geischter- and Älplermüsig”
Heinz Holliger : Gränzä – Grenzen
Helena Winkelman : Ronde des Lutins