# Bernd Alois Zimmermann



## Crudblud

I couldn't find a thread for this fellow, so here's one.

I first heard Zimmermann's music at the 2010 BBC Proms, namely his small set of dances called _Rheinische Kirmestänze_, immediately I was struck by the sense of humour and what seemed like a genuine affection for folk music. Though I am loathe to compare myself to a clearly higher talent, I felt a sort a sort of kinship upon hearing it and immediately sought out more, which brought me to pick up his opera _Die Soldaten_ as conducted by Aloys Kontarsky. Immediately I felt I had bitten off more than I could chew, this proving far more confusing that anything I had encountered before, including works by Stockhausen, who at the time was my sort of benchmark for "difficulty". So I left it gathering dust for a while until I came across his name again while trawling the library, it was on a CD called _Requiem für einen jungen Dichter_ (link contains only the first half of the piece). I got home, put it on, and it was again like nothing I had heard before, but this time there was something that I could follow in the music, and something in it instantly spoke to me. Since then I've been gathering whatever recordings I can find that contain even a single piece of his music, a process which, with all the other composers featured on those discs, has been an experience of discovery in its own right. I now feel that his body of work is one of the finest of the 20th century.


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## PetrB

Really fun piece, and a seemingly irrepressible good sense of humor... and very fine writing!
I've been meaning to look into more. Your post is a reminder. Thanks. (and thanks for those chosen links.)

Two problems with music: 
there is so much of it 
the listening to it runs in real time.


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## quack

His requiem is amongst my favourite requiems. Mixing all sorts of quotes, sounds and words from a century that really did need requiems. Reading about it makes it sound a mess but listening to it is like an exploration of the 20th century.


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## emiellucifuge

In 2009 I think it was, without any knowledge, I saw Die Soldaten in the Willy Decker staging.
It was magnificent, horrifying, utterly moving and it crushed my soul.

Ive been a big fan ever since.


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## Vaneyes

2013 will be a big year for Die Soldaten...

http://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/archive_detail/programid/4576


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## Prodromides

Zimmermann's 1954 trumpet concerto is subtitled "Nobody Knows The Trouble I See".

In 2013, Crudblud creates a composer guestbook on Zimmermann & nobody knows the trouble Crudblud went through to hear every CD containing BAZ's works.


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## Crudblud

That trumpet concerto... oh man! What a piece, what a piece...


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## Vaneyes

For me, it's Presence, and this rec. featuring Sashko Gawriloff, violin; Siegfried Palm, cello; Aloys Kontarsky, piano.


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## SilverSurfer

Speaking of Zimmermann in other threads, I had a problem to digest his music: I discovered live when Lluis Claret opened a concert with his 4 (extremely) short studies for cello, so when I looked for more of his music and bought some records, I was faced to large-scale works oposite to that first impression and was a schock from which I'm still trying to recover...


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## GioCar

I'll go to see Die Soldaten at La Scala on February 3rd.
The same Salzburg production mentioned above by Vaneyes.










The second good news is that I found tickets at a very good price (for La Scala, I mean). 
This year they introduced for the first time a 50% discount on ticket prices for some selected performances (the ScalAperta performances). Here's the calendar for this year's season, for those who may be interested.

PS I'll post this also in the "Next opera you're going to see" thread.


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## Red Terror

Absolutely love his work. I've had his "Requiem fur einen jungen Dichter" on repeat for two days. It's a pity he took his own life.


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## Ludwig Schon

With the horrors of the Russian Rodents in Ukraine, never has there been a more important time for a new production of Die Soldaten…


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