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Music played a thoroughgoing role in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and he composed some himself. He was largely self-taught, using a textbookby Albrechtsberger from Beethoven's time, and the 50 works of his that survive are mostly short piano pieces and songs. They're not masterpieces, andyet it is hard to agree with the judgment of conductor Hans von Bülow, who wrote, after Nietzsche sent him a four-hand piano work called Manfred-Meditation, that it was "the most extreme piece of fantastical extravagance, the most un-uplifting and the most anti-musical…that I have set eyes on in a ...read more
Music played a thoroughgoing role in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and he composed some himself. He was largely self-taught, using a textbookby Albrechtsberger from Beethoven's time, and the 50 works of his that survive are mostly short piano pieces and songs. They're not masterpieces, andyet it is hard to agree with the judgment of conductor Hans von Bülow, who wrote, after Nietzsche sent him a four-hand piano work called Manfred-Meditation, that it was "the most extreme piece of fantastical extravagance, the most un-uplifting and the most anti-musical…that I have set eyes on in along time." Nietzsche started out as an admirer of Wagner but later turned against him. Most of the works on this album date from the 1860s, when hewas a celebrated young professor and philosopher. This would have been during the pro-Wagner period, but there is little influence from Wagner inevidence. The music is light, often quasi-improvisatory, and some of it (hear the tiny Sonatina, Op. II) resembles the keyboard music of the composerwhom Nietzsche extolled later in life, Georges Bizet. The most substantial piece, the 20-minute Hymnus an die Freundschaft (track 11), was essentiallyhis last composition, but he later reworked it with texts by his then-love interest, Lou Andreas-Salomé; that version was later arranged for chorus andorchestra by another composer. A few of these pieces have shown up on compilations, but it's very rare to have a group of them together, and in placesit suggests that the aphoristic style of Nietzsche's late writings was anticipated by his musical thinking. Pianist Michael Krücker includes some fragmentsof dubious value, and his notes (in German and English) are written in a somewhat annoyingly breezy present tense, but he captures the lightnessNietzsche seems to have intended. This album is certainly of interest to those with even a generalist level of interest in Nietzsche.Taken from Allmusic.com « hide |
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