Kunjani

African Suite No. 5.
For Recorder Quartet AATB

Maybe there is no composed music that impressed me as much as the Gymnopédies by Erik Satie. In their transparence and uncompromising simplicity they unfold a timeless magic and tender beauty - at least for my ears. Hence my aesthetic ideal in composing has always been this: unpretentious clarity and plainness, purity of expression through reduction of complexity. In my African compositions I always set aside chromatic scales and chords and focused on the seven notes of the major scale. And in this piece I try to develop each movement out of a single idea.
Kunjani is Xhosa and means How are you? The suite gives three different answers: The first movement is about starting something and about the accompanying feelings of hope and confidence; Hermann Hesse, the German poet, wrote the famous line: A magic dwells in each beginning. The second movement speaks about a deep longing, the wish to be far away in time and space, in another world, another fate. The third movement loses itself in a crazy, playful, exuberant joy about a reunion.
I wish to thank Barbara Niestroy for enlivening and encouraging me as a composer for many years and for whose student ensemble flutes for fun I originally composed the first movement. And I wish to thank Mr Takashi Yasui and his Consort Company for the wonderful world premiere in the Ohmi-Gakudo-Hall of the Opera City in Tokyo on the 12th of October 2016. In this concert they brought together three continents and cultures. No language is as universal as music! It is those events and moments that make up the bliss of my profession.

The recordings on this page are directly from the Premiere in Tokyo on the 12th of October 2016. Interpreter: The Consort Company.