Unser neuer Gesamtkatalog

Recital: J.S. Bach · W.A. Mozart · Claude Debussy · Johan Severin Svendsen · Miklós Rózsa · Harald Genzmer
Ulrich Herkenhoff, pan flute · Matthias Keller, piano

The title of this CD – “Recital” – and the list of composers represented on it, including Bach, Mozart and Debussy, might lead one to believe that we have a solo program of a “classical” instrument here. Surprisingly, however, we have a completely different instrument – one which is normally never connected with classical music or chamber music recitals – the pan flute! The transcriptions presented on this recording enable the listener to perceive classic compositions of many eras in a fascinating new light. But the most recent work in this collec-tion is an original composition for pan flute – Harald Genzmer’s Sonata for Solo Pan Flute, written and dedicated to Ulrich Herkenhoff in 1993.

For years, Ulrich Herkenhoff has paved the way for the pan flute in classi-cal concert halls, freeing it from the one-sided cliché that it is only a “folklore instrument”. Herkenhoff studied flute and pan flute at the Munich Richard Strauss Conservatory, graduating with a degree in pan flute. Today, he is an inter-nationally renowned soloist. His audiences have the greatest appreciation for his interpretations, which display his profound understanding of and sensitivity for both the folkloristic roots of his instrument as well as classical art music.

Ulrich Herkenhoff: Recital

Every instrument and type of song was eligible to participate in 1992 at the very first competition for the “Musikförderpreis Gasteig”, named for the Munich Cultural Center and home of the Richard-Strauss-Conservatory. The objective was to find an exceptionally talented young artist. The winner of the competition was a student of the transverse flute class taught by Jochen Gärtner. His name was Ulrich Herkenhoff and he played the pan flute. During the laureate concert, he enchanted the audience. The composer Harald Genzmer, who happened to be in the audience, spontaneously decided to write a piece for the pan flute: the Sonate für Panflöte solo that can be heard on this CD. Impressed by Gheorghe Zamfir, the young man from Osnabrück who was born in 1966 decided at the age of fourteen to become a pan flute performer. It was clear to him from the very beginning that he wanted to master the complete pallet of the pan flute repertoire, from Romanian folk music – the instrument’s source of life – to the skilled interpretations of Baroque music. To achieve this goal, he studied Romanian music under the Swiss discoverer Gheorghe Zamfir, a musical ethnologist, and the organist Marcel Cellier, the latter of which recorded Herkenhoff’s first CD with him in 1990. In order to be able to complete a regular program of study, he studied the transverse flute and found a mentor and teacher in Dr. Jochen Gärtner at the Richard-Strauss-Conservatory in Munich, who not only guided him to concert level proficiency on the traverse flute, but who was also prepared to tailor his instruction to the needs of the ambitious young pan flute performer.

Since that time, Ulrich Herkenhoff has dedicated his life to the pan flute with an amazing diversity: he builds fabulous pan flutes, adapts literature, is engaged in publishing, teaches, and encourages composers to provide original compositions for his instrument. Above all: he is a grandiose artist that is capable of summoning truly erotic magic from his instrument, an intuitive primordial musician. Ulrich Herkenhoff has managed to achieve the unimaginable: as a German to become one with an instrument that embodies the spirit of the Balkans and the soul of antique Hellenism. One needs to have heard him play Claude Debussy’s Syrinx in order to fully appreciate the mutual permeation of artificial and archaic, French-intellectual and Hellenic-mythic spheres. When he performs Handel’s aria lascia qu’io pianga, the instinctive vigilance against such “desecration” is immediately forgotten in the face of the touching fusion of tone and articulation.

Ulrich Herkenhoff, who was awarded one of the sought-after “Bayerische Staatsförderpreise für Musik” in 1996, has since produced an impressive spectrum of recordings, to-gether with orchestras, the organ, and now – once again – with his pianist Matthias Keller, who has stood by his side as friend and colleague from the very beginning. The “Recital” is a musical pleasure of many facets.



The author is Director of the Richard-Strauss-Conservatory in Munich and President of the German Music Council. From Bach to Genzmer Johann Sebastian Bach on the pan flute – in an era which appears to be more dedicated than ever to the concept of “original sound”? If one was consequent in this “historical” approach, then no pianist would be permitted to play Bach on a modern grand piano!

That Ulrich Herkenhoff nevertheless has a few works by Bach in his repertoire demonstrates his great respect for this mighty composer. His objective is to be stylistically true to Bach’s music on an instrument – from technical and constructional design – that is justifiably termed as “primitive”. For that reason, works like Suite in B minor or the Concerto in C major the latter of which is performed here for the first time on the pan flute, prove a true challenge for the performer: the most exacting test of self-control. Flutists may well recognize the A major Sonata BWV 1032 in this concerto, whose change of key appears for the first time in a harmonious and logical sequence of C major – A minor – C major in the present adaptation.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on the other hand, to whom the literature of the pan flute owes only a single and innocuous five-tone motif (The Magic Flute), is represented here by an adaptation of his small Flute Quartet in G major, KV 285a: a piece whose charm is evoked primarily by an imaginativeness of melody and Mozart’s unmistakable effortlessness – which nonetheless conceals certain unmistakable perils for the performer.

A third facet is revealed with the inclusion of Claude Debussy, namely the picturesque depiction of nature found in his En bateau, taken from his Petite Suite for the piano, that is dedicated to one of Debussy’s favourite elements – water. It describes, in a sort of musical play of nature, the journey of a small boat over the waves of the ocean. In turn, Le petit berger from the collection Children’s Corner, takes the listener and performer back to an archaic and mythical world in which the saga of Herkenhoff’s instrument and Pan, the god of the shepherds, find their origins. Thereto Clair de lune, inspired by a poem of Paul Verlaine, seduces one into dreamlike hideaways between reality and intoxicating nocturnal fantasy.

Johan Severin Svendsen’s Romanze op. 26, originally composed for solo violin and orchestra sublimely unites the will to expression with a richly coloured resonance of sounds – all of this before the backdrop of an unabashed affinity for Wagner on the part of the composer.

In contrast, the North Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances op. 5 lead back to a refuge of folklore, in which not only the pan flute finds its origins, but also the musical cosmos of the Hungarian composer Miklós Rósza. Similar to his countryman Béla Bartók during his childhood, Rózsa was deeply influenced by the music of his homeland before he finally achieved global fame as a composer with his film scores for such films as “Spellbound”, “The Junglebook” or “Ben-Hur”. This cycle too was originally composed for a single violin with piano accompaniment.

Since that time when Ulrich Herkenhoff was able to demonstrate the full value of the pan flute as a concert instrument, he has been able to win over numerous composers to write original literature for him. Harald Genzmer is doubtlessly one of the most prominent of these composers. His Sonata for pan flute solo was written in 1993 and was one of the pieces performed for Genzmer’s 95th birthday gala in the year 2004 during a festive concert in Munich.

In reaction to the first performance of his sonate, the composer wrote the letter depicted on p. 7/8.







Matthias Keller

Matthias Keller was born in 1956 in Bremen, Germany and grew up in Osnabrück. He went on to study piano, music education and church music at the College for Music and Theatre in Munich. In 1985, he turned his emphasis to music journalism and since the year 2000 has been editor of the Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bayern 4 Klassik). Further, he is the author of a book about film music entitled “Stars and Sounds” (Bärenreiter-Bosse) and a member of the jury for the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. He is also active as a composer and arranger and has written, among others, the finale for the FIFA concert “3 Orchestras and Stars” that was performed in June of 2006 in the Olympic Stadium in Munich together with Zubin Mehta, Mariss Jansons and Placido Domingo. Since 1987 he has been the musical partner and manager of Ulrich Herkenhoff.