Born in Aachen in 1979 and now based in Freiburg, Anno Schreier is known as a versatile composer. His primary focus is undoubtedly in the field of opera, where he works in all formats, from large-scale opera and chamber operas to pieces for children. However, he has also written a large number of orchestral and chamber music works, as well as songs. The program of this portrait CD draws from these latter two areas and is based on a portrait concert given in December 2023 by Theater Freiburg and musicians of the Holst Sinfonietta in close collaboration with the composer.
With one exception, this program consists of song and chamber compositions from the years 2019 to 2021, which is significant because a clear stylistic shift in Schreier’s compositional style became apparent during this period. Previously, his musical language was essentially characterized by an expressionistic tendency, into which stylistic quotations from diverse origins were repeatedly woven, giving Schreier’s music a more or less pronounced polystylistic character. Early on, it was evident how the composer sought to create an increasing distance between his own compositional style and the typical gestures and clichés of academic ‘New Music’—he was always concerned with his own voice, not with reproducing established patterns. The stylistic shift that began around 2016 can be understood as a continuation of this distancing: Schreier turned not only to decidedly tonal but also to popular music and minimalist stylistic devices, which are still largely frowned upon, at least in German New Music circles (though no longer as strictly as in earlier times). Minimal music, to which Schreier closely approaches in some pieces, contradicts both the conventional avant-garde and Schreier’s previous expressionism: it works with a regular pulse and clear tonality (though not necessarily in the classical sense) as well as with process-oriented structures in which repetition with minimal variation is crucial. Expressiveness, on the other hand, appears significantly subdued; in classical minimalism, it is abandoned in favor of a flat, trance-like aesthetic, while composers such as John Adams have reintegrated it. Even in this creative phase, Schreier cannot simply be labeled a neo-minimalist; although some pieces or parts thereof slip very far into the stylistic guise of minimal music, elsewhere Schreier maintains a distance from this style, which, like academic contemporary music, is not allowed to completely dominate his musical language.
To better understand both the new style and some other characteristics of the pieces collected here, it is helpful to be aware of some biographical framework. Firstly, there’s Schreier’s background. He grew up in the northern Eifel region around Aachen and, by his own admission, was deeply influenced by this landscape. It’s a rather barren, unspectacular landscape, the image of which is clearly deeply etched in Schreier’s memory and which he repeatedly evokes in his work. It is striking how often the term ‘landscape,’ frequently in connection with ‘winter,’ appears in Schreier’s titles; here, he always refers to the Eifel landscape of his childhood. Schreier doesn’t see this landscape as a static tableau to be merely described; rather, movement through this landscape is always implied, leading to shifts and changes in perspective. This already reveals an inherent affinity with the process-oriented thinking of Minimalism, whose principle of continuous shift fits well with the idea of gradually moving through a landscape.
The second factor that at least facilitated such a stylistic shift was Schreier’s studies with Manfred Trojahn, whom Schreier himself describes as a ‘liberal’ teacher who imposed few stylistic constraints on his students and did not want to commit them to a particular school of thought. This allowed Schreier to work independently from the outset, without blinders, and can be seen as a prerequisite for his taking his initially purely personal appreciation for minimalist and certain popular music seriously as a compositional tool (while many other composers repeatedly profess how much they appreciate certain popular music, they keep it meticulously absent from their own compositions).
And thirdly, it is important to remember that Schreier soon turned his attention to opera, not with the intention of dismantling it in the name of an avant-garde theory, but rather, on the contrary, to do justice to its genre’s inherent demands. This requires a certain degree of pragmatism and flexibility, as the purely musical requirements must be reconciled with the dramatic necessities. Schreier confronts this fundamental question of music theater, which essentially runs through the entire history of opera, without reservation and always with the aim of ultimately creating a whole that serves the theatrical narrative, to which stylistic considerations are ultimately subordinated.
In a certain sense, all the pieces gathered on this CD are directly influenced by one or more of these prerequisites. This is already true of the earliest piece, Drei Landschaftsbilder (Three Landscape Pictures) for solo cello, composed in 2007 and revised in 2010, which is the only one on this CD not yet affected by the stylistic shift described above. Rather, Schreier employs several stylistic elements typical of contemporary classical music. Instead of the regular cello tone, certain effects such as harmonics, increased bow pressure, and pizzicato predominate; the harmony is dominated by dissonances, and Schreier repeatedly weaves in quarter-tone shifts that sound imprecise and displaced to the unfamiliar ear. Regardless, the piece can also be heard as a stroll through Schreier’s homeland: The first movement sounds improvised, with individual elements alternating between longer pauses, some motifs reappearing in altered form. The whole piece resembles a somewhat disoriented walk through nature, composed of many disparate details that the walker encounters again and again from different directions and perspectives. The second movement, entitled “Fließend” (“Flowing”), initially seems simpler, with a straightforward, three-note melody that evokes the image of a leisurely walk or stroll. This is contrasted with a lively, slightly dance-like motif that only pretends to be in 6/8 time. The two elements alternate at increasingly shorter intervals, with a certain exchange taking place: the initially very calm and quiet opening melody becomes louder and more accentuated as the movement progresses, while the dance-like melody, initially a loud disturbance, gradually transforms into something quiet and murmuring. The third movement, “Sehr fließend” (“Very flowing”), is conceived as a perpetual motion with a continuous sextuplet figure that repeatedly gets stuck on a kind of trill — here, a very distant resemblance to the motoric nature of minimalist music becomes apparent. Overall, the tempo of the music steadily increases throughout the three movements: a landscape disintegrating into countless details ultimately becomes a rushed journey in which there is no longer any room for detail.
Schreier also entrusted the second of his landscape pieces, Zwei Studien zu einer Landschaft (Two Studies on a Landscape) from 2019, to the cello, this time with the addition of a complementary, or rather, dialoguing piano. The two studies could hardly be more different: The first, entitled “Sehr ruhig” (“Very calm”), seems like an illustration of the concept of ‘austerity,’ so sparsely and simply is it crafted. The pacing chords in the piano, in their peculiar mixture of euphony and dissonance, possess a certain brittleness, even defiance, which impressively embodies the harsh, almost forbidding nature of this landscape. The cello initially responds only with a single, long note, more of a refusal to answer; but as the piece progresses, it softens, allowing a little more melody and expression. It seems as if one must approach this landscape with a certain perseverance and tenacity to coax out its secrets and its austere charm.
In contrast, the second study is bursting with energy and power. Cello and piano initially play in unison, merging into a single body of sound with almost brutal impact. Schreier directly references popular music here, giving the piece a distinctly rock-like quality; at the same time, it is structured according to the principles of minimal music: A rather simple opening pattern of a few bars, which is repeated like all subsequent ones, expands and changes with each new variation. The activity increases, more and more notes and rhythmic figures are added, and at some point, the unison is abandoned. However, this increase is not continuous; at several points, the newly developed complexity is suddenly withdrawn in favor of a new beginning reminiscent of the start, with the fundamental note of the patterns usually changing as well. A somewhat gentler coda follows: delicately moving, almost ethereal soundscapes, representing the greatest possible contrast to the ‘groovy’ energy of the main section, culminate in a dabbing staccato dance that soars to luminous heights and concludes the piece with an unexpectedly intense crescendo.
While the minimalist, process-oriented approach was still handled relatively freely in this second study, we encounter a rather strict process-oriented thinking in the first movement of Landschaft im Schnee (Landscape in the Snow) (2020) for flute, viola, and cello. Again, each group of two bars is repeated, with the time signature changing, but not the total number of notes; only the notes are played sometimes sequentially, sometimes simultaneously. The basic formula is an ascending D minor triad, broken into six notes, which is distributed among the three instruments in two-note groups. The entire piece is played pizzicato and staccato, giving it a pointillist quality reminiscent of snowflakes. For much of the piece, all that happens is a change of one or two pitches in each new variation, so that the harmony gradually shifts from D minor to F major and back again. Only in the middle of the movement are there a few shifts between the instruments, but these do little to alter the fundamental structure of the movement. Schreier never again wrote such a rigorously crafted and minimalist piece.
As if in respite, the second movement unfolds in an expressive melody that somehow recalls a Bach aria, without any specific model being immediately apparent. The melodic theme is answered by a simple canon based on a scale motif, which appears as a sustained postlude. A second section initially takes up the melody again, altering, expanding, and intensifying it, while the concluding canon develops into a rather elaborate and increasingly calming proportional canon (different rhythmic levels in the three voices).
The third movement is once again a perpetuum mobile in rapid, wild chains of sixteenth notes, which evoke a veritable blizzard. The sixteenth-note figures, initially played in unison, move within a very limited tonal space, appearing as permutations of a small C minor scale, which gradually expands. The whole thing is reminiscent, probably intentionally, of the early works of Philip Glass, whose Music in Fifths is also evoked by the idea of later replacing the unison with parallel fifths. Even though the second section features arpeggiated chords instead of scale fragments, Glass’s influence is evident, specifically his later work, with Schreier clearly having fun developing Glass’s compositional techniques further: arpeggiated chords are combined with parallel fifths, or the permutative scale patterns are shifted against each other, reminiscent of Steve Reich; diatonic scales later become chromatic figures, which also appear in different keys, creating unexpectedly harsh dissonances. Classical minimalism, it seems, is being vigorously challenged, even though Schreier gradually re-establishes the key of C minor towards the end – only to then conclude the piece with a D major chord.
Here, as in all of Schreier’s chamber music works, it becomes clear that the composer often uses small ensembles and forms to try out new things and, in a sense, to conduct experiments in a laboratory setting, the results of which then benefit other, larger-scale works. This is particularly evident, indeed already evident in the title, in the case of the Vier Turing-Tests (Four Turing Tests) for two violas, which refer to the opera Turing, composed in 2020/21, about the British mathematician Alan Turing. The term ‘Turing test’ is ambiguous here: On the one hand, Schreier suggests that music for the opera is being tried out, so to speak, tested. On the other hand, it describes a method developed by Turing himself, who was concerned with the problem of distinguishing between machine and human thought. The test is also referred to as an ‘imitation game’ because it ultimately asks whether a computer can convincingly imitate human communicative behavior.
Applied to music, the ‘Tests’ could be interpreted as a reflection on automated, machine-like processes on the one hand and the human element on the other, for which the minimalist compositional techniques, with their inherent processuality, are particularly well-suited. The first movement in particular is strongly reminiscent of Steve Reich, employing Reich’s technique of successively expanding a pattern while simultaneously shifting that same pattern. Moreover, its rhythmic and melodic structure bears a striking resemblance to Reich’s music. However, Schreier significantly accelerates these processes, omitting several intermediate steps and thus presenting in just a few minutes what Reich would have extended over an entire work. This makes the sequence less predictable and automatic, instead imbuing it with a certain dynamism and spontaneity more characteristic of humans than machines. Quite apart from that, the music, with its fresh energy, is simply enjoyable.
In contrast, the second movement feels more like a slow pace, almost like a funeral march. The basic formula is a small ascending scale, whose notes, however, are sustained, thus layering themselves into a diatonic cluster. This formula reappears with varying numbers of repetitions, is transposed and reversed, and thus forms a melodic arc that constitutes the first section. In a second section, an expressive melody is added, which moves back and forth between the two violas, leading to a dramatic climax. After its subsiding, a brief reminiscence of the beginning concludes the movement. The third movement takes the form of a scherzo: Light-footed pizzicato passages, in which the two violas toss notes back and forth, alternate with somewhat more robust, at times quite dissonant, arco passages. Particularly interesting here are the constantly changing time signatures, which arise from the increasing and decreasing number of notes per figure.
The final movement, with its almost continuous motoric drive, again suggests a somewhat more mechanical process, especially since the basic pattern of arpeggiated chords is rather mechanically shifted against itself. However, the unexpectedly human element soon reveals itself in small, accentuated additions, scratched like hatchings into the uniform background. This is the starting point for a progression that is somewhat reminiscent of a freely interpreted rondo form, in which the music initially develops in a particular direction (e.g., by shifting to other keys, adding further melodies, etc.), but then returns to the opening music. At the end, the initial pattern breaks up with pauses, disintegrates into fragments, and concludes the piece with an almost furious final gesture. In conclusion, one could summarize that the human element ultimately prevails—simply because it is music.
With few exceptions, opera composers are rarely also song composers, primarily due to the quite different demands of the genres: the grand, dramatic arc on the one hand, the small, intimate lyrical form on the other; the large orchestra and powerful operatic voices on the one, and just a piano and decidedly more restrained chamber singing on the other. Anno Schreier, however, cultivates both genres and, in addition to his numerous operas, has also written several song cycles and a number of individual songs. The Morgenstern-Liederbuch (Morgenstern Songbook), composed during the Corona pandemic, is somewhat special in that Schreier deliberately intended to compose lighter songs, with ‘light’ here being understood in a twofold sense: both in terms of the vocal demands and in terms of style, which consciously embraces the ‘lighter muse.’ For this, Schreier chose poems from Christian Morgenstern’s Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs), not only for their humor, but also because a classical-romantic interpretation of these texts is essentially impossible, which has an incredibly liberating effect on contemporary composers. Schreier clearly enjoyed juxtaposing Morgenstern’s whimsical, nonsensical texts with equally witty music, making use of numerous clichés from both popular and classical music.
At times, this even veers into parody, as in the very first song, Galgenberg (Gallows Mountain), a kind of anthem for the Gallows Brothers—and indeed, the song uses the same rhythm as the German national anthem, the original of which is even hidden within the piano part.
In the middle section of Nein! (No!), Schreier masterfully parodies a Baroque aria in flawless polyphony, even when it involves the groaning of a noose – the outer sections, however, are kept in a lurking, mysterious style. In Der Tanz (The Dance, here in an orchestrated version by Klaus Simon), Schreier draws on reggae, both in the melody and in the ostentatious emphasis on the weak beats of the 4/4 time signature. Der Hecht (The Pike) comes across as a light-footed waltz, with the piano interludes in particular sounding like quotations from dance music. Der Zwölf-Elf (The Twelve-Eleven), which the singer declaims with minimal melodic means, haunts the piano part with rhythmic figures strongly reminiscent of hip-hop, while the thematically related song Das Problem (The Problem) is a broad, slightly vulgar boogie-woogie. And in Die Westküsten (The West Coasts), the singer gets to try her hand at rock ’n’ roll.
Occasionally, however, the composer is indeed influenced by tradition when it comes to tone painting and text interpretation. In both Das Wasser (The Water) and Das ästhetische Wiesel (The Aesthetic Weasel, “amidst a babbling brook”), Schreier composes the water as flowing, scale-like accompaniment figures in the piano, very much in the spirit of Schubert, whose flowing accompaniment figures, for example from Die schöne Müllerin, may well have served as a model here. Das Huhn (The Hen) clucks and pecks quite clearly through the piano part and vocal line, even though a kind of recitative accompanies it. And Bim, Bam, Bum, a tragic love triangle involving three bell tones (!), naturally cannot do without corresponding bell chimes in the piano and a motif of two descending fourths (“bim bam bum”) that runs through the song. All of this is extremely entertaining and enjoyable, yet very well thought out and composed with great care and inventiveness. One can only hope that these songs (and also the five others from the Morgenstern Songbook that did not make it onto this CD) will establish themselves in the song repertoire in the same way that Schreier’s operas have on the stage.
Cornelius Bauer
“The soprano, whose compelling stage presence captivates audiences, impressed above all with her disarming naturalness,” writes the FAZ. Katharina Ruckgaber is currently establishing herself both on the opera and concert stage.
Since embarking on a freelance career at the start of the 2023/24 season, Katharina Ruckgaber opened the 2024/25 season performing the role of Beppi in Gerd Kühr’s opera Stallerhof at Stadttheater Klagenfurt. This was followed by debuts under René Jacobs in Handel’s Tamerlano at Teatro Real, the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, and in Valencia, as well as a return to the Berlin Philharmonie with the Freiburger Barockorchester. Highlights of recent seasons include her acclaimed performance as Ännchen in Weber’s Der Freischütz in Philipp Stölzl’s celebrated production at the Bregenz Festival, Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro) at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, Bellezza in Handel’s Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno at the ClassicAnd Festival in Andorra, her debut as Galatea with the Kammerakademie Potsdam, as well as concert debuts at the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, the Berlin Philharmonie, and with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra.
Katharina Ruckgaber has also appeared as a guest at Opernhaus Zürich in Turnage’s Coraline, at the Theater an der Wien, at Staatstheater Darmstadt as Adele and Pamina, and at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich.
Her extensive concert activities have taken her to Paris with the Orchestre National de France, to the MDR Symphony Orchestra, to the Konzerthaus Berlin under Iván Fischer, the Gewandhaus Leipzig, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, Moscow, the Cologne Philharmonie, and regularly to the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg — most recently in 2022, returning as Ännchen on René Jacobs’ acclaimed Der Freischütz tour with the Freiburger Barockorchester and alongside several concerts with the Zürcher Kammerorchester.
Immediately after completing her studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, Katharina Ruckgaber was engaged by the Oper Frankfurt’s Opera Studio and subsequently became an ensemble member at Theater Freiburg until 2023. There, she appeared in numerous central roles of her repertoire, including Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), the Vixen (The Cunning Little Vixen), Musetta (La Bohème), and Nanetta (Falstaff). Her portrayal of Mélisande (Pelléas et Mélisande) was celebrated by the press as a “highlight of the season” (nmz / Der neue Merker, July 2019).
As a passionate recitalist, the multiple award-winning soprano enjoys close collaborations with pianists Helmut Deutsch, Sholto Kynoch, Daniel Heide, So-Jin Kim, and Jan Philip Schulze. Her most recent album, LOVE AND LET DIE, showcases her versatility, spanning repertoire from Schubert to Berio. Recital appearances have taken her to the Konzerthaus Vienna, Oper Frankfurt, Zurich, Bayreuth, Budapest, Madrid, and Barcelona, as well as to the Oxford Lieder Festival and Wigmore Hall in London.
was born in Überlingen on Lake Constance. He is the founder and artistic director of the Holst Sinfonietta and the Opera Factory Freiburg (until 2014: Young Opera Company). With both ensembles, he focuses primarily on 20th- and 21st-century music, though he does not consider himself a specialist in contemporary music.
His repertoire as a conductor and pianist ranges from Mozart to Widmann. His areas of focus include classical modernism, minimal music, and British and American music of the 20th and 21st centuries. He has collaborated as a guest conductor with, among others, the Staatsbad Philharmonie Bad Kissingen, Grupo Enigma (Zaragoza, Spain), the Zafraan Ensemble (Berlin), and the SWR Vokalensemble (Stuttgart).
Since 1999, he has made numerous CD and radio recordings as a conductor and pianist, including, for example, Claude Vivier’s only opera, Kopernikus, in 2012. For this work, he received the prestigious German Record Critics’ Award in 2016 as a conductor, the International Classical Music Award (ICMA) in 2017, and the German Record Critics’ Award in 2021 as a song accompanist for his complete recording of Erwin Schulhoff’s songs.
As a pianist, he has focused on art song. His repertoire now comprises more than 1,600 songs. The core of his work as a song accompanist is German Late Romanticism, with a particular focus on the songs of Hans Pfitzner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Erwin Schulhoff, each accompanied by a complete CD recording. From 2019 to 2021, in co-production with Deutschlandfunk Kultur, he recorded all the songs of the Italian composer Franco Alfano. Since 2022, he has been working on a complete recording of all the songs of the late Romantic Austrian composer Erich J. Wolff, whose out-of-print scores he is republishing as editor.
As an arranger, he has adapted numerous works for chamber ensemble, including almost all of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies and works by Berg, Schoenberg, Ravel, and others. These arrangements are performed successfully by renowned ensembles and orchestras worldwide.
A foray into the unfamiliar or a curiosity for uncharted territory—this could be a way to characterize the programs of the Freiburg-based chamber ensemble Holst Sinfonietta.
The ensemble’s name is a tribute to the English composer Gustav Holst (1874–1934). Founded in 1996 by its conductor Klaus Simon, Holst Sinfonietta is comprised of accomplished instrumentalists from southern Germany, France, and Switzerland.
The ambition to offer unusual and challenging concert programs has been a key motivation for the ensemble from the very beginning. While the ensemble consciously avoids being categorized as a contemporary music ensemble, its repertoire focuses primarily on music of the 20th and 21st centuries. The quality of the selected compositions and their meaningful combination within an original program concept are paramount in concert planning. This is evidenced by concert programs featuring works by prominent composers such as Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams, Philip Glass, Joseph Schwantner, HK Gruber, Gustav Mahler, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten, Bohuslav Martinů, Andrew Norman, Moritz Eggert, Luke Bedford, and Steven Mackey, many of which have been German premieres.
Since its founding, the Holst Sinfonietta has maintained a close relationship with the Opera Factory Freiburg which has found an ideal partner in the ensemble.
Since 1999, the ensemble has made numerous radio and CD recordings, including the world premiere recordings of John Adams’ songplay Ceiling/Sky, E. W. Korngold’s Die Stumme Serenade, Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus and, most recently, Gustav Holst’s opera Sāvitri.
Since 2019, the ensemble has received institutional funding from the city of Freiburg.