Liebeslied (2015)
for solo viola // 5'
Recorded at All That We Are in Hobart, May 2018
Performance history
May/June 2019 (premiere)
Katie Yap
The Baroque Viola (Brisbane, Melbourne)
September 13 2019
ANAM, South Melbourne Town Hall
Sound Bite: Jared Yapp
Henry Justo
October 20 2019
Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House
Katie Yap
October 24 2019
The Newsagency Annandale
Henry Justo
October 15 2023
ACO Nielsen Pier 2/3
Henry Justo
Recorded by Thomas Green, June 2019
This performance is on baroque viola
About
Liebeslied is a miniature for solo viola in homage to Kreisler's salon pieces for violin and piano. In them Kreisler paints a whimsical, romantic and sentimental notion of love, so in tribute to that liebeslied is like an ugly cousin to those works, trying to capture the all the things he left out about love because of course it's not as simple as he portrays.
Reviews
" The work’s (liebeslied) rich, sometimes strident overtones and gritty scraping effects (amplification highlighting every detail of the sound) making for an apposite pairing with French spectral composer Tristan Murail’s C’est un jardin secret, ma soeur, ma fiancée, une fontaine close, une source scellée… Justo handled the technical demands with aplomb, and if there is some room to heighten the trance-like stillness in which works like this thrive, the explorations of texture and overtones foreshadowed the music to come"