national and international
reviews
Basel Landschaftliche Zeitung
Music as old as this is rarely heard, even at the concerts of the ‘Freunde Alter Musik Basel’. A performance in St Leonhard Basel by the ensemble Melpomen, led by the recorder player, composer and music archaeologist Conrad Steinmann, transported us to the 6th century BC.
Melpomen demonstrated how this may have sounded with lyrics by Sappho and some of her male colleagues. The subjects were love and enjoyment of life, wine, women and song – and lovely boys. The span ranged from a prayer to Aphrodite to a drinking song. Steinmann has composed music for these texts, which of course is not ‘original’, but approaches the ancient world as closely as possible.
The music exposed a fascinating universe of unfamiliar sounds and harmonies. Steinmann himself played the Aulos, sometimes buzzing, sometimes nasal instruments of various sizes, which are used in pairs and thus allow two-part playing in which one part has a stable bourdon function, upon which the other delivers lively melodies. The drummer Martin Lorenz rattled with the castanet-like Krotala, played the Kymbala, palm-sized metal cymbals that are struck against each other (the cymbals of the bible) and the timbrel-like Tympana.
The singers, soprano Arianna Savall and the tenor Giovanni Cantarini, accompanied themselves on various stringed instruments. Both have been familiar with this music for a long time. Cantarini, gifted with an exquisite timbre, formed the songs based upon the words, ‘speaking’ as it were. They included a hymn to Aphrodite and a self-justification of the Athenian poet and statesman Solon. Arianna Savall also has a slender, enchantingly beautiful voice with silver shining peaks. Her totally reserved interpretations of Sappho’s poetry, which she accompanied herself on the lyre with sparse notes, were highlights of the evening, moments of pure beauty. Alfred Ziltener
Frans Brüggen
What mastery! Superb, how Conrad Steinmann passes by the Italian Renaissance and plunges directly into the dark paradigm; I admire it and I admire him. The strangest noises and sounds I have ever heard. As if there were no world: I thank his great mind.
Peter Bichsel
It’s a search for the note, for the lost melody, for lost time.
The search for the lost melody – the Greek aulos flutes which made Paul J. Reichlin – only superficially has something to do with history and music history. Steinmann brings to life the imaginable music of the Greeks. His notes are a categorical ‘now’. Only in our recollection, several minutes or hours after hearing them, do they become memories. Memories of an imagined Greece.
When we listen, however, we realize that his notes have a specific presence : this is the note that I hear at the very moment. This may seem an obvious and banal statement. But Conrad Steinmann makes me aware of this fact. Music is the ‘now’. It takes place now, at this precise moment in time.
The Gramophone UK
Musical Archeology is a real pleasure. Any such project obviously depends on a great deal of historical research (notably in terms of instruments – in this case all reconstructed by Paul J. Reichlin – and language) and, just as importantly, informed creative imagination. In this case the results are impressive. There’s a confidence about the instrumental playing, and a good deal of the music is very memorable. One can listen with pleasure and fascination. Ivan Moody
Basler Zeitung
An epoch-making project: To hear was Steinmann’s double-flute playing (sometimes virtuos with screeching overblown tones, sometimes sounding like a bagpipe), Arianna Savall’s bárbitos-song with a Mediterranean folksmusic-like impact. Then the gentle Alto song by Luiz Alves da Silva and of course all in a highly virtuose manner of the mentioned ensemble Melpomen. Sigfried Schibli
Basel Landschaftliche Zeitung
The first results are impressive and of great vitality. Steinmann, Arianna Savall, Luiz Alves da Silva and Massimo Cialfi played a part of their program Melpomen and enchanted everyone. In the second part Steinmann, Cialfi, Giovanni Cantarini as well as the five members of the choir, offered songs for Olympia Winners according to texts from Pindaros in a gripping presentation […] The newly imagined music of the Antique was brought to life: truly a pioneer performance. Christian Fluri
Diapason Paris
Diapason d’or pour Melpomen: ‘Le résultat est stupéfiant. D’autant que Steinmann a ‘mis en situation’ son travail archéologique, imaginant les échanges chantés et instrumentaux lors d’un banquet où autour des thèmes de l’amour et du vin s’égrènent des poèmes de Sappho et d’Alkaios, d’Anacréon et de Bacchylide. Le livret fourmille d’informations et de reproductions qui aideront à convaincre l’auditeur en quête de vérité historique. […] Du beau chant et de belles exécutions instrumen-tales, raffinés, subtils, parfois envoûtants, comme cette poésie d’une sophistication inépuisable. Un excellent résultat pour une splendide démarche.’
Die Zeit Hamburg
Here Anakreons Songs of Praise to Eros, sounds in plain, clear lines livened with restrained cries of joy and spurred on from the bárbitos (lyer). There the wistful tones of Sappho verse, where the tympanon (tamburin) fires up to dance in African rhythm, before a Homer-like hymn in a cradling tone lets the evening fade away. The musicians liven the plain tunes with Mediterranean playing techniques, with Sardinian and Calabrian, with Egyptian and Arabian tones filling the empty places with plausibilities. The musical result is successful! Frank Hilberg
Tages-Anzeiger Zurich
Conrad Steinmann and his ensemble Melpomen performed during the festival in the Augustiner Church. A breath of air or flute-like, sometimes bagpipe-like sounds, the auloi (double wind instrument); they developed together with the voices of Arianna Savall and Luiz de Silva, with percussion and the fragile sounding string instruments bárbitos, into a very special, totally unique, lively Archaic. Whether it really sounded like that in the 5th century BC Greece, none knows, but with the passion, with which Steinmann applied his research, it really doesn’t matter.
Diverse broadcasts
Diverse long radio interviews with Conrad Steinmann and Paul J. Reichlin were broadcasted by ‘France Musique’ (Paris), ‘WDR’ (Cologne), ‘SWR’ (Stuttgart) and Thessaloniki.