Schweitzer, Benjamin: Geisterseher (Grand Scherzo)

The work is a spider-fingered scherzo which translates the concept of ‘Romantic irony’ into a modern tonal language. Mysterious creatures fl it back and forth and run on the spot before breaking off once more into a wild counterpoint of movement in all directions. Intermittently, the music assumes a more concentrated form: on one occasion in a feverish, oscillating plane of trills (an echo of Beethoven's extended trills in his late period?), and again in an expansively soaring song on the violin, initially accompanied dreamily by the piano which then rapidly engulfs the song. Th e title originates from a remark by E.T.A. Hoffmann that we are transformed into ‘ghost-seers’ when listening to Beethoven, but it can be applied equally to Schiller's novel of the same name and other Romantic concepts such as the ‘devil's violinist’. The score is permeated by ‘ghostly apparitions’ in which the action suddenly disappears behind a veil and it is these phantom-like sections which form the clandestine core elements of the composition. Benjamin Schweitzer