Projects

Premiere: Dec 19 2013 Cologne Philharmonie,
Mark Atkins (didgeridoo), Wulfin Lieske (guitar) WDR Radio Symphony (Yutaka Sado)

Extract from the premiere programme (Martina Seeber, WDR)

"Alone over the land song hallows and heals." (Rainer Maria Rilke) Dreams have as little to do with the "Dreamtime" of the Australian aborigines as the western world's concept of time. Dreamtime in this context denotes the mystical time of creation, encompassing both that of the world and every creative process, irrespective of whether it has already occurred, is in the making or lies in the future. There is no linear time in aboriginal mythology, but instead creative processes that are rooted in a different dimension.
In Wulfin Lieske's "Dreamtimes" the dreamtime and songlines of the Australian aborigines mingle with Western art music. The guitarist and composer travelled the continent as a musician and also became acquainted with aborigine culture. On one of these tours he met didgeridoo player William Barton. They captured their joint improvisations on the CD Dreamtime. Lieske now harks back to this first bridging of cultures, yet from a different angle, with the versatile didgeridoo virtuoso, painter, storyteller and songwriter Mark Atkins. While the recordings for Dreamtime were completely improvised without prior discussion, the same-name work for didgeridoo, guitar and orchestra is the product of a long compositional process. At the same time, it is also a reflection on the meeting of two cultures, on an archaic wind instrument and Western orchestra, on improvisation and composing, freedom and determination. In fact, the didgeridoo is alien to the symphonic apparatus. Merely the fact that it can only play one keynote like the alpine horn makes it incompatible with Western works and their intervals. Yet precisely the concentration on the sound of this one tone, the richness of its overtones and variability of the didgeridoo attracts Wulfin Lieske. While, down the centuries, Western instrument makers have pursued the ideal of a pure clear sound with the greatest efficiency, didgeridoo builders assess their instruments according to the complexity of their sound spectrum, in which criteria like coarseness and instability are ascribed a positive role. Against this background, Dreamtime is not about adjusting the exotic to the Western European system and compensating its limitations. Quite the opposite: the didgeridoo possesses sound qualities, which the sophisticated modern orchestral apparatus lacks and with which Wulfin Lieske endows the Western instruments in Dreamtime. The guitar, the composer's instrument, assumes the role of mentor in this encounter of extreme cultural positions. It links the two worlds by contributing material that bridges differences, for the most part executing the balancing act between the part of the orchestra defined down to the last detail and the traditional free play of the didgeridoo. In the score, the part of the solo wind player is only roughly outlined, Wulfin Lieske and Mark Atkins worked on the details together. Yet repeatedly moments are created in which the music diverges from the score, not only for the experienced improviser, but also the orchestra and guitar.
This process of encounter and exchange in Dreamtime is played out against the backdrop of the eternal cycle of becoming and passing away. Wulfin Lieske also speaks of his single-movement double concerto as a "symphonic poem". It begins with the creation of the universe, the birth of song and dance and nature and goes to describe their decline.
After the chaos of the Big Bang, Birth of Song is initially portrayed by tonal elements above the keynote H of the didgeridoo: a timeless peaceful nine-part string canon executes never-ending circles until the guitar intones the "Song". Originally improvised, Wulfin Lieske includes the melody in his composition without changing it. On this level also, the unscored culture of improvisation meets the Western traditions of planned, calculated and constructive composition in Dreamtime. 

The rhythmic second movement, Initiation of Dance, recalls the origins of dance. Instead of the deep didgeridoo, a higher instrument is used that permits swifter movement. Used primarily percussively, the didgeridoo is answered by the African slit drum and guitar with short curt beats. 
At the same time, the structural principle of the canon, reflecting the cosmic orbits of the heavenly bodies, harks back to a law of time that is beyond human ken. 

With the tapping technique, the guitar seeks the closest possible affinity to its soloist partner, which produces sounds by lip and finger movements.
Three orchestral groups, the wood, brass and plucked string instruments take the stage. Accompanied and guided by solo percussionists, they interpret the material of the Song. The originally improvised melody is approached from a completely different angle of rigorous musical interpretation until the percussionists, as the most archaic instrument group in the symphony orchestra, extinguishes the entire dance in a thunderous explosion.
The third movement, Nature, is in turn divided into three parts. Following the hypothesis that music originated in an imitation of nature, Wulfin Lieske devotes the three parts to the wind as an expression of inanimate nature, living beings in the shape of insects, omnipresent in Australia and finally, the dying away of nature. This final part is based on a feral whine. A radical change is accomplished in the score at this point. The soloists, and also the orchestra, no longer play by the score, but improvise on it instead. They "create an atmosphere of wind and breath" they imitate the rapid movements and noises of the insects (a small homage to the termites that created the didgeridoo by hollowing out the dead tree trunks), until in the third part they interprets sounds, which according to the composer, recall the whimpers of a dying animal. The conductor's role in this part is to create a tonal balance by regulating the degree of density and volume and allowing the orchestra to follow the solo improvisations. If "Nature" ends with whimper, Wulfin Lieske leaves unsaid whether it is nameless animal, nature or perhaps even an ancient nature culture that has died. Sorrow at the loss is expressed in the following requiem. After the improvised interlude, this part is again formally composed as a canon, also again played solely on strings. Following this peaceful leave-taking the entire orchestra builds up in the next part to a tumultuous outcry. "Stele" is not a reconciliation with death, but rather a despairing warning of destruction and extinction, a memory of past suffering. The harmonic tensions are also calmed in the ensuing exhaustion. The string canon dies away, however both the "Nature interlude" of the fifth and the B minor of the brass and woodwind section are blown away by the sweep of the percussion instruments. 
And so the circle is completed, as aborigine mythology relates, like everything issuing from the dreamtime, in time it will return there as a memory. A cycle of becoming and passing away, as also described by Rainer Maria Rilke in Sonnet XIX, a theme which accompanied Wulfin Lieske in the composition of Dreamtime. 

Sonnet XIX 

Though the world change swiftly 
as the forms in clouds,
all perfected things fall back
to age-old ground. 

Over what changes and passes, 
wider and freer,
your deep song still hovers, 

O god with the lyre. 
Pain has not been understood, 
love has not been learned, 
and what in death removes us

remains undisclosed.
Alone over the land 
song hallows and heals. 

From Rainer Maria Rilke "The Sonnets to Orpheus", Part One (1922)