Electronic Frequencies

From Tolv stationer/ Twelve stations Part I
Rekvisitasalen I/ Property Room I
lona Maros – soprano

Miklós Maros, Viveca Servatius – voices

Ákos Rózmann – piano and voice
Composed at EMS elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm by Ákos Rózmann.
Ákos Rózmann (1939-2005) studied at the Bártók conservatory in Budapest and took diplomas in both composition and organ playing at the Liszt Academy. In 1971 he was given a scholarship to study electronic music in Stockholm. His encounter with the electronic tools was a revolutionary experience for him and was to give a whole new direction to his work. Soon he abandoned composition for acoustic instruments and was later to claim that instrumental music "had no future". For several years he earned his living as an organist at St. Eric’s  Catholic Cathedral in Stockholm, often using recordings of organ sounds made in the dead of the night as a source for his electronic works. Rózmann often preferred monumental forms and several of his most prominent works, such as 12 stationer (12 stations), grew side by side over a long period of time. With a few rare exceptions, the conflict between good and evil was the basic theme in his works. The fight went on continuously in arenas and within power relations that would suddenly change. In Rózmann’s imagined world, no room was given to chance. Big powers, luminous or dark, would lie behind the most trivial everyday events.
A large portion of Tibetan Buddhism gradually infiltrated his Catholic Weltanschauung, and 12 stationer (12 stations), composed between 1978 and 2001, is a musical interpretation of the Tibetan Wheel of Life. The last part of the 12 stations, “old age and death”, is called “the celebrators” in Rózmann’s version (completed in 2001). When asked what sort of celebration he meant he replied: “the merriment you hear is false, it is not genuine, it is empty”. (Mats Lindstöm)
CD Box:
Tolv Stationer(Twelve Stations)
Ákos Rózmann
SOMA021