Karlheinz Stockhausen has always been one of the most "avant" of the avant-garde, pioneering electronic music, aleatoric techniques, and "intuitive music." It is something of a surprise, then, to listen to this relatively tame but no less intriguing work. The title refers to this work's genesis; it was composed for a birthday concert for Dr. Alfred Kalmus, director Universal Editions, the prominent music publisher. It is written for violin, cello, flute, clarinet, piano, and percussion. Perhaps appropriately for a birthday celebration, in a mordant way, Dr. K-Sextet musically depicts a shock wave. The music begins with slight foreshocks, played on piano and various percussion instruments, including bells and xylophone. The melodic instruments play only isolated notes, and all of the music is surrounded with masses of silence. Eventually, the shocks start occurring with increasing frequency, and ultimately the music breaks into a veritable earthquake, with outbursts from every instrument. The rhythms of nature inform the appearance and disappearance of the music, and the silences in between are eerie, seeming as uncalculated as they are perfectly placed. Dr. K-Sextet is an unusual, even strange, work, which is no surprise from this composer, but its strangeness makes it no less engaging.



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