<span class="vcard">Wendelin Bitzan</span>
Wendelin Bitzan

I Don’t Name Any Names

This is why I am not really interested in performers of classical music. My impression is that many artists, particularly those featured by the major labels, abuse their personality to mask the music. I cringe whenever I see a concert ad or CD cover with a performer’s name printed in capital letters bigger than the composer’s—this makes me stay away from the concert or leave the store. Their faces may be pretty and their attitude seductive, but unfortunately I am attracted by the music itself rather than by the people performing it. And what they perform is largely uninteresting—no surprises, hardly anything beyond the established canon. So all of you big shots and top sellers: Please spare me your hundreds of Moony Sonatas, Teardrop Preludes, and La Campannoyas just serving your self-portrayal. Keep your artistic profile neurosis for yourself. For being commercially controlled puppets of the music industry, you have my pity, not my sympathy. You don’t illuminate the music, you are basking in its light. Go on selling your shallow high-gloss products, but don’t expect me to watch or listen.

Absorbed by Chopin and Medtner

Frédéric Chopin wrote 57 mazurkas, covering 20 of the 24 major and minor keys. I’m currently doing analytical annotations of the whole corpus in context of a musicological research project at TU Dresden, adding Roman numerals to every single chord in order to make the music accessible to computational modeling. Moreover, my bulky thesis chapter on Nikolai Medtner’s G minor Sonata, Op. 22, is approaching its final shape, incorporating Schenkerian and metrotechtonic perspectives. What a stunning masterpiece of musical architecture!

Musicians on Music: A No-Go

Dear fellow musicians and performers, please do me a favour. Do not write music-related texts or documents on your own unless you really, really know how to do this! In any other case, have somebody write these for you (or at least show your writings to somebody) who is specialised in this field. You may be wonderful as performers, but I recently made so many encounters with poorly written, awkward, or even embarrassing texts authored by musicians that I cannot suppress this plea. So if you need professional assistance with your CV, concert announcement, work introduction, liner notes, or texts for your website: Please do let me know! I’ll be more than happy to help you.

Guitar and marimba pieces

The repertoire for guitar and marimba duo is not what you would call a cornucopia (no horns involved, naturally). However, I made a contribution. Guitarists and percussionists are invited to have a look at my composition At the Forest Verge which is now finished and typeset, consisting of four short pieces inspired by my favourite trees and their specifically-shaped leaves. You can download the sheet music here on my IMSLP page.

Music Theory Faculty Concert

Dear folks, I’ll have the considerable pleasure to perform two of my own compositions in a faculty concert next Friday, 10 February, 7:30 pm, at Joseph Joachim hall, Berlin University of the Arts. As the opener to a versatile programme including viola d’amore, jazz vocals, and improvisations on Schubert, my piano cycle Children’s Kaleidoscope will experience its first complete performance, along with the sombre November Lament (yes, still not matching the month of presentation). Admission is free—it’d be so much of a delight if you joined the audience!