Since 2004, the lost world of the former “Buchenland” (Beech Country) with its Jewish-Christian culture, which was expelled and destroyed by Naziism, has played a special role in Alexander Kukelka’s oeuvre – his ancestors came from Czernowitz (Chernivtsi) and the former Bukovina. The album “Call to the Highest Vision” is a follow-up to the production “Czernowitzer Skizzen” released in 2008, and stands as a further attempt to pay compositional tribute to this historically unique “multi-ethnic mosaic” on the edge of the Carpathians with its capital Czernowitz, also known as “Little Vienna” or “Jerusalem on the Pruth”. The selected works combine most diverse styles of composing, with works ranging from the concerto for nai (pan flute) and string auintet, songs for bass bariton, bass clarinet and piano, Meditations for solo clarinet and Klezmore Orchestra, works with ironic titles such as “About a March That Set Out to Learn How to Dance – Humoresque for Wind Quartet” or “Requiem for a Dead End – Farce for Flute, Cello and Piano”. However, no “historical distance” or compositional employment can relativize or explain the irretrievable loss of this unique linguistic and cultural landscape, in which half a dozen ethnic groups dreamed of a better world in peaceful coexistence on the eve of the Shoah.

Artists

Andreea Chira, Peter Uhler, Monika Uhler, Marta Potulska, Manuel Schager, Michael Pistelok, Alexander Kukelka, Günter Haumer, Wolfgang Kornberger, Kaori Nishii, Moritz Weiß, Sophie Stocker, Yu-Hsuan Lin, Piotr Motyka, Koehne Quartett, Joanna Lewis (soloist), Anne Harvey-Nagl (soloist), Melissa Coleman (soloist), Asja Valcic, Josef Bednarik, Thomas Steinwender, Marion Janda, Trio Frizzante, Marlies Gaugl (soloist)