Kontraste

Ursula Mamlok was born in Berlin in 1923, but was forced to emigrate via Ecuador to New York in 1939 because of her Jewish descent. In 2006 she returned to the city where she was born. In about three minutes, the small and charming two-part piece Kontraste [Contrasts] for oboe and harp captivates with clarity and limitation to the essentials. The name says it all: A lively humoresque is followed by a rather delicate, even almost melancholy second movement which is headed 'largo e mesto'. The composition was written in 2009/10 as a birthday present for the Swiss oboist – and this work's dedicatee – Heinz Holliger (and his wife, the harpist Ursula Holliger).