Klingende Buchstaben (‘Sounding Letters’, 1988) was written as an affectionate fortieth birthday tribute to the cellist Alexander Ivashkin, it is based on letters from the name ‘Alexander’: A–E–A–D–E. More flamboyantly gestural than the
Madrigal,
Klingende Buchstaben nevertheless shares its mournful, soliloquizing tone, ending ambiguously not on the fourth or fifth suggested by the A–E–A–D–E monogram but hovering around the interval of a tritone.
from notes by Pauline Fairclough © 2006
