Boris Yoffe

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Boris Yoffe (2014)

Boris Yoffe (born December 21, 1968 in Leningrad ) is a composer .

Life

Yoffe emigrated from Russia to Israel in 1990 and moved to Germany in 1997. His composition teachers were Adam Stratievsky and Wolfgang Rihm . Yoffes compositions have been performed in EU countries, Switzerland , Israel, Russia and the USA ; Radio recordings (BBC, SWR, Radio France, DRS, Israelische Rundfunk) and CDs document his work. Yoffe was a scholarship holder of various foundations; in 2000 he received the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Prize .

Yoffe is also the author of numerous arrangements and arrangements, as well as some musicological and philosophical essays.

His closest "musical relatives" among modern composers are probably Galina Ustvolskaya , Morton Feldman and Juri Chanon ; but one could also perceive his music as a kind of opposition to the established “ new music ”. The central means are form formation and polyphony . It is also important to deal with the music of the baroque and classical periods; Virtuosity and work with sound effects are almost completely neglected.

“… Boris Yoffe studied composition with me and is certainly one of the most talented and idiosyncratic figures among the composers of his generation. His work is characterized by extraordinary concentration. His sense of sound is extraordinary, but not in the sense of pleasing sound, but developed from the lines. This is very rare today. In addition to his compositional work, Yoffe is a highly sensitive instrumentalist and a profound theorist. "

- Wolfgang Rihm , composer, according to Yoffes website

Yoffe has written and published various articles, essays and papers. Released in 2012. Yoffe treats here in six essays u. a. the musical semantics , the use of “foreign” musical material (quotations) and the musical notation .

After extensive research into Soviet music, Im Fluss des Symphonischen was released in 2014 . The book is one of the few comprehensive writings in German on the music of the Soviet Union , as the musicologist Jascha Nemtsov noted in his article in Music & Aesthetics .

Musical works

Yoffe began to write in 1995 on the quartet book of poems , a “ work in progress ”. It is a collection of short pieces for string quartet or viol consort, to which a new contribution is made almost every day. The quartet book is something like a trunk from which almost all other compositions of Yoffes branch. Mostly these are instrumental and vocal chamber music works that Yoffe wrote as commissioned compositions for certain musicians or music institutions:

Boris Yoffe, 2000
  • Sonnet (lute player) for gamba solo,
  • Tree for bassoon solo,
  • Oratio de hominis dignitate for guitar
  • 6 drafts for Sonate de Vinteuil for solo violin,
  • Easily, but with passion for solo violin,
  • Folk tune for violin solo,
  • 6 designs for cello solo,
  • Klagenspiel for recorder solo,
  • Sonata ricercata for piano,
  • Bagatelles for piano
  • Essay for violin and piano,
  • 9 dedications for violin and piano
  • Caprichos for cello and guitar,
  • Bracha for recorder and harpsichord,
  • Speech for clarinet, viola and piano,
  • Aria for string trio,
  • Romance for piano trio,
  • Bagatelles for three recorders,
  • Masterpieces of naive painting for viola, cello and double bass,
  • Night music (church window at night) for horn, two cellos and double bass
  • Tanka for four cellos,
  • 16 pieces for harp, flute, oboe and bass clarinet
  • I'm thirsty! for violin, viola, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon
  • Variations for string quartet, piano, flute, basset horn and tuba
  • Air and Angels (Donne) for soprano and choir
  • Russian music (Platonov) for alto and wind quintet,
  • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Frost) for voice and string quartet
  • My prayer (F. Schubert) for voice, oboe, violin and cello,
  • Folk tune (Rilke) for voice, flute and harp,
  • VIER , a song cycle for mezzo-soprano and three instruments: Villon - Mandelstamm - Ise Monogotari, Chapter I - The Lord of the Castle
  • 3 canzoni for violin and strings,
  • Comments for a second cello on the Ricercari for cello solo by Domenico Gabrielli
  • Cadenzas for the piano concerto KV. 537 by WA Mozart
  • Children's play Von Prinzen, Prinzessinnen for speakers and orchestra

Orchestral works

  • Motet for violin and orchestra (WP: 2005, Patricia Kopatschinskaja, Baden-Baden Philharmonic)

Operas

  • Esther de Racine , for four singers and seven baroque instruments (WP: 2006, Ensemble Muscadin, Basel)
  • Madame Lenin, for four singers
  • The story of the rabbi and his son , based on the story of Rabbi Nachman from Brazlaw.

There are also numerous arrangements by Yoffe, including a chamber music version of Bizet's opera Carmen .

Book publications

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Boris Yoffe . « The descending stairs - up » (Draft Confession. Sketch) .
  2. ↑ official website «borisyoffe.de»: about Boris Yoffe
  3. ↑ Musical sense - table of contents. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Jascha Nemtsov: "The Awakening of Music" - A journey of discovery through the Soviet symphony . In: Ludwig Holtmeier, Richard Klein, Eckehard Kiem, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf (eds.): Music & Aesthetics . Issue 73. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2015, p. 100-107 .
  5. ↑ Boris Yoffe: In the flow of the symphonic - table of contents. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Yoffe, Boris
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian composer
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Leningrad