Raymond Chapman Smith - Traktat vom Licht / Variations on a Minuet by Mozart CD

“Light is the vehicle of the community - of the universe. All that is visible clings to the invisible. That which can be heard to that which cannot - that which can be felt to that which cannot. Perhaps the thinkable to the unthinkable. Like ourselves, the stars float between illumination and darkening in turn - but even in the state of darkness we are granted, as they are, a consoling, hopeful glimmer of companion stars that are luminous and illuminated."
-Novalis, Traktat vom Licht

Amir Farid returns to De la Catessen Records with the premiere recordings of Traktat vom Licht / Variations on a Minuet by Mozart - the second volume in an ongoing survey of endearingly quixotic piano music by Adelaidean composer Raymond Chapman Smith. In this new collection, following on from 2023’s Nachschriften / Ländler, pianist Amir Farid sheds further light on a fruitful period of Chapman Smith’s work, in which he utters in a uniquely mellifluous voice a beautiful old language recognised by so many but spoken by so few.

Chapman Smith’s musical journey, through Sydney’s experimental scene of the early ‘70s, to his study with Australian modernist doyen Richard Meale, and his leadership of the notorious ACME New Music through the ‘90s, has led him to - of all places - the green pastures of nineteenth century German romanticism, where he invites us to join him in thoughtful spiritual contentedness through the current phase of his craft.

The title of Chapman Smith’s 26-part Traktat vom Licht is borrowed from a cycle of 26 poetic-scientific-metaphysical fragments by Novalis, a crucial voice in the formulation of the first phase of German Romanticism.

Written in 2006 as an acknowledgement of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, Variations on a Minuet by Mozart takes the theme from the first piece in Mozart’s catalogue - his K1, written when he was five years old - and turns it through a set of twelve variations.

'Mozart is so pure and bright that I see his music as the inner beauty of the universe'
-Albert Einstein