Composed in 1970, Mantra, for two pianos and ring modulation, was one of the decisive turning points in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s career. The 70-minute piece not only signalled a break with the text-based intuitive works, relying heavily on improvisation, that had come to dominate his output towards the end of the previous decade and a return to fully notated scores, but also introduced the idea of melodic formulae, the “mantra” of the title, which Stockhausen would eventually develop into the organising principle for the whole of his vast cycle of operas, Licht, which would emerge between 1977 and 2003. But Mantra is also one of the most immediate and lucid of Stockhausen’s works; it’s a showpiece for the two pianists’ virtuosity, and for their comedic skills, too, in the few moments of rather heavy-handed humour. There’s an immediacy about the way in which this performance by Mark Knoop and Roderick Chadwick, with Newton Armstrong controlling the electronics, has been recorded; every nuance and colour in Stockhausen’s piano writing is caught, and the work’s coda, which compresses everything that’s been heard before into two minutes’ frantic activity, becomes an overwhelming climax.
