Insektenhotel

year of composition: 1984, 2017/18/21

In the case of a concert of the complete cycle of 25 scores, the composer recommends respecting the order of the scores as indicated by the numbering in the table of contents. This order ensures a dramaturgy that has been carefully planned by the author.
The additional percussion instruments in the cycle should be playable by the performers of the soprano, clarinet and guitar trio, with the probable exception of number 18) Zulu, where the clarinet and guitar are replaced by the marimba (or balafon). Banjo, E-Bass and Erhu should basically be able to be played by a single performer.

"Finally I had a chance to listen to Insect Hotel. It's really wonderful and I love all the different musical styles going with each nationality. Contrary to what one might think, the movements string together magnificently as a cohesive whole.
Well done."

Irvine Arditti, Abdruck mit freundlicher Genehmigung

"(...) Insect Hotel by the Luxembourg composer Claude Lenners (...) deals with the world of insects "from the point of view of languages in their cultural environment in general and musical contexts in particular." He uses 24 languages in the piece, including the common ones, but also such exotic ones as the Zulu language or that of the Aztecs, Nahuatl. (...) The texts set to music fall into four different categories: literary originals by William Shakespeare, Pablo Neruda, Lambert Schlechter or Günter Grass, characteristic sayings of the respective country or language, texts that have an illustrative or lexical statement about a given insect as their content, or texts that are in the realm of pure fantasy. Besides the voice, the clarinet, and the guitar, in order to idiomatically characterize the individual languages, additional instruments are used, hand drums, maracas, balafon, banjo, the bass ukulele as well as the Chinese violin erhu. These explanations already show how much love and care the composer took in the elaboration of his score, and accordingly imaginative and original the composition has become. It is therefore a contextualized musical adventure that proves to be exciting, taking the listener into a new sound world each time, one more poetic, the other more rhythmic, this one more cerebral, that one more emotional."

Remy Franck, Pizzicato online magazine

Abdruck mit freundlicher Genehmigung

„Die humorvoll-verspielten Textvertonungen rund um verschiedene Insekten zeichnen sich durch einen ebenso illustrativen wie kunstvollen Umgang mit Sprache und Klang aus, der durch ein hohes Maß an Theatralik und szenische Komponenten erweitert wird. Der Zyklus besteht aus 25 Einzelkompositionen von jeweils individueller Dauer, Formgebung und musikalischem Charakter; Ausgangspunkt sind gewöhnlich aus dem zugrundeliegenden Text abgeleitete Ideen, die klanglich oder strukturell verarbeitet werden. Die traditionelle Notenschrift wird durch grafische Notation und Symbole für erweiterte Spieltechniken ergänzt, die, ebenso wie spezielle Präparationen, im Kontext jedes Stückes erläutert werden. Auf der Grundlage von Texten unterschiedlichster Herkunft entsteht ein buntes musikalisches Mosaik, aus dem auch beliebige Einzelstücke zur Aufführung ausgewählt werden können; die Neben- und Perkussionsinstrumente sorgen hierbei für klangfarbliche Kontraste."

Stefan Drees, neue musikzeitung, November 2024

Abdruck mit freundlicher Genehmigung