Heller, B :: Stimmungen [Moods]

Barbara Heller's 'Moods' is a set of 5 miniatures written for solo oboe that can be played on flute, treble recorder, or other wind instrument. It was composed in 2001.

As founding member and, at times, also member of the board of the Internationaler Arbeitskreis Frau und Musik e.V. (Women in Music Germany), since 1978 she has dedicated herself to the works of forgotten female composers; research work, teaching and editing take up a lot of her time. She publishes the works of Fanny Hensel and of other contemporary female composers and, as solo pianist or member of a number of chamber-music groups she herself has founded, she lends her full support to performing their music. For her own compositions (piano, chamber music and songs), collaboration with the interpreters of her works is important. She loves to experiment and to interact with other arts, she is the driving force behind projects with female artists and actresses, composes music for films, creates tape-recorded compositions, sound installations and joint compositions. Her works, which may be notated traditionally or graphically, are increasingly characterised by openness and the love of experimentation, but they always challenge the improvisational imagination and the creativity of the interpreters. More and more, Barbara Heller is seeking closeness with nature - for her synonymous with the opening into a sound cosmos that will bring her into contact with the everlasting flow of existence. She lives and works alternately in Darmstadt, in the Odenwald forest and on the island of La Gomera. Her music is infused with a great richness of style, as well as an awareness of tradition as a basis for further development and musical experiments in the widest sense of the word. She expresses her poetical understanding of music in words: in song and in the music of sonorous diction.

- Dr. Anne Stegat, 2011