SUBHARMONISCHE MIXTUREN

Every morning Oskar Sala, born in 1910, walks to his small studio in Charlottenburg, Berlin where he composes. Here exists the only functioning Mixturtrautonium in the whole world, securely protected by an alarm system. At the beginning of the 1930s Sala made it his task to master and develop this unique instrument.

Its a long way from being a young pianist, who is forced to watch his teacher, Paul Hindemith, being condemned and banished by the Nazis, to being a celebrated film composer for Hitchcocks "The Birds".

During the "Third Reich", the musical and at the same time handy virtuoso Sala studied the instrument in detail. He worked through long nights in the basement of the music academy improving the Trautonium, the invention of Professor Trautwein, his professor. Sala played it on radio and under the direction of Karl Böhm and Richard Strauss. He invested 10 years of his life to master the instrument.

Telefunken tried to bring a "Volkstrautonium" into the market as the first electronic instrument to be produced as a series, but war equipment production got in the way. In 1944 Sala was called to the EAST Front. By the end of the war he had suffered rather heavy injuries. At the beginning of the 50s Sala had further developed his instrument into the Mixturtrautonium. Without a keyboard but played instead with two electronic string manuals, the Mixturtrautonium was not limited to the 12 halftones of the octave or to tempered sound as is necessary with keyboard instruments.

This instrument offered continuous variability: pitch, tone colour, volume, and with maximum ease and sensitiveness. Sala began a second career as a film composer and quickly won awards and praise. The breakthrough came with the nerve-racking electronic bird twittering for Hitchcock‘s thriller "The Birds". Oskar Sala, world-famous inventor and pioneer, holder of several patents, bearer of the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Service Cross) and awarded with the "Filmband in Gold" (Golden Filmtape), is one of the most important representatives of electronic music and its most important contemporary witness.

The new CD embraces the entire life of a musician. It contains many wonderful electronic musical surprises. It begins immediately with Paul Hindemith‘s composition, "Slow Piece and Rondo", written for Sala, the first piece for Trautonium Solo composed in 1935! Sala‘s own "6 Caprices for Mixturtrautonium Solo" were specially composed for his new microelectronic Mixturtrautonium built by the Postprofessors.

They are exceptionally virtuosic electronic sound creations with difficult interpretational tasks. Then there is another piece, that the composer himself describes as "wild" and gives reasons for, as well as the soundtrack from the Edgar Wallace (?) film "The Strangler from Blackmoor Castle", filmed in 1963.
1996 Viktor Pavel, Translated by Ieva Gaidulis

Press reviews:

OSKAR SALA' S "Subharmonische Mixturen", a ground-breaking release of electronic music from a true pioneer of the medium. Born 1910 , Sala was a student of Paul Hindemith while mastering the Mixturtrautonium, an electronic instrument which offers continuous variability in pitch, tone colour, and volume. He composed the film score for Hitchcock's The Birds" and countless other films. This new CD includes various electronic surprises, virtuosic sound creations, & wild electronic offerings from Hindemith, and Sala himself. This is true ambient music! - Heartbeats