Chaya Czernowin (1957) was born in the Israeli city of Haifa and has settled in the US after spending some time in Germany and Japan. Her composition tutors include Dieter Schnebel or Brian Ferneyhough. Czernowin’s music features novel timbres and combinations of instruments and often affects the listener in a notably physical way. Sometimes, it seems rough and aggressive, at other times, it may remind us of a continually shape-shifting liquid. The perception of time is also important for the composer: by various means, her compositions often accelerate the flow of time or slow it down. Instrument groups are often treated as a single polyphonic instrument. Whether a given composition includes electronics or not, the listeners can often only guess what instruments they are hearing. Besides exploring the possibilities of sound, the music of Chaya Czernowin is often politically charged, which is especially true of her two operas, Pnima… ins Innere (2000) and Adama (2005). The latter was written as a sort of response to Mozart’s opera Zaïde, marking the 250th anniversary of his birth.
Matěj Kratochvíl
