A Stockhausen recording not emanating from the composer himself (and DG) is a rare event. But rarity is of no value in itself, and what matters here is that Singcircle offer a totally convincing account of Stimmung in a superbly clear and naturally-balanced recording which is all the more notable since more than 70 minutes of music are included.
Stimmung has a reputation as the earliest and least compromising European example of fully-fledged 'minimalism', with six singers intoning just six notes on and off for more than an hour. So it will do no harm (I hope) to reaffirm that the work is a model of how to make such music interesting. This performance is particularly good at realizing the eventful rhythmic processes and subtle shifts of tone-colour within and around those six pitches which totally escape from the sort of inflated inertia afflicting so much minimal music. There's spontaneity and liveliness here which override the latent pretentiousness and absurdity of Stockhausen's characteristic inability to separate the universal from the personal. (The universal is represented by the names of Gods and Goddesses called out periodically to articulate the large form of the piece, the personal by erotic verses whose function is less fundamental but which certainly add to Stimmung's special atmosphere.)
Stimmung has been recorded before by the Cologne Collegium Vocale Ensemble on DG 2543 003 (9/71—nla), in a version quite different from this one. Hearing the music on LP keeps the listener at arm's length in a way which, with this of all Stockhausen's major works, is perhaps not entirely desirable: one needs to see the performers in order to share in the experience. But Singcircle's tour de force deserves preservation as a magnificent document of how one of the century's most testing challenges to singers can be triumphantly surmounted.'