Column: European concert diary: The Stockhausen effect, even without Stockhausen

When it comes to panhandlers, I am indiscriminate with my change. Late Monday night, arriving at Düsseldorf’s main train station after a concert of new music in Cologne, I handed a couple of small coins to a small, unpleasant-looking man, who spied the program in my hand and furiously blurted out “Stockhausen!”

I’m not current on German swear words, so I’m unsure exactly what he was rattling off in the torrent that followed, but it wasn’t nice. Especially peculiar was the fact that there was no mention of Karlheinz Stockhausen on the paper I was holding.

But the visionary composer, who died in 2007, was such a galvanizing force on the post-World War II Cologne scene that his name can still be used to stand for just about anything good or bad in German culture. In the ‘60s, his fame was such that the Beatles included him on the cover of “St. Pepper.”

Perhaps just seeing “Kölner Philharmonie” on the program was enough to send this particular panhandler into a Stockhausen state. Shaken and impressed, I gave him my last two-euro coin, and that only made him angrier. One can only imagine what Stockhausen may have once done to the poor man. I headed fast to the exit.

There was no Stockhausen on the program in the Cologne Philharmonie. I’m told that his music can still fill the hall. The Lucerne Festival Academy only attracted a small crowd. But Stockhauseniana never felt far away.

The ensemble, a student group groomed to play new music, was founded by Pierre Boulez, Stockhausen’s contemporary and sometime cohort. The conductor was composer Matthias Pintscher, whose conducting style (and music) is strongly influenced by Boulez and who is currently music director of Ensemble Intercontemporain, which Boulez founded in Paris.

The program began with “Tempi Concertati,” a piece from the late ‘50s by Luciano Berio, yet another contemporary and sometime cohort of Stockhausen. The evening, which also included Pincher’s “songs from Solomon’s garden” (sung by baritone Leigh Melrose) ended with Helmut Lachenmann’s Concertini. The latter is a wacky piece from 2005 by the senior German composer who maybe comes close to having Stockhausen’s allure.

It was an exciting concert, excellently played. The Lachenmann offered unexpected pleasures every moment with its whooshing, walloping sounds.

Pintscher will make his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut at a Dec. 9 Green Umbrella concert in Walt Disney Concert Hall devoted to the European avant-garde and beginning with, you guessed it, Stockhausen. It ends with Pintscher’s “Solomon.”

Given the typical Green Umbrella attendance, the odds are great that 10 times as many will show up for Pintscher as did Monday in Cologne. But what are the odds of a Stockhausen-crazed panhandler on the streets outside?