PRESS KIT ERNST VON SIEMENS MUSIC PRIZE 2017
CONTENT
PRESS RELEASES
Press release May 2017 Press release February 2017
Press release January 2017
ERNST VON SIEMENS MUSIC PRIZE 2017
Program
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD
Essay by Ulrich Mosch
In conversation with Pierre-Laurent Aimard Pierre-Laurent Aimard on his choice of works
Biography Recordings
COMPOSERS’ PRIZES 2017
Michael Pelzel
Simon Steen-Andersen
Lisa Streich
PHOTO OVERVIEW BOARD OF SUPERVISORS AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES ARCHIVE
PRESS RELEASES
Press Release May 2017
Award Ceremony: Pierre-Laurent Aimard receives the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize Composers’ Prizes to Lisa Streich, Michael Pelzel and Simon Steen-Andersen For the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation provides a total of €3.5 Million The international Ernst von Siemens Music Prize will be awarded to the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard on the 2nd June by Michael Krüger, Chairman of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s Board of Supervisors. The prize – which is endowed with €250,000 – will be awarded as part of a ceremonial concert in Munich’s Prinzregententheater, to be streamed live on the internet. Award Ceremony at 8pm on 2nd June 2017, in the Prinzregententheater, Munich The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize will be awarded to Pierre-Laurent Aimard during a ceremonial concert on Friday 2nd June 2017 in Munich’s Prinzregententheater, to be presented by Michael Krüger, President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. The laudation speech will be given by the British composer and conductor George Benjamin – a lifelong friend of Aimard’s – whose work Shadowlines will be played by the award winner during the following recital. In addition, Passio sine nomine by György Kurtág, two of György Ligeti’s Études – Entrelacs and Der Zauberlehrling –, Passacaglia canonica from Miniature Estrose by Marco Stroppa, Elliott Carter’s Caténaires as well as the piano duet Frames by Vassos Nicolaou – to be played by Aimard together with his wife, Tamara Stefanovich – will be performed. These pieces reflect the diversity of friends and colleagues Aimard has worked with during his career. Commenting on his choice of works, Aimard said, ‘My programme consists of works by composers I have worked with and with whom I have a special relationship. Each of these pieces is dedicated to me. And I premiered them, so they were especially important for me concerning my musical development. Taken together, they portray what is essential to me as performer and interpreter.’ The recipients of the Composers’ Prizes Michael Pelzel, Simon Steen-Andersen and Lisa Streich will be introduced through short films by Johannes List, which will also be available on the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s website from the evening prior to the ceremony. The Münchner Kammerorchester (MKO) will play an excerpt from pieces by Lisa Streich and Michael Pelzel under the direction of Jonathan Stockhammer. AUGENLIDER (Eyelids) by Lisa Streich, a piece for prepared guitar and orchestra, will feature the young British guitarist Laura Snowden. The CLEX, an electronically extended contrabass-clarinet played by the soloist Ernesto Molinari, will make an appearance as part of Michael Pelzel’s concerto Gravity’s Rainbow. Likewise, Run Time Error – a joystick-controlled video-performance – will give insight into the work of Simon Steen-Andersen. Cooperation between the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and the Bavarian Broadcaster BR will once again enable the live transmission of the ceremony online at www.evs-musikstiftung.ch and www.br-klassik.de. Over €3 Million for Contemporary Music Projects Worldwide For the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation provides a total of €3.5 million in the form of awards and grants. Of this, €3 million has gone to support 130 projects worldwide – from Rio de Janeiro to Rome, from Iceland to Israel, from Shiraz to Schwetzingen. The EvS Music Foundation provides assistance to the Brazilian-European project Re-inventing Smetak in Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo, the premiere of a contemporary poly-choral work in Rome, the Tzlil Meudcan (‘Updated Tone’) festival in Tel Aviv and the Shiraz Festival for Contemporary Music organised by the Association of Iranian Contemporary Music Composers. Once again, the majority of financial support has been used for the commission of new works of music, with grants likewise available for festivals, concerts, educational institutes, symposiums, publications as well as mediation projects. The recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize receives €250,000, while the winners of the Composers’ Prizes receive €35,000 each as well as the production of a CD. For interview questions and/or visual-media, please contact: Imke List and Dr. Tanja Pröbstl | +49 (0)89 636 32907 | [email protected] Current visual-media of the award ceremony can be downloaded after the event from the Press area of our homepage at www.evs-musikstiftung.ch/en/press.html
Press Release February 2017
Composers’ Prizes of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation for Michael Pelzel, Simon Steen-Andersen and Lisa Streich | Contemporary music projects supported with more than 3 million euros In 2017, the three Composers’ Prizes of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation go to the Swedish composer Lisa Streich, the Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen and the Swiss composer Michael Pelzel. Each of these awards for promising young composers is endowed with 35,000 euros. In addition, the young artists will receive portrait CDs. In 2017, for the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award over 3.5 million euros in prize money and grants. The largest share – more than 3 million euros – will go towards supporting contemporary music projects worldwide. The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, which is being awarded to the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard this year, is endowed with 250,000 euros. 3 million euros for contemporary music projects worldwide For the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award 3.5 million euros in prize money and grants. Thereof 3 million euros will go towards supporting 130 projects worldwide – from Buenos Aires to Budapest, from Iceland to Israel. For example, the EvS Music foundation is supporting the Latin American premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas’s In Vain at the famous Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Cycle Music and Arts Festival in Island, the Tzlil Meudcan (‘updated sound’ in Hebrew) in Tel Aviv, or a music theatre workshop for young composers held by the Peter Eötvös Foundation in Budapest. The largest part of the funds will finance and support commissions for new works by such composers as Rebecca Saunders, Adriana Hölszky, Iris ter Schiphorst, Salvatore Sciarrino and Aribert Reimann. The repertoire for unusual instrumentations will also be expanded with commissions, for example for electric guitar quartet by Alexander Schubert, Joanna Bailie und Christopher Trapani. The Irish composer Ann Cleare will be writing a piece for voices and trombone, commissioned by the Ekmeles Ensemble from New York. Ensemble intercomporain, whose long-standing solo pianist was none other than this year’s EvS Music Prize winner Pierre-Laurent Aimard, will commission seven composers – from Mark Andre to Marko Nikodijevic – to write pieces relating to the seven days of the creation. The EvS Music Foundation supports both festivals with long traditions, such as the Donaueschingen Festival, and smaller festivals like Gezeitenkonzerte (Tidal Concerts) 2017 in East Frisia with a composer portrait of Jan Müller-Wieland or Music Books II, which will be bringing the music of Salvatore Sciarrino to Ireland’s County Louth this year. Furthermore, the support of the EvS Music Foundation will enable such concerts as ‘Dialogues with Latin America’ by the Mexican Trio Moralia, featuring numerous world and Mexican premieres, projects for children and young people like the BigBang festival in Hamburg, conferences such as the Darmstadt Spring Conference held by the Institute for New Music and Music Education, as well as publications like the new, practically-oriented critical edition of Arthur Honegger’s Le Roi David, to name only a small selection. The next application deadline for project grants is 1 March 2017. Detailed information on all project grants and how to apply for them can be found on our homepage: www.evs-musikstiftung.ch Composers’ Prizes for Michael Pelzel, Simon Steen-Andersen and Lisa Streich As a Swiss foundation, we are happy to announce that in 2017, there will once again be a composer from Switzerland among the Composers’ Prize winners. Michael Pelzel was born in Rapperswil in 1978. He studied organ and composition in Lucerne, Basel, Stuttgart, Berlin and Karlsruhe. His composition teachers were Dieter Ammann, Detlev Müller-Siemens, Georg-Friedrich Haas, Hanspeter Kyburz and Wolfgang Rihm. Among other awards, he won the 2005 musica viva Composition Prize of Bavarian Radio in Munich, the 2011 Busoni Composition Prize and the 2016 Composition Prize of the State Capital Stuttgart. Michael Pelzel works as a freelance composer and organist, and is also the organist for the reform church in Stäfa, on Lake Zurich.
Michael Pelzel’s music exerts a powerful pull, drawing in the listener. As in Yves Klein’s famous monochrome blue, differentiation and homogeneity are interwoven in fascinating ways: he allows his ensembles to transcend their components and create an amalgamated overall sound while still retaining a depth of focus full of rich details. He also refines his sensitivity to sounds and rhythms by engaging with extra-European music: he recently travelled to southern India to devote himself to the clay pot drum ghatam and Carnatic music, with its highly unusual rhythmic concepts. He also gained decisive artistic impulses form a three-month residency in South Africa. In awarding a prize to Simon Steen-Andersen, we acknowledge the work of a composer whose music is very closely tied to the possibility of multimedia technology, yet does not lose itself therein or succumb to trends. Through recordings and projections of visual and audio material, his works reflect on themselves, creating labyrinthine nested structures – like the doll within the doll – and multiple refractions. Despite their self-reflection, Simon Steen-Andersen’s works are anything but abstract; it is precisely the visibility of the sounds and their production that carry central importance in the works of the multimedia artist. Simon Steen-Andersen, born in 1976, lives in Berlin. He studied composition with Karl Aage Rasmussen, Mathias Spahlinger, Gabriel Valverde and Bent Sorensen in Aarhus, Freiburg, Buenos Aires and Copenhagen. Since 2008 he has taught composition in the State Academy of Music, Aarhus. From 2013 he was a visiting professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, and from 2014 to 2016 a tutor at the Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music. Simon Steen-Andersen has received numerous awards and grants, most recently the Music Prize of the Northern Council and the prize of the SWR Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden and Freiburg in 2014, the Carl Nielsen Prize, and the Art Prize for Music of the Academy of Arts, Berlin in 2013. In 2016 he became a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin. Lisa Streich is the first Swede ever to receive a Composers’ Prize of the EvS Music Foundation. She grew up in northern Sweden and Schleswig-Holstein (Germany), and studied composition and organ in Berlin, Stockholm, Salzburg, Paris and Cologne with, among other teachers, Adriana Hölszky, Johannes Schöllhorn, Mauro Lanza, William Brunson, Margareta Hürholz, Ralph Gustafsson and David Smeyers. Her musical training was rounded off by master classes with Chaya Czernowin or Brian Ferneyhough. In addition to numerous scholarships and awards, such as the Busoni Young Composers’ Prize or the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Scholarship of the City of Cologne, she also received the Roche Young Commission for the 2017 Lucerne Festival. Lisa Streich lives with her husband and children on the Swedish island of Gotland, though she is currently at the Villa Massimo in Rome for a residency offered by the German government. In 2017/2018 she will be Composer in Residence with ensemble recherche in Freiburg. Lisa Streich’s work is shaped as much by deeply existential questions as by everyday matters. Even without programmatic titles, texts or commentaries, one can hear in the music that her concerns are fundamental. The buzzing of beating notes and differential tones can become almost torturous for the listener. The young Swede’s work draws its expressivity from clearly-placed materials and nuanced structures. For example, she specifies six different speeds at which string players move their bows, harpists run their hands along the strings and trombonists perform glissandi with their slides. Lisa Streich’s music has an enveloping beauty; it is both earnest and playful, forceful and pregnant, physical, cruel and tender. Portrait CDs Each Composers’ Prize is endowed with 35,ooo euros. In addition, the young artists will receive portrait CDs that will be developed in close consultation with the composers and produced with great resources. The three discs, which will once again by recorded by outstanding soloists, major orchestras and renowned contemporary music ensembles, will be released in the winter of 2017. Award Ceremony on 2 June 2017 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich The Ernst von Siemens Composers’ Prizes will be awarded to the three composers by Thomas Angyan, chairman of the advisory board and artistic director of the Vienna Society of Music Friends, during a musical ceremony at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. Each prizewinner will be introduced with a short film portrait. The Munich Chamber Orchestra will play excerpts from Lisa Streich’s piece AUGENLIDER as well as the second movement from Michael Pelzel’s Gravity’s Rainbow, a concerto for contrabass clarinet (CLEX) and chamber orchestra, with Ernesto Molinari as the soloist. In addition, the programme will also feature Simon Steen-Andersen’s video installation/performance Run Time Error. The 2017 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, endowed with 250,000 euros, will be presented to Pierre-Laurent Aimard by Michael Krüger, president of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. The prizewinner himself will interpret works by Ligeti, Boulez and Kurtág.
Detailed information and visual material: www.evs-musikstiftung.ch/de/presse
Imke Annika List | +49 / (0)89 / 6 36 3 29 07 | [email protected]
Press Release January 2017
2017 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for Pierre-Laurent Aimard For the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award a total of 3.5 million euros
The 2017 International Ernst von Siemens Music Prize goes to the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. This award, for a life devoted to the service of music, is endowed with 250,000 euros. The prize ceremony will take place on 2 June 2017 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. For the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will be awarding a total of 3.5 million euros in prizes and grants – sponsoring up to 130 projects worldwide. Pierre-Laurent Aimard is a shining light and an international key figure in contemporary musical life. The advisory board of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation is honouring the pianist, born in Lyon in 1957, for a life’s work literally in the service of music: ‘For me, reflecting – or rather interpreting – means serving both the music of yesterday and that of today.’ Unique in the intensity of his readings of the piano literature of all periods, Aimard’s position in the musical present is like no other: he was both a performer and a companion of numerous great figures in New Music, such as Pierre Boulez, Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Kurtág or György Ligeti – all recipients of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. The number of works he has premiered by Elliott Carter, George Benjamin, Harrison Birtwistle and Marco Stroppa, extending to the music of Tristan Murail and the pieces dedicated to him, give some idea of his enormous significance for the music of recent times. Ligeti even considered him ‘the best pianist’, someone who knew his music better than the composer himself. Aimard’s teachers were all full of passion for New Music. His childhood teacher, Geneviève Lièvre, was already an enthusiastic devotee of the Darmstadt Summer Course, especially Boulez, and he went on to study in Paris with Yvonne Loriod, Olivier Messiaen’s wife, and then Marcia Curcio. When he was 19, Pierre Boulez made him principal pianist of the newly-founded Ensemble intercontemporain. With its manifold tasks, the ensemble provided him with the ideal setting to intensify the interest in contemporary music that had grown inside him at an early age. Having matured as an artist, he left the ensemble in 1995 to pursue a solo career and projects of his own. Bit by bit, he devoted increasing attention to the canonic piano repertoire from previous centuries, extending back to Bach’s music for keyboard instruments. But contemporary music always remained the central element in his repertoire. Aimard is multi-faceted not only in his interpretations, which are characterized by great technical clarity. He sees himself as a musician who plays the piano – as a soloist, chamber musician or song accompanist: ‘I love teaching and working as an artistic director. Sometimes I also conduct. I find it organic not to be trapped within one specialization.’ Outreach work is also very close to Aimard’s heart. With ambitious projects like ‘Explore the Score’, as part of the Ruhr Piano Festival, he involves himself in expanding musical outreach projects all over the world:
‘We musicians should be ambassadors for what we call “classical music” so that we can pass on a rich legacy to a new audience and younger generations. Music outreach can start with any kind of music – with Mozart, Stravinsky, Lachenmann or any music on this planet. If the outreach is done well, any music can be meaningful and become familiar to anyone, especially young people.’ In Aimard, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation is honouring a pianist of light and colour who brings clarity and life to everything he plays. His unusual path from the music of the present to that of the past, his boundless joy of discovery and the meticulousness with which he devotes himself to composers ranging from Bach via Debussy to George Benjamin, make him one of the exceptional musicians of our time. Prize Ceremony on 2 June 2017 at the Prinzregententheater in Munich The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize will be awarded to Pierre-Laurent Aimard on 2 June 2017 during a musical ceremony at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. Michael Krüger, President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, will present this illustrious accolade. In addition, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award Composers’ Prizes to three promising young composers who will be named in late February. Alongside solo pieces performed by the prizewinner himself, the Munich Chamber Orchestra will play works by the Composers’ Prize winners. For the first time, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will award 3.5 million euros In total, the foundation will award over 3.5 million euros in prize money and grants. In 2017, roughly 130 projects are being sponsored worldwide in the field of contemporary music. The largest share of the support will once again go towards commissioning new compositions, but there will also be funding for festivals, concerts, publications as well as education projects. 250,000 Euros are allotted for the main prize and 35,000 for each of the Composers’ Prizes, along with the production of a portrait CD. räsonanz – Stifterkonzerte Together with its partners, the LUCERNE FESTIVAL and Bavarian Radio’s music viva, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will continue its initiative of ‘donor concerts’. The Munich räsonanz concert will take place on 1 April 2017 at the Prinzregententheater. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the musicAeterna Choir, conducted by Teodor Currentzis, will perform works by Vivier, Berio and Xenakis. On 8 April 2017, as part of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL’s Easter festival, Mariss Jansons will direct the Symphony Orchestra and Choir of Bavarian Radio in the Swiss premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Requiem-Strophen, featuring Anna Prohaska, Mojca Erdmann and Hanno Müller-Brachmann as the soloists. Note The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (EvS Music Prize) has been awarded annually since 1973 by the private Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, based in Switzerland. It is not awarded by the Siemens company or the associated Siemens Foundation. It is therefore very important to ensure that the names of the foundation and the prize are reproduced correctly. Contact and visual material: Imke Annika List | +49/(0)89/636-32907 | [email protected]
ERNST VON SIEMENS MUSIC PRIZE 2017
PROGRAM Word of Welcome Michael Krüger Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Composers’ Prizes Lisa Streich Extract from AUGENLIDER (2015) | Premiere For prepared guitar and orchestra Laura Snowden, guitar | Münchener Kammerorchester | Jonathan Stockhammer, conductor Portrait Film Michael Pelzel Portrait Film Extract from Gravity’s Rainbow (2016) for CLEX (contrabass clarinet extended) and orchestra Ernesto Molinari, CLEX | Münchener Kammerorchester | Jonathan Stockhammer, conductor Award Presentation Thomas von Angyan Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Simon Steen Andersen Portrait Film Run Time Error @ Opel feat. Ensemble Modern (2015) for joystick-controlled video Simon Steen-Andersen, joysticks
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize Laudatory Speech George Benjamin, composer and conductor Presentation of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize to Pierre-Laurent Aimard Michael Krüger Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich Vassos Nicolaou Frames for piano four hands (2017) Pierre-Laurent Aimard [quasi attacca] George Benjamin Shadowlines – six canonic preludes for piano – IV, V (2001) György Kurtág Passio sine nomine (2015) György Ligeti Étude XII Entrelacs (1993), Étude X Der Zauberlehrling (1994) Marco Stroppa Passacaglia canonica from Miniature Estrose (1991) Elliott Carter Caténaires for piano (2006)
Portrait Films by Johannes List
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD
ESSAY
Serving Music – Pierre-Laurent Aimard
by Ulrich Mosch
translated by Wieland Hoban
When the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard was taken up into the circle of musicians in the
newly-formed Ensemble intercontemporain by Pierre Boulez in 1976, no one could foresee that
he would carve out the extraordinary career which has meanwhile taken him to all the major
concert stages and important festivals in the world, as a soloist and a chamber musician with a
wide-ranging repertoire. Over the course of 18 years, Aimard, as a member of what quickly
became one of the reference ensembles for music from recent decades and the present day,
was involved in numerous world premieres, concerts and recordings featuring 20th-century
music, often with solo performances. With its wide range of challenges, the ensemble provided
the ideal framework to satisfy the interest in contemporary music that had awakened early on,
and grown during his musical training. Nonetheless, having matured as an artist in this field, he
took the risk of leaving the ensemble in 1995 to pursue a solo career and projects of his own.
Since then, in addition to contemporary music, his repertoire has gradually expanded to include
Classical and Romantic works, even extending back to Bach’s music for keyboard instruments.
The course of Aimard’s career – his studies with Yvonne Loriod and the years with Ensemble
intercontemporain – is the origin of various attributes that characterize his stance as a performer.
The first of these is his treatment of recent and current music as something completely natural
that – for all the different and novel qualities that led to the name ‘New Music’ – is by no means
separated from that of the past by any rejection or rupture. Another aspect is a musician’s ethos
that applies the same standards to every musical performance, whether of works by George
Benjamin, Marco Stroppa, Elliott Carter, Charles Ives, Claude Debussy, Robert Schumann or J. S.
Bach – and that means the very highest standards. This is the stance that defines the work of
Ensemble intercontemporain and was one of the motives for founding it: to finally enable
performances that truly did justice to the works of the present day. Finally, he displays an
approach to interpretation that – once again, regardless of the specific type of music – focuses
entirely on getting to the heart of every score, intellectually and emotionally, in terms of its
pianistic presentation as well as questions of form, structure and sound.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard embodies a type of performer for whom there is only music, not disparate
musics, which is an absolute exception in times of increasing specialization and fragmentation in
musical life. From this perspective, Bach’s Art of Fugue is music in the same sense as Elliott
Carter’s Night Fantasies, and Schubert’s G major sonata D 894 is no different in its status from
Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke, Pierre Boulez’s Third Sonata or George
Benjamin’s Shadowlines. Asked by Cyrill Stoletzky in 2012 whether his work as a contemporary
music performer gave him a ‘different’ perspective on traditional repertoire, Aimard replied: ‘For
me, reflecting – or rather interpreting – means serving both the music of yesterday and that of
today’. Thus every music ultimately demands the same stance of the performer. Serving music
includes, for example, searching for each work’s specific sound. But it can never simply be a
matter of perfection; rather, Aimard states, the sound must adapt to a particular style, to a
work: ‘For example, very clear and articulated in Bach, songlike and intimate in Schubert,
colourful in Debussy, explosive in Boulez. If the instrument, its tuning, the pianist’s playing and
the acoustic all converge and match up, there is a chance of approaching one’s ideal.’
In cases where a sense of the music’s sound world and form of pianistic presentation first have
to be found, however, where – as one finds especially often with the most recent music – there
is not yet a tradition of sonic realization, he seeks collaboration with the composer, a habit that
has remained with him to this day from his time in Ensemble intercontemporain. This, he argues,
gives him a better understanding of what to emphasize in his interpretation. In this context,
there are two composers who took on a special significance for Aimard: firstly Olivier Messiaen,
with whom he had been in close contact since studying with Yvonne Loriod (Messiaen’s wife),
and for whose music he is currently considered one of the foremost performers; and secondly
György Ligeti, who was greatly taken with Aimard’s pianistic skills. In a conversation with the
chief music critic at the New York Times, Anthony Tommasini, Ligeti once said about the pianist:
‘I was impressed by his good technique, the extremely high level of his artistry and our mutual
understanding. I decided he would be the best pianist for me, and I heard him give lectures and
courses on my music which prove that he knows it better than I do.’
If one attempts to characterize Aimard’s pianistic approach to works, one category in particular
comes to mind: that of gesture. Building on stupendous virtuosity, his playing puts the gestural
squarely in the foreground. It is this musical gesture that turns a mere succession of sounds into
a directly graspable unit, and this is surely one aspect of what Ligeti emphasized about Aimard’s
artistry in the interview with Tommasini: on the one hand, he has an extraordinary ability to
depict music, in terms of events taking place simultaneously, as a form of layered space. On the
other hand, he is able to place an entire piece before our ears, as if showing us an object whose
end – that is, where it is going – already seems present at the beginning, and whose start we
still sense in its last moments. In both cases, the individual element is conceptually embedded in
a whole and becomes directly appreciable in the role which it plays therein.
Some examples would be Aimard’s interpretation of the eleventh piece from Vingt regards sur
l’enfant Jésus (1942-43) by Olivier Messiaen, entitled ‘Première communion de la Vierge’. Here
the listener is given the impression not of a process, but rather of walking along a sounding
architecture with their ears. Thus, at the very beginning, we hear the extremely contrasting
spheres of the chordal ‘theme of the God’ in the left hand, the whirling right-hand figures in the
top register, and the series of eighth-notes following on from the theme’s final chord in the
register between them, as clearly differentiated levels. The form of the whole, quite
appropriately considering the title of the cycle, transpires as a succession of ‘views’. Or: György
Ligeti’s Entrelacs, the twelfth piece from the second book of etudes (1988-94). Aimard – the
piece’s dedicatee – succeeds here in making the gradually-unfolding multiplicity of rhythmic
layers audible with staggering clarity, like the strata of a geological formation.
The second horizon, namely his stupendous virtuosity and, perhaps even more significantly, his
power to shape musical works, have also made Pierre-Laurent Aimard a sought-after teacher
who enjoys passing on his skills and knowledge at the Conservatoire national supérieur de
musique in Paris as well as the Cologne Academy of Music, not to mention numerous master
classes. This is also what drives his enthusiasm for, and commitment to Explore the Score, the
interactive internet project by the Ruhr Piano Festival, which allows one to experience him
performing and commenting on Ligeti’s piano etudes.
Aimard’s all-encompassing perspective on music, in which a recent work is as self-evidently
natural as the music of past centuries, also reveals itself in his programming, whether as artistic
director of the Aldeburgh Festival (2009-16) or in his own solo concerts. Not infrequently, they
confront works historically far apart with each other, creating a dialogue in which each lets the
other speak.
IN CONVERSATION WITH PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD
On Order and Freedom in Music
Pierre-Laurent Aimard in Conversation with the Music Journalist Eckhard Roelcke
Eckhard Roelcke: In addition to contemporary music, you’ve occupied yourself intensely with
music from the 18th and 19th centuries, including compositions by Bach, Beethoven and
Debussy. What idea is at the heart of this wide-ranging repertoire?
Pierre-Laurent Aimard: To gain a better understanding of our world, we need to know our
strong roots in the past and build on them. That’s why I didn’t want to play contemporary music
exclusively. One can be far more convincing if one doesn’t stay within a niche. The music
business wants that niche, it wants a clear profile for a product. The customer isn’t supposed to
think too much, they’re meant to buy a title, a face, an image. It’s difficult to fight against this
tendency at the same time as asserting a position in society where people see and listen to you.
So, to return to music and to your question, that’s why this repertoire, from Sweelinck to
younger composers, is so important to me. We’re not a supermarket for New Music, we
shouldn’t sell everything. We need to choose and have a profile. That’s exactly how I’ve
conceived my artistic life. But it doesn’t mean we’re narrow-minded. We have to be open!
So, as an artist, you also reflect on social developments.
We live in an age of specialists. I think that’s dangerous, because specialism often leads to a lack
of communication. One sees the dangers everywhere in the sciences, for example in medicine.
Knowing and doing are separated from each other far too much. When I was young, I thought I
had to fight the overly sluggish world with New Music, fight against its habits and routines. But
there’s a danger that one can easily seek protection in habits and routines oneself. The
structured world can lead directly to the very academicism one sought to oppose. We have to
stay alert with our critical judgement! When I see the world, how it’s changing, I think that
future battles for a better world will be hard.
You’re a performer and a teacher. What meaning does teaching have for you?
As there are composers from different generations, there have to be performers from different
generations too. That’s why we musicians should definitely also teach. We have to pass on our
repertoire and tell others about our experiences with the composers! I think it’s wrong for
performers to regard a piece as their property simply because a composer wrote it for them. The
pieces must circulate, they must live. For example, I’m happy that many young pianists today are
playing the piano music of Ligeti. Teaching is also important because it gives us teachers the
chance to regenerate ourselves – when we work together with younger musicians, who live so
differently from us in this new world. Culture, communication and concentration are in a state
of change, so we also have to change constantly. What happens in show business is exactly the
opposite: works are simply objects for sale. And performers are just players. If one wants to fight
against this world and the politics that supports this development, one has to stay in constant
contact with the young generation.
How do you proceed when you have the score of a new work that you’ll be premiering in your
hands for the first time? Do you sit down at the piano and start playing? Do you go to your desk
and start reading – maybe with pencil in hand?
There isn’t any rule. It depends on the circumstances, for example, whether there happens to be
an instrument nearby. And naturally the type of work. With some scores I want to have a sonic
presence immediately. With a very long piece, I start by getting an overview by reading;
immediate contact with an instrument wouldn’t be the solution. So this question comes up
anew each time.
Reading a novel sentence by sentence and understanding it isn’t the same thing as reading a
score bar by bar and understanding it. How does reading music like this work?
In a text too, one only discovers the various layers, the construction, the depth and variety bit by
bit. We musicians also read the notation, hear it and understand it up to a certain point. If a few
of the sounds or the whole musical language are completely new, one needs more time. That’s
comparable to learning a new language. As I deal with notes every day, it’s always easier for me
to read music than a book. That’s why I became a musician and stayed one.
Is your work when reading and understanding a score comparable to the work of a translator
taking a novel from one language into another?
I don’t think so. The composer notated what they want to hear. They gave it a fixed graphic
form, and we performers have to find a way of breathing life into the work, in sound and time,
in the way they had in mind. That’s not really a translation. It’s comparable to an actor speaking
a text. A bad actor only says the words, just as a bad musician only plays the notes. But we have
to grasp and present their meaning.
Can you learn things about the piece when you see how the composer notated their thoughts?
Naturally, especially with handwritten scores. With Chopin one notes the flow of the phrasing;
with Beethoven one sees his struggle while composing and the way the ideas fight amongst
themselves; with Debussy, the elegance in the note choices and their groupings; with Boulez,
the way he focuses on each individual note. The scores ‘breathe’ and provide wonderful
information! That’s why I play from manuscripts as often as possible, even though they’re not
always as clear as printed scores. With composers who work directly at the computer, this
dimension, the order and sometimes also the chaos of the score, is lost.
Is ‘order’ a central concept for understanding music? A composer creates a musical order, and
the performer has to recognize it and make it audible?
What’s central are the structures and the basic physical rules governing how sounds and
relationships between sounds work. A composer can work against these rules with their own
rules. They can also accept or expand them. Working creatively therefore means structuring
rules and creating an order with them.
Does that also mean there can be no freedom without order?
I find this dichtomoy – either order or freedom – problematic. Freedom only comes about after
reaching a certain level of order. When is one completely free in a language? One can only
express oneself richly once one knows the rules very well, either consciously or unconsciously.
Someone who doesn’t know the rules well remains trapped. How can Mozart sound so natural
and free? So human, as people say? Because he composed with incomparable perfection! He
knew the rules like no other. The greatest freedom and the strongest expressive possibilities
come about at a very high level of rules. But they can only be reached if the rules are recognized
as possibilities rather than a limitation. When there’s mastery, one forgets the rules. It doesn’t
matter if it’s a lawyer or a politician: anyone who understands rules not as a constraint but as an
opportunity for areas of freedom can make good decisions. That also applies to art. Order and
freedom: there’s no contradiction there. They make a very good couple!
So how does freedom come about in interpretation?
It comes about at the end of interpretation. It could be a gesture, a sound or a phrase. It’s like a
craftsman who’s performed the same actions a thousand times, then at some point forgets the
effort – and becomes free. So the performer’s freedom is based on craftsmanship, but also
imagination and a joy in experimenting. What’s important is the right dosage. One has to decide
which dimension one wants to highlight and which should be kept discreetly in the background.
Scientists seek to prove or disprove theories through experiments. What do you want to achieve
as a musician when you experiment with sounds?
The question is always which sound fits, which one is suitable. If I play a piece by Bach or
Lachenmann, I obviously have to find the appropriate sounds. They’re not lying in a cabinet
waiting for me to take them. I have to experiment until I find the appropriate sound. Only then
does the music become meaningful and alive.
So experimenting means trying things out?
The composer, not the performer, is the creator. The performer’s role is far more modest than
most people think. Our society wants to give performers a role they don’t have. That’s why the
results are often embarrassing. When is a performance of a Bach passion or a large work by
Lachenmann successful? When the piece sounds in all its richness and variety! In the phrasings,
the harmonies, the vertical blocks, with a meaningful treatment of time. One has to observe the
phenomenon of a piece down to its roots and understand how all these elements are connected.
Sadly, one hears such performances so rarely! Let’s take Helmut Lachenmann as an example, it
could just as easily be some other contemporary composer. He crafted a new sound world. Now
we, the performers, have the task of shaping his music so that it sounds the way he imagined it.
That’s not easy. Often the composer has to fight with the performer before they get what they
want. How rarely one reaches that point as a performer. You can tell when you speak to the
composer. Some of them are direct and rude: ‘Please don’t play my piece! It doesn’t sound the
way I hear it and understand it.’ Often composers only accept the performers because they have
the power in society. Some performers say quite openly, ‘I only play music by dead composers,
because then I get left in peace.’ If Beethoven were alive today, he’d often get annoyed with his
performers.
Works can also have dimensions that the composer deliberately avoided creating. If a performer
discovers such a quality, should they refrain from presenting it because it doesn’t correspond to
the composer’s will?
Certainly an extremely complex structure will contain parts or layers that a performer can
present in a different light. But the identity of the whole, in all its richness and complexity, will
remain.
So if I understand you correctly, the work has a single artistically truthful form, if you will, and
the only ‘leeway’ for interpretation is in the details?
Often the composers don’t allow any freedom in the precisely-crafted details either. But there
are still different interpretations of the same work. You can take different routes to climb Mount
Everest or Mont Blanc, but in the end it’s always the same mountain, and you either make it to
the top or you don’t. It’s rare for someone to reach the summit. One’s freedom often becomes
immense when you have a good understanding of the style and the rules. It’s like that in every
profession: someone who knows the complex rules very well and has a lot of experience will
also have a lot of room for decisions. That means freedom, if you want to use the term in this
context. If a musician plays Beethoven today with the attitude ‘let’s be cool, let’s be free!’,
they’re supposedly playing Beethoven completely freely. But what is that? Infantilism! Or
someone plays Bach post-Romantically and allegedly freely. To me that has nothing to do with
the work.
Let’s talk about the beginnings of your life as a musician. Why did you become a pianist? Why
did you choose the piano?
A great-uncle of mine had a collection of instruments. He lived in Savoy, which historically
belonged alternately to Italy and France. Because of this tradition, my great-uncle had a
collection of ‘southern’ instruments – mandolins, guitars, wind instruments. He also directed an
amateur mandolin orchestra. I tried to play on all of them as a five-year-old, and also on an
upright piano in the collection. I immediately felt, ‘That’s a great instrument, I want to learn it!’
This passion guided me. As a pianist, I’m independent. I can decide for myself whether to stay
alone or make music with others. And, very importantly, I can play all music on the instrument.
We pianists have a phenomenal repertoire! I stayed with the piano for all these reasons. I
wanted to have as interesting a life as possible, which meant avoiding instruments that would
limit me too much in my possibilities. I also studied singing, flute and conducting, as it happens,
but those were just satellites and things that enriched my musical life.
Our society is changing at a great speed, but it takes amazingly long for new things to establish
themselves. Even productive developments that are vital to humanity, such as the transition to
renewable energy in order to reduce global warming. In music it’s also hard for new things to
establish themselves. Why is there such resistance?
You should speak to a neuroscientist (laughs). Changing a mentality takes the longest. Obviously
there are people who progress more quickly. They have to help move the world forwards more
quickly. But unfortunately we have to observe the Galileo phenomenon on a daily basis; the
view of the world stays the same. Why do many musicians even believe that music history ended
with Rachmaninov? This attitude becomes dangerous in politics, in military thinking and ecology.
Things are going on there that keep us awake at night. Collective suicide is on the horizon.
One has to inform people. Is it also part of your task as a performer to explain music?
It’s part of my role. I don’t have to sell the same piano concerto all over the world two hundred
times a year. Listeners want to communicate with me. They’re curious, and they don’t simply
want to follow the typical consumerist models that manipulate us. Just think what happens to
food nowadays. It’s a disaster what people eat in our society.
Because it’s unhealthy.
Incredibly unhealthy. That food makes many people ill. It’s also bad for the brain. The big
industries manipulate people. Musical consumerism also manipulates us.
What can we do about it?
We have to develop a personal resistance and simply refuse to accept this development. More
and more people want to live more healthy lives, not just physically in what they eat, but also
mentally. We musicians can’t reach the majority. But we work in an awareness that we’ll always
find people who are interested in our work. They won’t necessarily love it, but they’ll engage
with it.
You sound fairly confident.
I can’t say if there’s good reason to hope for improvement. It’s now completely clear that after a
certain point, humanity won’t survive without a functioning environment. Nonetheless, a great
many people are going totally in the wrong direction.
Out of ignorance? Out of stupidity?
It is a bit stupid. Yes, one could say that.
In 2007 you said in an interview with the Berlin Tagesspiegel that if nothing changed, classical
music would be dead in twenty years. Ten years have passed since then. Has anything changed?
A great deal! Many music education programmes have been installed all over the world, and are
beginning to show results. Or the many new concert halls: they create a permanent artistic
event in a city and foster a new audience and a new enthusiasm for classical music. That’s
fantastic! And this is also in countries that are still suffering from the economic crisis. Despite
enormous political difficulties, fabulous concert halls have been built. This collective desire gives
us hope. Fifteen or twenty years ago there was also a lack of new talent. Suddenly there are lots
of incredibly talented, independent, young conductors with ambitious projects. They have
artistic and social visions. They give us hope.
Is that a call for more education and more artistic experience?
I’m very worried about the political situation in the world. In the USA, it’s possible that the tax
system could be changed and all public money for the arts simply cut, just like that. All culture
on the entire continent could be forced to its knees! That gives me nightmares. But that’s
nothing compared to what’s happening ecologically, with human rights, with the foundations
of our civilization. I often hear that such times are good for the arts. I don’t want us to pay such
a high price for good art.
The interview was carried out by the music journalist Eckhard Roelcke in Berlin, April 2017.
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD ON HIS CHOICE OF WORKS
“My programme consists of works by composers I have worked with and with whom I have a
special relationship. Each of these pieces is dedicated to me. And I premiered them, so they were
especially important for me concerning my musical development. Taken together, they portray
what is essential to me as performer and interpreter“
Vassos Nicolaou (1971)
Frames for piano four hands (2017)
“Vassos’ piece represents my current work as performer: it is the most recent piece I have
premiered. It was commissioned by the Ruhr Piano Festival: Nicolaou and the Festival gave us this
work as a wedding gift. The compositions of Vassos Nicolaou are complex and of the highest
quality. He writes in a very personal way, with dedication and without making any compromises.“
George Benjamin (1960)
Shadowlines – six canonic preludes for piano IV, V (2001)
“George and I have been friends since our student days at the Paris Conservatoire. He was
working on his large orchestral piece Palimpsets and reached a point where he couldn’t continue.
He called me on the phone and said, ‘You’ll be getting a surprise’. A day later the piece came in
the mail. It was born during a blocked creative compositional process and at the same time
resolved it. In that phase of his work he expanded his style by an extremely polyphonic dimension,
combined with the charming sound that was always characteristic of George’s music. The piece is
a mutual penetration of two opposed, almost contradictory musical forms: prélude and canon.“
György Kurtág (1926)
Passio sine nomine (2015)
“When I first met Kurtág in his Budapest apartment – it must have been in the winter of 1978 – it
was difficult to start a conversation, so he invited me to play piano music for four hands. We also
played some of his works at sight. From this moment on, I immersed myself in his passionate
world of dreams, which turned out to play a very important part in my musical life. In 2015 he
called me to tell me that he wanted to entrust his latest piece Passio sine nomine to me. It was
written when his wife Marta was severely ill. One night, the doctors thought she would die.
György was with her. Luckily the doctors’ prediction turned out to be wrong, and she survived.
Marta asked her husband to express this moment in music. This desperate piece lasts two minutes,
and he says more in that time than most composers do in half an hour. It expresses the
unspeakable, or rather that which cannot even be shouted out, making this miniature
unbearable.“
György Ligeti (1923–2006)
Étude XII Entrelacs (1993), Étude X Der Zauberlehrling (1994)
“The title of Entrelacs only works in French; one can’t really translate it – which is precisely why
Ligeti chose it. It refers to voices which are entwined, interwoven. The polyrhythm is very clear at
the beginning but in the course of the piece it is burdened in a way that makes it imperceptible.
This procedure is characteristic for Ligeti’s work – he is a master of transgression. This also
becomes clear in ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’. Ligeti wrote it in such a way that it looks unplayable,
even though it is entirely playable. It was also his aim for all the etudes to be very challenging for
the performer. He literally wanted to place them in danger, he wanted to make their efforts part
of the performance“
Marco Stroppa (1959)
Passacaglia canonica (1991) from Miniature Estrose (1991–2001)
“After having played and recorded Stroppa’s fantastic piece Traiettoria for piano and electronics, I
was so enthusiastic about his sonic creativity that, together with the Festival d’Automne in Paris,
gave him a commission for a work for piano solo and to create something entirely new regarding
writing for piano. He created the Passacaglia canonica, the first piece of the one hour cycle
Miniature Estrose. At the climax of this Passacaglia canonica he layers different timbres. Each
timbre is extremely finely crafted, which results in a highly complex polychromatic effect, a real
polyphony of colours and gestures. The dedication shows that I had an indirect influence on the
piece’s composition: ‘à Pierre-Laurent pour que les parfums, les sons et les couleurs se répondent’.
This is an allusion to Debussy’s prelude ‘Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir’, which
in turn refers to Baudelaire. So Stroppa continues a French tradition: the resonance of words in
Baudelaire and the mingling of different senses – sight, hearing and smell – in Debussy.”
Elliott Carter (1908–2012)
Caténaires for piano (2006)
„I first met Carter in the late 70s and worked with him until his death in 2012, especially
intensively during the last phase of his work after the year 2000. He composed Caténaires in 2006,
when the almost one hundred-year-old man composed work after work. One feels the energy
and the exuberant vivacity of the piece, about which he once said: ‘I had to write this piece. I
couldn’t get rid of it. Every day in my bed I felt the need to wake up for composing it. It ate me.’
What’s amazing is that Carter, who is known for his extremely polyphonic music, wrote a toccata
– whose compositional principle is precisely not polyphonic. This work is of physical as well as
fundamental virtuosity.“
BIOGRAPHY
Widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time and as a uniquely significant interpreter
of piano repertoire from every age, Pierre-Laurent Aimard enjoys an internationally celebrated
career.
He has performed throughout the world each season with major orchestras under conductors
including Pierre Boulez, Nikolaous Harnoncourt, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Peter Eötvös and Sir Simon
Rattle. He has been invited to curate, direct and perform in a number of residencies, with projects
at Carnegie Hall, New York‘s Lincoln Center, Vienna‘s Konzerthaus, Berlin‘s Philharmonie,
Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, the Lucerne Festival, Mozarteum Salzburg, Cité de la Musique in Paris, the
Tanglewood Festival and London‘s Southbank Centre. Aimard was the Artistic Director of the
Aldeburgh Festival from 2009 to 2016. This season sees Pierre-Laurent’s development of
innovative programme of concerts for Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and he joins Esa-Pekka
Salonen for a series of concerts, entitled Inspirations.
Born in Lyon in 1957, Pierre-Laurent Aimard studied with Genevieve Lièvre before studying at the
Paris Conservatoire with Yvonne Loriod and in London with Maria Curcio. Early career landmarks
included winning first prize in the 1973 Messiaen Competition at the age of 16 and being
appointed, at the age of 19, by Pierre Boulez to become the Ensemble intercontemporain‘s first
solo pianist.
Aimard has had close collaborations with many leading composers including Boulez, Kurtág,
Stockhausen, Carter, Lachenmann, George Benjamin and Marco Stroppa and had a long
association with Ligeti, recording his complete works for piano. Most recently he performed the
world premiere of piano works by Kurtág at a celebration of the composer’s 90th birthday.
Recent seasons have included the world premieres of Harrison Birtwistle’s piano concerto
Responses: Sweet disorder and the carefully careless, as well as Carter’s last piece Epigrams for
piano, cello and violin, which was written for Pierre-Laurent. Through his professorship at the
Hochschule Köln as well as numerous series of concert lectures and workshops worldwide, he
sheds an inspiring and very personal light on music of all periods.
During the 2008/09 season Aimard was an Associate Professor at the College de France, Paris and
he is a member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste. He was also a fellow at the
Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin in 2013 / 2014.He was the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic
Society’s Instrumentalist Award in spring 2005 and was named ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ by
Musical America in 2007. In 2015 he launched a major online resource centred on the
performance and teaching of Ligeti’s piano music with filmed masterclasses and performances of
the Études and other works by Ligeti in collaboration with Klavier-Festival Ruhr.
(www.explorethescore.org)
Pierre-Laurent has made many highly successful recordings. His first Deutsche Grammophon
release, Bach‘s Art of Fugue, received both the Diapason d‘Or and Choc du Monde de la Musique
awards, debuted at No.1 on Billboard‘s classical chart and topped iTunes’ classical album
download chart. In recent years Pierre-Laurent has been honoured with ECHO Klassik Awards,
most recently in 2009 for his recording of solo piano pieces, Hommage à Messiaen, a Grammy
award in 2005 for his recording of Ives’ Concord Sonata and Songs and he was also presented
with Germany’s Schallplattenkritik Honorary Prize in 2009. Further releases for DG – The Liszt
Project in 2011 and Debussy Préludes in 2012 – were joined by a new recording of Bach’s Das
wohltemperierte Klavier Book 1 in 2014.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard – Recordings
2015 Helmut Lachenmann Ausklang, Musik für Orchester und Klavier With Jonathan Nott, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
2014 Johann Sebastian Bach The Well-Tempered Clavier Book I
2012 Claude Debussy Préludes Book 1 & 2
2011 The Liszt Project Works by Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, Alban Berg, Maurice Ravel u.a.
2010 Maurice Ravel The Piano Concerts / Miroirs With Pierre Boulez, Cleveland Orchestra
2009 Note By Note The Making of Steinway L1037
2009 Traiettoria Spirali Marco Stroppa
2009 Bartók Concertos With Pierre Boulez, Tamara Stefanovich, London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker
2009 Mendelssohn: Works for cello and piano With Valérie Aimard
2009 Not Just One Truth J.S. Bach, L.v. Beethoven, Elliott Carter, George Benjamin
2008 Elliott Carter Caténaires (from: Two Thoughts for Piano)
2008 Hommage à Messiaen: 8 Préludes Olivier Messiaen
2008 Johann Sebastian Bach The Art of Fugue
2007 Eötvös, Zimmermann, Smolka With Peter Eötvös, Chor und Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
2006 Schumann Live at the Wiener Konzerthaus Carnaval / Études Symphoniques
2006 Boulez: Mémoriale/ Piano Sonata No. 1/ Dérive etc. With Pierre Boulez, BBC Singers, Ensemble intercontemporain, Sophie Cherrier
2005 Mozart: Piano concertos 6, 15, 27 With Chamber Orchestra of Europe
2005 Maurice Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit Elliott Cater: Night Fantasies, Two Diverisions, 90+
2005 Boulez: ….explosante-fixe…. With Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez, Florent Boffard
2004 Shadowlines, Viola, Viola, Three Studies, Piano Sonata George Benjamin
2004 Dvořák: Piano Concerto; The Golden Spinning Wheel With Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
2004 Beethoven: Triple Concerto; Rondo in B flat; Choral Fantasy With Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Chamber Orchestra of Europe
2004 Ives: Concord Sonata, Song With Susan Graham
2003 Beethoven: Piano Concertos No. 1–5 With Nikolaus Hanoncourt, Chamber Orchestra of Europe
2003 Claude Debussy Images / Études
2003 African Rhythms György Ligeti, Steve Reich, African Traditional
2002 Pierre-Laurent Aimard at Carnegie Hall Alban Berg, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt u.a.
2001 Messiaen: Turangalila Symphony With Kent Nagano, Berliner Philharmoniker, Dominique Kim
2001 The Ligeti Project I With Schönberg Ensemble, ASKO Ensemble, Peter Masseurs
2000 Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus Olivier Messiaen
1998 György Ligeti Edition 7: Chamber Music With London Winds, Saschko Gawriloff, Marie-Luise Neunecker
1997 György Ligeti Edition 3: Works for Piano (Etudes, Musica Ricercata)
1997 György Ligeti Edition 4: Vocal Works (Madrigals, Mysteries, Aventures, Songs) With Rosemary Hardy, Christiane Oelze and The Kings’s Singers
1997 György Ligeti Edition 6: Keyboard Works With Elisabeth Chojnacka, Zsigmond szathmáry, Irina Kataeva
1997 Olivier Messiaen : Poèmes pour Mi, Sept Haikai, etc. With Pierre Boulez, Cleveland Orchestra, Joela Jones
1996 Helmut Lachenmann: Wiegenmusik / Pression / Dal Niente With Alain Damiens und Pierre Strauch
1995 …chaque jour n’est qu‘une trêve entre deux nuits… etc. With Michael Jarrell, Ensemble Intercontemporain
1994 György Ligeti: Concertos for Cello / Violin / Piano With Pierre Boulez, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Saschko Gawriloff
1992 Harvey / Boulez / Benjamin With George Benjamin, London Sinfonietta
COMPOSERS’ PRIZES 2017
MICHAEL PELZEL
In the Stream of Sound. On the works of Michael Pelzel
by Markus Böggemann
‘Composing means: building an instrument.’ This statement by Helmut Lachenmann is a perfect
match for the music of Michael Pelzel, for the Swiss composer’s works often incorporate the
idea of special sonic resources – an imaginary ensemble, as it were, that is represented by the
actual one present and has to be veritably wrested from it on at times. …sentiers tortueux…
(2017), for example, an ensemble piece for nine musicians, is described by the composer as
reminiscent of an entire ‘gong orchestra’. To this end, the two pianos (tuned a sixth-tone apart)
are prepared with an array of objects, as are the three string instruments. Together with an
enormous arsenal of percussion instruments – temple bells, cowbells and church bells, cymbals,
gongs, trompong, steel drums and also a kalimba (thumb piano) – this results in an
overwhelmingly rich and multi-faceted sound that almost transcends the chosen
instrumentation. At the same time, this richness is embedded in a combined sound world that
overarches and merges its components.
This only seemingly paradoxical interweaving of differentiation and homogeneity is a central
aspect of Michael Pelzel’s compositional thought. Referring to the fascination evoked in him by
the monochrome pictures of Yves Klein, he speaks of an ‘amalgam sound’ that he seeks to
realize in his works, bringing about a timbral merging of instruments while retaining an
exceptional depth of focus in the details. And, just as the painter’s simultaneously clear and
fathomless ultramarine triggers a dizziness in the viewer with which he draws them into the
picture, Michael Pelzel’s music likewise develops a pull that one should accept while listening.
Pelzel himself uses the image of a river that sweeps all manner of things along with it; taking up
this metaphor, one can say that the ideal listening position for his music is not on the shore, but
rather in the midst of the current.
Sculture di suono (2014) for large ensemble is one such current. Although the work, whose
subtitle ‘in memoriam Giacinto Scelsi’ makes it a form of stele, an act of remembrance, takes
the sound world of Scelsi’s improvisations on a simple electronic instrument (the ondiola, or
clavioline) as its point of departure, it does not simply imitate them. Rather, the piece projects
certain characteristics of this sound world – its incorporeal, non-expressive quality, its organ-like
homogeneity, but also its microtonal riches, its diverse vibrati and beating effects – onto the
large ensemble. This ensemble becomes something resembling an oversized, multiply-expanded
replica of Scelsi’s instrument that can be played individually to formulate and execute one’s own
musical ideas. In Sculture di suono these include the changing relationship between foreground
and background, between incisive motivic elements and their diffuse environments, and the
interaction between the different instrumental layers. It is entrancing to hear how a figure in the
cor anglais breaks through the opaque sonic surface after a few bars and is then sucked back
into it, but remains present as an individual colour, and it makes the listener very curious as to its
development, as the ensemble enacting this contrast is itself already the result of compositional
work.
Reflection upon sound and its means of production seems like a maxim for Michael Pelzel’s
music, even when it takes up genres supposedly stabilized by tradition. ...vague écume des
mers..., his string quartet from 2013, does not rely on this tradition, but instead conceives the
individual sound anew, and with it the ensemble producing that sound: the four string
instruments mostly use a separation into two layers that interlock, run in contrary motion, evade
each other and reconverge. Their forms of interaction are influenced not least by Pelzel’s
reception of the interlocking technique found in African music, where rhythmic patterns are
woven together in the manner of a zip.
Building an instrument means: taking sound not as something given, but as something to be
discovered, a field of considered compositional action. The music of Michael Pelzel demonstrates
this in an aesthetically convincing fashion, characterized by reflection and an exceptional aural
imagination.
Translation: Wieland Hoban
Biography Michael Pelzel is a composer and organist. He was born in Rapperswil (Switzerland) in 1978.
After passing his school-leaving exam “Matura” at the Canton school of Wattwil, from 1998 to
2009 he went on to study at the Lucerne, Basel, Stuttgart, Berlin and Karlsruhe academies of
music. Amongst other things, he studied piano under Ivan Klánsky, organ under Jakob Wittwer,
Martin Sander, Ludger Lohmann and Guy Bovet and composition under Dieter Ammann, Detlev
Müller-Siemens, Georg-Friedrich Haas, Hanspeter Kyburz and Wolfgang Rihm as well as music
theory under Roland Moser and Balz Trümpy.
He attended various composition master classes given by Tristan Murail, Beat Furrer, Michaël
Jarrell, Klaus Huber, Brian Ferneyhough, György Kurtàg and Helmut Lachenmann. From 2004 to
2010 he attended the Darmstadt Summer Courses, as well as masterclasses at the Acanthes
Festival in Metz and Royaumont Festival in Paris and was a member of Akademie Musiktheater
heute.
As an organist Pelzel was hosted at various churches and cathedrals, for instance in San
Francisco, Los Angeles, Sydney and Cape Town. His compositions are performed by bodies of
musicians like ensemble recherche klangforum wien, quatuor diotima, Arditti Quartet, ensemble
intercontemporain or the Symphony Orchestra of the Bavaria Broadcasting Corporation. His
works are played at festivals like the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music,
Donaueschingen Music Festival, Wien Modern, Klangspuren (Schwaz, Tyrol), Tremplin (Paris),
Lucerne Festival and Art on Main (Johannesburg). He also teaches music theory at music
academies and holds composition workshops at the University of the Witwatersrand in
Johannesburg (South Africa).
He has received numerous prizes and awards. For instance, in 2005 he was prizewinner in the
musica viva composition competition (Munich), in 2005 he was prizewinner in the Stiftung
Christoph Delz composition competition (Basel), in 2007 prizewinner in the Jurgenson
Competition (Moscow), in 2009 prizewinner in the Music Today composition competition
(Seoul) and in 2011 he received the Busoni Composition Prize. In the same year he was selected
to feature on a portrait CD as part of the Edition of the German Music Council in collaboration
with the German label WERGO. In 2012, 2013 and 2016 he received a residency grant for the
Visby International Centre for Composers (VICC), in 2014 a residency grant as part of the DAAD
Artists-in-Berlin Program; in 2016 he was presented the Composition Prize of the Regional
Capital of Stuttgart and a grant from the Swiss art foundation pro helvetia – for a three-month
artistic residency in Chennai (India). There he studied Carnatic music with its special rhythmic
structures and perfected his playing of the ghatam, a Southern Indian clay pot instrument.
Michael Pelzel’s compositions and composition commissions have been supported on multiple
occasions by the foundations STEO Stiftung, Küsnacht, Stiftung NICATI DE LUZE, Lausanne and
the Swiss cultural foundation pro helvetia.
www.michaelpelzel.ch
Works by Michael Pelzel Solo Pieces ...trois études-bagatelles... (2010) organ (org) Brushing (2009) piano (pno) ...trois bagatelles perforées... (2008) accordion (acc) Toccata fluida (2004) organ (org) …psalmodie volubile… (2003) flute (fl) Chamber music NW (2016) (trio for vc, perc, pno) Dance balaena (2015) (2 kb-clar) Cosmic Swoosh (2015) (2 pno, 4 perc) Inside-Out – „Diabelli“ (2015) (clar, vc, pno, perc) 5 to 5 to 5 (2015) (5 trb) „Alf“-Sonata (2014) (hrn, vl) Dance Machine (2014) (fl, vc) …vague écume des mers… (2013) (string quartett) Erlkönig (Goethe) (2012) (baritone voice, fl, clar, vl, vc, pno) ...étude-bagatelle N° IV... (2011) (organ, 4 assistants)
...vers le vent... (2010) (string quartett) Gruis (2010) 3 short pieces (tr,hrn) Haikus (2010) (soprano, fl, vc, pno, perc) corrugated passacaille (2009) (sax, vc, acc) Chant fractal (2009) (ob, vl) Blue and monochrome (2009) (clar, sax, acc) Slivers of Sound (2009) (string quartett) ...mélodie fractal... (2009) (bass, tr, hrn, trb, org) Piano Operation (2009) (soprano, ob, vc, pno) ...trio volubile... (2007) (fl, vc, org) ...figures perforées... (2006) (fl, clar, vl, vc, pno) Ensemble Pieces Dance of the Magic Waterbells (2015) Sculture di suono in memoriam Giacinto Scelsi (2014) (3 fl, ob, 2 cl, sax, 2 hrn, trp, 2 trb, 2 vl, 2 vla, 2 vc, 2 db) Sempiternal lock-in (2012-13) (fl, ob, clar, fag, hrn, tr, trb, 2 pnos/cel,hp, 2 perc, 2 vl, vla, vc, db) (short (12‘) and long (35‘) versions available) ...along 101... (2008) (fl, ob, clar, fag, hrn, tr, trb, pno, cel, 2 perc, vl, vla, vc, db) ...sentiers tortueux... (2007) (fl, ob, clar, perc, 2 pnos, vl, vla, vc, perc)
...danses oniriques... (2005) (fl, clar, perc, 2 pnos, vl, vla, vc, db, perc) with two pianos tuned in sixth tone intervals ...par la brume flottante... (2004) (fl, clar, vl, vla, vc, db, perc) Orchestra, Choir pieces, Concertos „Diabelli“-Suite (2017) (6 voice chorus) Gravity’s Rainbow (2016) (kb-clar and orchestera) Hazgusa und Galsterei (2016) (24 voice chorus) Misterious Anjuna Bell (2016) (orchestera and ensemble) Danse Diabolique (2016) (bl, pno, org, hf) Sculture di suono in memoriam Giacinto Scelsi (2014) (3fl, ob, 2 cl, sax, 2 hrn, trp, 2 trb, 6 vl, 6 vla, 6 vc, 4 db) Chatoiements à l’air (2012) (chamberorchestra) Dreamland (2008) (semiprofessional choir and orchestra) ...méandre inondé... (2005) (clar. and orchestra) Other Works Let’s Brush (2009) (4 semiprofessional pianists on 1 piano)
Michael Pelzel – Recordings
2015 Sempiternal Lock-in With Klangforum Wien, Johannes Kalitzke, Sylvain Cambreling and Peter Hirsch.
2014 Grammont Sélection 6 Includes: …vers le vent… With Arditti String Quartet
2011 Grammont Sélection 4 Includes: …trois études-bagatelles…
2010 Grammont Sélection 3 Includes: Piano Operation With Ensemble Equatuor
2009 Orgelportrait Organ works by Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Sweelinck, Bach, Mendelssohn
SIMON STEEN-ANDERSEN
Visible Sounds: The Music of Simon Steen-Andersen
by Bernd Künzig
Some visitors to New Music concerts will readily admit that often, they can only really
understand and enjoy the newness of the music when they not only hear, but also see it come
into being. Contemplation, just listening with eyes closed, seems to be a difficult task for this
type of concertgoer. With a composer like Simon Steen-Andersen, however, they are more likely
to get what they need, for the visibility of sounds plays a decisive part in his music. To this end,
he makes extensive use of the available multimedia possibilities, albeit without following the
fashions of the time. On the contrary, the incorporation of a low-tech visibility is perhaps
connected more to the childhood of the composer, born in 1976: the joystick from the early
generation of computer games is a central instrument in his music, and in his series Run Time
Error he uses it to control both images and sounds. In this site-specific series, which often takes
place in the back rooms of his concerts, he himself runs through a kind of obstacle course on
which found instruments, devices, objects and architectural elements are knocked on, rattled
and shaken into a microphone which he uses to record it. A camera performer following close
on his heels documents this tour de force in images. In the actual concert, the video recording is
projected in duplicate and controlled with a joystick by the composer-performer: the speeds of
the two projections accelerate and decelerate in relation to each other, they are played
backwards and forwards, but they nonetheless manage to come together for the finale. One
could define this new form of audiovisual composition in the sense of the original word
componere, and with a formulation by the brilliant exhibition curator Harald Szeemann: ‘When
attitude becomes form.’
Even though Simon Steen-Andersen’s music has little to do with pop, there is still one central
aspect of rock and pop music that, along with the range of noises he uses, affects his sonic
language. Sounds can not only be made visible; a fundamental aspect of their genesis is their
physicality, as the composer underlines: ‘Actually, I always tell the musicians to arrange
themselves so that one can see what they are doing. I always find it interesting to see what the
people are doing or how a sound comes about.’
At a first, superficial glance, this seems rather banal. But Simon Steen-Andersen is anything but
a mere illustrator of sounds. In his compositions, he often plays with perceptions in a way that
makes it hard for us to distinguish whether what we are seeing is producing and determining
the acoustic result, or vice versa. Thus in Black Box Music (2012), conductor-like gestures are
made in a form of puppet theatre setting. The body of the percussionist making these gestures
never becomes fully visible, either to the musicians playing in front of him or to the audience. He
is entirely reduced to his hands, which not only conduct, but also have to use all manner of
objects inside this closed box – the puppet theatre curtains, rubber bands, paper streamers and
other devices – and even indulge in surreal slapstick. One only sees inside this box via a
miniature camera and an oversized video projection of what it records, giving the whole setting
the air of a proscenium stage or a magic box. The viewers and listeners remain unsure whether
the gestures and events taking place inside it are controlling the musicians, or rather act as a
choreographic interpretation of the sounding events. The whole situation has an eeriness to it,
for essentially this connection between image and sound is a monstrous one: Steen-Andersen
refers to this approach as a simultaneous deconstruction of conducting and puppet theatre, of
the animal and the mechanical, which he carries out almost as thoroughly as E. T. A. Hoffmann
in his tale The Sandman.
The Piano Concerto (2014) can be viewed as a large-scale, concertante synthesis. The video
prelude, a film of a grand piano falling in slow-slow motion, is merely the starting point for the
‘building’ and ‘breaking’ of a classical instrument that finally produces broken sounds itself. In
this concerto, the broken appears like a phantom as the video projection of the pianist, who not
only plays the intact concert grand live, but also uses a sampler to control and rhythmicize a pre-
recorded version of himself playing the broken instrument. The result is an orchestral piece with
two piano soloists, intact and broken, perfect and imperfect, real and surreal, with various
references to music history extending from Romantic virtuosity to ragtime. Steen-Andersen
speaks of the ‘beauty of the imperfect’, and realizes a principle that Helmut Lachenmann named
when he said: ‘composing means building an instrument’.
Biography Simon Steen-Andersen, born in 1976, is a Berlin-based composer, performer and installation
artist, working in the field between instrumental music, electronics, video and performance
within settings ranging from symphony orchestra and chamber music (with and without
multimedia) to stagings, solo performances and installations. The works from the last 6-7 years
concentrates on integrating concrete elements in the music and emphasizing the physical and
choreographic aspects of instrumental performance. The works often include amplified acoustic
instruments in combination with sampler, video, simple everyday objects or homemade
constructions.
Simon Steen-Andersen received numerous prizes and grants - latest the Nordic Council Music
Prize and the SWR Orchestra Prize 2014, the Carl Nielsen Prize (DK) and the Kunstpreis Musik
from Akademie der Künste in Berlin 2013, the International Rostrum of Composers, the DAAD
Berliner Künstlerprogramm Residency 2010 and the Kranichsteiner Music Award 2008. Member
of the German Academy of the Arts 2016. Works commissioned by ensembles, orchestras and
festivals such as ensemble recherche, Neue Vokalsolisten Stuttgart, the SWR Orchestra, The
Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France, Ensemble Ascolta, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Modern,
Oslo Sinfonietta, 2e2m, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Ultraschall, Wittener Days of New Chamber
Music and ECLAT. Furthermore worked with ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, Collegium
Novum Zurich, ICTUS, Arditti, London Sinfonietta, Intercontemporain, asamisimasa and NADAR.
Simon Steen-Andersen studied composition with Karl Aage Rasmussen, Mathias Spahlinger,
Gabriel Valverde and Bent Sorensen in Aarhus, Freiburg, Buenos Aires and Copenhagen. Since
2008 Simon Steen-Andersen is a lecturer of composition at the Royal Academy of Music in
Aarhus, Denmark, in 2013-2014 he was visiting professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music
in Oslo and in 2014-2016 he was lecturer at the Darmstadt Sommer Courses.
Most works published by Edition-S / Copenhagen.
www.simonsteenandersen.dk
Works by Simon Steen-Andersen
if this then that and now what (2016) for 4 actors and 18 musicians Korpus (2015) for three Harry Partch-instruments and 7-8 players Piano Concerto (2014) for piano, sampler, orchestra and video Buenos Aires (2014) music theatre in 5 scenes for 5 singers and 4 musicians Mono (Autotune Study and Nachgesang) (2014) for male voice, keyboard and electronics Inszenierte Nacht (2013) stagings of pieces by Bach, Schumann, Mozart and Ravel in collaboration with Ensemble Ascolta Black Box Music (2012) for percussion solo, amplified box, 15 players and video String Quartet #2 (2012) for strings with prepared and amplified bows Im Rauschen (2012) for piccolo flute (playable for non-flutist), flute and bass clarinet with intra-instrumental playback History of My Instrument (2011) for prepared harp and video Study for String Instrument #3 (2011) for cello and video Double Up (2010) for sampler and small orchestra Ouvertures (2008/2010) for amplified gu-zheng, sampler and orchestra Study for String Instrument #2 (2009) for one or more string instruments and whammy pedal Run Time Error (2009-...) video installation / performance Self Simulator (2009) "interactive installation" Pretty Sound (Up And Down) (2008) for amplified piano (pianist or percussion player)
Beloved Brother (2008) two movements from J.S. Bach's Cappriccio on the departure of his dearly beloved brother arrangered for "backside-guitar" On And Off And To And Fro (2008) for vibraphone, saxophone/clarinet, double bass/cello and 3 players with megaphones soundTAG (2008) epidemic sound installation (room, street and web) in coorporation with Kaj Aune www.soundtag.info Study for String Instrument #1 (2007) for one or more string instruments Nothing Integrated (2007) for extremely amplified clarinet, percussion, cello and live-video Difficulties Putting it Into Practice (prior In Her Frown) (2007) for 2 or 4 amplified performers In Spite Of, And Maybe Even Therefore (2007) for amplified fl., horn, cl. + unamplified double bassoon, pno., perc. and db Chambered Music (2007) for 12 instruments and sampler loloopop (2006) audio/visual installation created in coorporation with visual artist Carl Krull [sproglyd] (2005) interactive webpage (for Norwegian and Danish words and phonemes + string quartet) Within Amongst (2005) anti-kadenza for amplified guitar solo Amongst (2005) concerto for extremely amplified guitar and large orchestra Self-reflecting Next To Beside Besides pieces from the NTBB-series in virtual combinations, where the musicians play together with video recordings of themselves, playing with video recordings of themselves, and so on ... Next To Beside Besides #1-13 (2003-06) (+...) - amplified solo pieces that can also be played together as ensemble pieces or movements in any combination of (cello,) doublebass (2 different pieces), saxophone, accordion (2 pieces), percussion (2 pieces), piccolo flute, violin, piano, guitar (2 pieces) and camera (perc.) ... Amid (2004) for flute, clarinet, piano, guitar, percussion, violin and cello (optional amplification) Beside Besides (/Next To Beside Besides #0) (2003) fragment for solo cello (optional amplification) Besides (2003, revised 2010) for amplified piano, violin and flute + "damped" string trio
Drownwords (2003) for soprano and guitar, both amplified rerendered (2003, revised 2004) for pianist and two assistents (optional participating conductor, optional live video) Split Point (2002) for snaredrum, sandpaper and S (one player) Spin-Off (2002) for soprano saxophone, optional trompet, accordeon and double bass Praesens (2001) for 14 musicians Electro Miniature (2001) for tape in-side-out-side-in (2001) for guitar solo De Profundis (2000) for soprano saxophone (also playing percussion) Impromptu (2000) for english horn, bass clarinet, bassoon and baryton saxophone String Quartet (1999) Punctus Contra Punctum (1999) for organ Polaroid (1999) a saxophone collage for the short movie Polaroid (for tape) Sinfonietta Variations (1999) for sinfonietta and saxophone Aurora Ritual (1999) for orchestra Study (1999) for saxophone and percussion 4 Petitesses (1998) for solo cello Suite (1998) for ensemble
Simon Steen-Andersen – Recordings
2016 Darmstadt Aural Documents Box 4 Pianist Includes: rerendered for pianist and two assistents With Ellen Ugelvik, two assistants (members of asamisimasa)
2015 Donaueschinger Musiktage 2014 Includes: Piano Concerto for piano, sampler, orchestra and video With Nicolas Hodges, François-Xavier Roth, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg
2011 Donaueschinger Musiktage 2010 Includes: Double Up for sampler and small orchestra Radio Kamer Filharmonie, Peter Eötvös
2011 Pretty Sound With asamisimasa
2010 Within Includes: in-side-out-side-in for guitar solo With Frederik Munk Larsen
2010 getString Includes: String Quartet With Den Schlesiske Strygekvartet
LISA STREICH Not Only of This World
Lisa Streich’s Music Between Minutia and Faith, Between Here and Hereafter
by Rainer Nonnenmann
Like the wings of seraphim and cherubim, two harps extend the curves of their golden frames
around the ensemble placed in the center. Normally more restrained when it comes to
expressions of faith, Lisa Streich uses an instrumentation with obvious biblical connotations in
GRATA for cello and ensemble (2011). The construction of the piece can also be understood
symbolically: between sustained string notes, fierce organ clusters, and the metallic fortissimo
attacks of five apocalyptic trombones, the solo cello appears as a solitary vox humana, with
fragile cantilenas, breathy harmonics, and trembling recitatives. In addition, the score contains
verses from the ‘Gloria’ of the Latin mass that are not spoken, yet nonetheless point to the life
and death of the Son of Man and God, Jesus Christ. ‘Domini fili unigenite’, ‘agnus dei’, ‘qui
tollis peccata mundi’ – the Lamb of God died on the cross for the sins of the world. Similarly, the
cello is suddenly left alone with a solo, abandoned by all: ecce homo. Similarly, Streich’s filigree
duo SERAPH for cello and organ (2013) unfolds as a tender coming into being and passing away
of sounds, which the listener can experience as an allegory of fleeting existence.
The composer and organist Lisa Streich, born in Sweden in 1985, does not display the spiritual
background of her music in missionary fashion; alongside deeply existential questions, her work
is also shaped by the quotidian, simple, trivial. Yet even without programmatic titles, texts or
commentaries, one can hear in her pieces that something essential is at stake. The expressive
power of her music owes itself to clearly defined materials and differentiated structures. For
example, Streich often specifies six different speeds at which string players bow their
instruments, harpists run their hands across their strings, and trombonists perform glissandi with
their slides. The prerequisite for any musical creed is, first and foremost, the greatest possible
compositional and notational precision. While the title of ASCHE [Ashes] for clarinet and cello
(2012) refers ambiguously to burnt things, the period of Lent, or German slang for money, the
piece’s compositional technique and form all the more unequivocally show a process of
convergence of the wind instrument and the string instrument across sonic differences and
spatial distance. The cello, positioned in the middle of the stage, and the clarinet, placed as far
as possible to the right, initially play strictly in alternation. And although they never coincide,
they interlock seamlessly to form a monophonic line until finally the instruments merge through
extended playing techniques, multiphonics, and unisons in the higher register. This instrumental
anamorphosis can be interpreted theologically as a negation of the principio individuationis, but
need not be. The purely musical process and the flickering beats and differential tones, which
inscribe themselves on the ear very physically, even painfully, are captivating enough on their
own.
Streich’s output encompasses vocal, choral, solo, chamber, ensemble and orchestral works,
including AUGENLIDER for prepared guitar and orchestra (2015), as well as the pocket opera
...MIT BRENNENDEM ÖLE (2011) on texts from the Old and New Testaments, and also electronic
compositions and pieces for electronically or mechanically expanded instruments. In PIETÀ
(2012), the cello strings are played – independently of the performer – with thin paper strips
that rotate on small motors, allowing the body of the cello, subjected to martyrial abuses which
are magnified using microphones, to develop a mechanical life of its own. Streich expands this
grotesque symbiosis of playful machinery and the Paschal notion of the resurrection of the
crucified in SAI BALLERE? for piano trio (2015) and ZUCKER for ‘motorised ensemble’ (2016).
The magic of inanimate matter and serendipitous coincidences is the subject of Streich’s
performance installation DER ZARTE FADEN DEN DIE SCHÖNHEIT SPINNT (2014). Four
percussionists feel their way through loose sequences of sounds, only coming together for
synchronous tutti actions at certain points. From time to time they also pull on a string,
stretched using rope winches, with small strips of metal, plastic, leather and cardboard attached
to it that stroke the surfaces of percussion instruments, egg slicers, bottles and glasses. The
incidental nature of the delicate resulting sounds, as well as the changing distribution of rolls
among the players and objects develop great intensity and magic.
Lisa Streich’s music has an enveloping beauty; it is both earnest and playful, forceful and
pregnant, physical, cruel and tender – not only of this world.
Translation: Joseph Lake
Biography Lisa Streich, born in Norra Råda, Sweden in 1985 studied Composition (M.Mus.) and Organ
(M.Mus.) in Berlin (Udk), Stockholm (KMH), Salzburg (Mozarteum), Paris (Ircam) and Cologne
(HfMT) with among others Adriana Hölszky, Johannes Schöllhorn, Mauro Lanza, William
Brunson and Margareta Hürholz. Master classes, for example with Chaya Czernowin, Brian
Ferneyhough, Steven Takasugi and Hanspeter Kyburz, complete her musical education.
Lisa Streich’s works have been performed on stage in Sweden, Germany, Israel, Austria, France,
Great Britain, USA and Canada and have been broadcast on Swedish, German, Norwegian,
Canadian and Czech radio. Her music has been played by among others Quatuor Diotima,
Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble Recherche, OENM, Ensemble Sonanza and Stockholms
Kammarkör at for example Taschenopernfestival Salzburg, ICMC, Ircam, Deutschlandfunk,
Swedish Radio, Ultraschall, Tzlil Meudcan, Acht Brücken, Acanthes, Cologne Cathedral and
Schloss Solitude.
She held a scholarship from Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and Cité des Arts, Paris /
Kungliga Musikaliska Akademin, Stockholm. In 2013 she was a beneficiary of the Anne-Sophie
Mutter Fund / Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and recepient of the Busoni Förderpreis of the
Academy of Arts, Berlin. 2014 she got a working scholarship from the Swedish Arts Grants
Committee and she won the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Prize. In 2015 she was selected for the
Edition Zeitgenössische Musik to have a portrait CD released on WERGO. She received a Roche
Young Commission for a new orchestra piece for Lucerne Festival 2017, and she was awarded
the Rome Prize by the German Arts Council to live in the Villa Massimo 2016/17. 2017/18 she
will have a composer residency with the ensemble recherche.
www.lisastreich.se
Works by Lisa Streich SEGEL (2017) for orchestra FLEISCH (2017) solo cello for 1–3 cellists ARK (2016) for wind orchestra, 5 percussionists and double bass ZUCKER (2016) for motorized ensemble ENUMA ELISH (2016) for orchestral brass FIKONTRÄDET (2016) for counter tenor and baroque ensemble AUGENLIDER (2015) for prepared guitar and orchestra NEBENSONNEN (2015) for violin, viola, violoncello and clarinet in Bb PIETÀ (III) (2015) for motorized violoncello and ensemble SAI BALLARE? (2015) for piano trio VOGEL. MEHR VOGEL (ALS ENGEL). (2015) for string quartet (ENGEL,…) NOCH TASTEND (2015) for string quartet MARIA CALLAS (2014) for ensemble MJÖLK (2014) for ensemble and ferris wheel RUE CUVIER OU LES YEUX AUX CIEL (2014) for violoncello and accordion „DER ZARTE FADEN DEN DIE SCHÖNHEIT SPINNT“ (2014) performance installation for percussion quartet SERAPH (2013) for violoncello and organ PAPIROSN (2013) for ensemble
AGNEL (2013) for 12-voiced choir, objects, choirboy und electronics SAI BALLARE? (2013) for violin, piano and motorized violoncello or piano trio ALV (2013) for orchestra ASCHE (2012) for violoncello and clarinet MADONNA DEL PRATO (2012) for saxophone quartet ÄLV ALV ALVA (2012) for ensemble PLAY TIME (2012) for bicycle and percussion trio PIETÀ (II) (2012) for ensemble and pictures PIETÀ (I) (2012) for violoncello, motors and electronics GRATA (2011) for violoncello and ensemble ASKARGOT (2011) for string quartet …MIT BRENNENDEM ÖLE (2011) pocketopera for 12 instruments, 5 women's voices and 5 children's voices JOIE (2011) for Lauscher and Lauscher HALBWERTZEITEN UND HONIG (2010) for soprano, piano and piano-loudspeakers WALLPAPERS (2010) for baritone and electronics ASKAR (2010) for string quartet and electronics ÄNGEN DANSAR (2009) for womens choir and electronics LAKALLES (2009) for ensemble and electronics
EXISTENSER (2009) for piano and electronics DER ZITRONENGELBE KLANG (2008) for baritone, soprano and tuba NÄCKEN (2008) for violin and electronics VON DEN SIEBEN PLAGEN (2008) for electronics PLAYING BERLIN (2007) for electronics
Lisa Streich – Recordings
2016 Aksiom Includes: PAPIROSN With Ensemble Aksiom and Kai Grinde Myrann
2014 seraph Includes: SERAPH With Christina Meißner and Poul Skjolstrup Larsen
PHOTO OVERVIEW 2017
Photo Overview Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Ernst von Siemens Music Prize Winner 2017 Contact: Imke Annika List | T. +49 / (0)89 / 6 36 3 29 07 | [email protected] You can download printable photos and find further information under: www.evs-musikstiftung.ch All Photos: © Marco Borggreve
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BOARD OF SUPERVISORS AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Board of Supervisors and Board of Trustees of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation The Board of Supervisors bears the responsibility for the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Currently, it is chaired by Michael Krüger, President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. Its other members are Bettina von Siemens as Deputy Chair, Hubert Achermann, Rudolf W. Hug, Elisabeth Oltramare, Herbert Scheidt and Ferdinand von Siemens. Selecting the prize winners as well as the grants-in-aid projects is the task of the currently nine-person Board of Trustees of the foundation. Its members are Thomas Angyan as Chairman as well as Hermann Danuser (until June 2017), Winrich Hopp, Isabel Mundry, Enno Poppe, Wolfgang Rihm, Peter Ruzicka, Ilona Schmiel and Nikos Tsouchlos (until June 2017). From now on, violinist Carolin Widmann, cultural manager Andrea Zietzschmann and musicologist Ulrich Mosch will be members of the Board of Trustees.
ARCHIVE
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize Winners since 1974
Pierre Laurent Aimard 2017 • Per Nørgård, 2016 • Christoph Eschenbach, 2015 • Peter Gülke, 2014 • Maris Jansons, 2013 • Friedrich Cerha, 2012 • Aribert Reimann, 2011 • Michael Gielen, 2010 • Klaus Huber, 2009 • Anne-Sophie Mutter, 2008 • Brian Ferneyhough, 2007 • Daniel Barenboim, 2006 • Henri Dutilleux, 2005 • Alfred Brendel, 2004 • Wolfgang Rihm, 2003 • Nikolaus Harnoncourt, 2002 • Reinhold Brinkmann, 2001 • Mauricio Kagel, 2000 • Arditti Quartett, 1999 • György Kurtág, 1998 • Helmut Lachenmann, 1997 • Maurizio Pollini, 1996 • Sir Harrison Birtwistle, 1995
• Claudio Abbado, 1994 • György Ligeti, 1993 • H.C. Robbins Landon, 1992 • Heinz Holliger, 1991 • Hans Werner Henze, 1990 • Luciano Berio, 1989 • Peter Schreier, 1988 • Leonard Bernstein, 1987 • Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1986 • Andrés Segovia, 1985 • Yehudi Menuhin, 1984 • Witold Lutoslawski, 1983 • Gidon Kremer, 1982 • Elliot Carter, 1981 • Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, 1980 • Pierre Boulez, 1979 • Rudolf Serkin, 1978 • Herbert von Karajan, 1977 • Mstislav Rostropowitsch, 1976 • Olivier Messiaen, 1975 • Benjamin Britten, 1974
Composers' Prize Winners since 1990 2017 Michael Pelzel | Simon Steen-Andersen | Lisa Streich 2016 Milica Djordjević | David Hudry | Gordon Kampe
2015 Mark Barden | Birke J. Bertelsmeier | Christian Mason
2014 Luis Codera Puzo | Brigitta Muntendorf | Simone Movio
2013 David Philip Hefti | Samy Moussa | Marko Nikodijevic
2012 Luke Bedford | Zeynep Gedizlioglu | Ulrich Alexander Kreppein
2011 Steven Daverson | Hèctor Parra | Hans Thomalla
2010 Pierluigi Billone | Arnulf Herrmann | Oliver Schneller
2009 Francesco Filidei | Miroslav Srnka | Lin Yan
2008 Dieter Ammann | Márton Illés | Wolfram Schurig
2007 Vykintas Baltakas | Markus Hechtle
2006 Jens Joneleit | Alexander Muno | Athanasia Tzanou
2005 Sebastian Claren | Philipp Maintz | Michel van der Aa
2004 Fabien Lévy | Enno Poppe | Johannes Maria Staud
2003 Chaya Czernowin | Christian Jost | Jörg Widmann 2002 Mark Andre | Jan Müller-Wieland | Charlotte Seither 2001 Isabel Mundry | André Werner | José María Sánchez-Verdú 2000 Hanspeter Kyburz | Augusta Read Thomas | Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini 1999 Thomas Adès | Olga Neuwirth 1998 Antoine Bonnet | Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf 1997 Moritz Eggert | Mauricio Sotelo 1996 Volker Nickel | Rebecca Saunders 1995 Gerd Kühr | Philippe Hurel 1994 Hans JC | Marc-André Dalbavie | Luca Francesconi 1993 Sylvia Fomina | Param Vir 1992 Beat Furrer | Benedict Mason 1991 Herbert Willi 1990 Michael Jarrell | George Lopez