Colours and Sounds Of Wood And Air

Eric Drescher | Flute
Pavlos Antoniadis | Piano

Event at the EnCounterpoints festival New music in Winskiez. Selected for this concert were works dealing with the interaction of new music, visual art and the influence of colors and sounds of nature. Apart from a nuance-rich solo piece by Salvatore Sciarrino and a new piano composition by Wieland Hoban, works by the composers Ernstalbrecht Stiebler and Klaus Lang are on the program. For the first time in the concert, the complete "Suite Sur bois" (2009-2016) by Andreas F. Staffel will be premiered.

Program

Klaus Lang: Weiß for flute and piano
Ernstalbrecht Stiebler: New work for flute and piano
Salvatore Sciarrino: Il pomeriggio di un allarme al parcheggio for glissando flute solo
Andreas Staffel: Suite Sur Bois for flute and piano (W.P.)
Wieland Hoban: When the painting starts for piano

Location: Musikstudio Ohrpheo, Jablonskistr. 15, 10405 Berlin

Admission: 10 € | 7 € | 6 € (Berlinpass) - children and teenagers free!
(Tickethotline: 030-25048799)

This event is sponsored by inm.

About the music

Klaus Lang: Weiß for flute and piano
If one observes cows, one can see movements which are completely comprehensible for us: a brake is placed on the belly; In response, the cow hurls its tail toward the brake. But then there are still movements of a completely different kind: After a cow has stood the longest time immovably and unchanged in a spot, she suddenly takes a step forward without a reason understandable or understandable for us. For the cow, this movement must have been as justified as the first (brake tail), but we can not understand it. There is, therefore, a layer of logic that is not intelligible to us (and probably not to the cow), and although mysteriously unaware, the sequence of events is felt to be conclusive. An unexplainable step of the cow remains mysterious as a single event, but does not destroy our unified picture of reality as it would happen, for example, if the cow suddenly began to recite the heart sutra from the memory. Nevertheless, one is always amazed at an extremely mysterious and highly miraculous fact: cows eat almost exclusively green food and yet the milk they give is white.

Ernstalbrecht Stiebler: New work for flute and piano
Two opposing, individually formulated movements - always slower, faster and faster - find in free play a sound space, which is designed in figurative movement free and without intention.

Salvatore Sciarrino: Il pomeriggio di un allarme al parcheggio (2015) | An alarm in an afternoon parking lot for glissando flute solo (for Erik Drescher)
„Many of my works are like linguistic metaphors. They design a sound illusion of the real. Technology and nature are mixed up in the current course of events. That is why I've already 'read' radios, sounds of the night, the internal physiology of the human body, bells, stones, wind, the sea, old and new phones or sounds of trains: Efebo con radio (1981), Lohengrin (1981) Perseo e Andromeda (1990), Archeologia del telefono (2005), Senza sale d'aspetto (2011). And now the car alarm in a parking lot.“ (Salvatore Sciarrino)

Andreas F. Staffel: About „Sur bois“ for flutes and piano (2009-16)
The first draft of a Suite for Flute and Piano was developed in 1999, and was revised in autumn 2009 and 2016. The title means as much as "about wood", and plays on the origin of the flute as a member of the woodwind family. I have tried to characterize the very different facets of the contemporary flute sound in connection with the wooden grndpiano in the five individual movements of "Sur bois". The first movement, Tombeau for alto flute and piano, is dedicated to my friend Wolfgang Moelders and combines the elements of a Sarabande with sound name inscriptions. In the second movement, "Air on Air", both instrumentalists play with the possibilities of breathing and the connections of "sounding air". In the third movement, "Embranchements" ("Branches"), the melodic and rhythmic series are intersecting, forming different forms, reminding of ramifications in nature. The fourth movement, "Les Feuilles Mortes" for alto flute and piano, uses as the sole tone for the flute an engraved E, the intonation of which is alternately clouded or illuminated. Separated parallel fifths, seventh and nonintervals in the piano break the shading of the flute sound prismatically. One will think of processes in nature, of the ever-new formation of wrinkles, rings, and discolorations. In the fast-paced gigue of the last movement "Langue du feu", both instruments move upwards toward the "tree line". The flute uses constantly changing sound colors so as  lip pizzicati, trumpet tones, whistle, jettones and whistles without flute Hissed notes. (Berlin, December 2016)

Wieland Hoban: When the panting STARTS for piano (2002 - 2004)
Even more than any other musical performance is a solo performance for me a theatrical act. Theatrical, therefore, monologue can be shifted inside. This piece is a monologue of this kind, which is, however, in a very tense state of conflict and at any time threatens to unload itself.
This situation, which is almost autistic in tension, corresponds to the treatment of the pianoforte, in which each finger becomes a separate voice, but it is restricted by the compulsory cooperation by the respective hand. At the same time, this approach makes possible forms of polyphony, which can not arise otherwise. Thus, the conflict between autism and out-pressure is directly expressed physically, in the smallest core of the pianoforte play itself. It is, therefore, less two hands than an ensemble of ten fingers. A major stimulus to this approach has been given by the play by Ian Pace, in which subtle nuances of articulation get a striking clarity.
The title refers to Samuel Beckett's prose work. There the narrator tries repeatedly to spin a narrative thread, and starts "when the wheezing ceases", that is, As soon as he can breathe again. But it is precisely this state of speechlessness which forms the starting point in when the panting STARTS - when the wheeze starts. - The play was composed and devoted to Ian Pace.

The artists

Erik Drescher

Erik Drescher is a freelance flutist, performer and curator for contemporary music based in Berlin. In addition to a very active international career as a solo performer, he has performed in many ensembles for contemporary music. He has premiered an enormous number of new pieces, the majority of which were also commissioned by him and dedicated to him.

He has been working with composers like Peter Peter Ablinger, Maryanne Amacher, Antoine Beuger, Axel Dörner, Sabine Ercklentz, Julio Estrada, Dror Feiler, Friedrich Goldmann, Hauke Harder, Hanna Hartman, Adriana Hölszky, Nicolaus A. Huber, Jamilja Jazylbekova, Sven-Åke Johansson, Christian Kesten, Artur Kroschel, Bernhard Lang, Klaus Lang, Juseub Lim, Alvin Lucier, Michael Maierhof, Maximilian Marcoll, Chico Mello, André O. Möller, Andrea Neumann, Chris Newman, Phill Niblock, Ivo Nilsson, Helmut Oehring, Christoph Ogiermann, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Gérard Pape, Karen Power, Éliane Radigue, Uwe Rasch, Jaime Reis, Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Marc Sabat, Friedrich Schenker, Marcus Schmickler, Cornelius Schwehr, Martin Schüttler, Salvatore Sciarrino, Simon Steen-Andersen, Stefan Streich, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Kasper T. Toeplitz, Mauricio Valdes, Jennifer Walshe, Jeremy Woodruff, Lidia Zielińska.

A special focus in recent years has been his work around the glissando flute, a normal C-flute with a variable-lenght headjoint replacing the standard mouthpiece. He is the editor of "The Glissando Flute Collection Erik Drescher" (Verlag Neue Musik), a collection of solo works composed for the new instrument.

Since 2012 Drescher is curator for music at the theatre Acker Stadt Palast in Berlin.

www.erikdrescher.de

Pavlos Antoniadis

Pavlos Antoniadis is a Berlin-based pianist for contemporary and experimental music and a researcher at IRCAM and LabEx GREAM, Université de Strasbourg, where he also teaches computer music and contemporary performance. He has performed in Europe, the Americas and Asia with the new music ensembles Work in Progress-Berlin, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Phorminx, ERGON and as a soloist. He has recorded for Mode (2015 Deutscheschallplattenkritikspreis) and Wergo records. He has worked with composers such as Mark Andre, Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, Wolfgang Rihm, Pascal Dusapin, Tristan Murail and has premiered solo piano works by James Erber, Nicolas Tzortzis, Luis Antunes Pena, Dominik Karski and others. He has recently started improvising on the occasion of his collaboration with the composer and improviser Panos Ghikas. Pavlos has published on embodied cognition, gesture capture and contemporary piano performance and has been invited for lecture-performances (HfM Dresden, INMM Darmstadt, IRCAM Paris, Orcim Gent, Goldsmiths London, Trinity Dublin, Aristoteleio Thessaloniki, Cité de la Musique et de la Danse Strasbourg, Hong Kong University, Yamanashi Gakuin University Kofu, Wocmat Taiwan). He was a Musical Research Residency fellow at IRCAM in 2014, where he developed with F. Bevilacqua and D. Fober GesTCom, an interface for the gestural control of complex notation. Pavlos holds degrees in piano performance (MA, UC San Diego) and musicology (Athens National University). He has studied on LabEx GREAM, Fulbright, UC San Diego, Nakas conservatory, IEMA Frankfurt and Impuls Academy Gratz scholarships.

pavlosantoniadis.wordpress.com