Jörg Widmann | Frank Reinecke | SWR Experimentalstudio | Andre

Like a researcher, composer-in-residence Mark Andre explores the possibilities of an instrument. Over several years he worked closely with the bassist Frank Reinecke. The result is a nearly three-quarter-hour solo piece that coaxes from the double bass an entire world of new and unusual sounds, directing our attention to the ephemeral, the unstable, the fragile. It pushes right up to the edge of the audible - for instance when the lowest string of the double bass is tuned even lower, down to an ultra-low E - and seeks, precisely through this, to let something transcendent, something metaphysical, shimmer through. For . . . selig sind . . ., a work conceived as spatial music and inspired by Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, Andre drew on sonic experiences he gathered during extensive sessions with Jörg Widmann. “We developed sounds together on the clarinet that I myself didn’t know before — because they didn’t exist before,” Widmann recalls. “We marveled like children.”

Performers:
Jörg Widmann, composer
Frank Reinecke, double bass
SWR Experimentalstudio:  Michael Acker | Joachim Haas | Daniel Miska

Program:
Onstage introduction:
Jörg Widmann and Frank Reinecke in conversation with Mark Sattler (in German)

Mark Andre (*1964)
… selig sind … for clarinet and electronics
iv 18 (“Sie fürchteten sich nämlich”) for double bass

Intermission at c. 11.45