All life originated out of primeval mud. And all life dissolves back into it again at the end. This release in the Edition Musikfabrik series leans its ear towards sewage sludge as well as “the ocean of yes and no.” It cringes at the end of the world before the sublimity of nature, seeking to surpass her with composed conglomerates, it allows itself to be buried alive, only to eat itself free from the earth three times. Four fascinating attempts to understand nature and to explore humanity’s position within it. For the composer Brian Ferneyhough, Cornwalls inhospitable landscape of moraine became the starting point of a composition for six voices and an 18 member ensemble. Klaus Langs „The ocean of yes and no“ is a story with no beginning or end, no climax and no apotheosis. While Carola Bauckholt has often used the “fauna philharmonic” in her recent compositions, she works with a whole bestiary in "Schlammflocke". In Jorge E. Lopez’s „Gonzales the Earth Eater“ the composer quotes William S. Burroughs’s psychedelic sceneries with creatures such as „Gonzales“, who defies his own funeral. This recording contains four fascinating attempts to understand Nature and to explore man’s place (in Nature). The demanding artwork of the series is created with pictures by the painter Gerhard Richter, commenting on the thematic concentration of the programs in an artistic manner. Richter, one of the most important living German artists, has been a member of the board of trustees of the Ensemble Musikfabrik since 2009.
Founded in New York in 2005, the contemporary music quartet Yarn/Wire is made up of two percussionists and two pianists. The group has gained an international reputation for dazzling and innovative programs. This release features outstanding studio-quality first recordings of three works that grew out of Yarn/Wire’s long association with the artistic team of Wolfgang Heiniger (percussionist, composer, sound designer) and Enno Poppe (pianist, composer, conductor). Heiniger and Poppe have worked together for more than 20 years and the piece “Tonband” (2008/2012) was a collaborative effort: Poppe composed the first two movements and Heiniger the final three. The work is indebted to Stockhausen’s “Kontakte” for piano, percussion, and four-track electronics from 1958–1960 but also contains references to rock music and has an uninhibited approach to melody. The other pieces on this album grew out of the two composers’ work on “Tonband”. “Feld” is the most explosively rhythmic music Poppe has composed to date – extremely challenging for the performers yet electrifying and highly expressive. While Bartók used the pianos for percussive effects in his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion from 1937, Poppe here treats the percussion instruments like “extended pianos.” Heiniger’s “Neumond” (2018) places historic electric organ sounds in a constantly shifting tonal space, recalling the dark aesthetic of old horror films as well as other pieces on which he collaborated with Enno Poppe such as “Rad”, “Arbeit”, and “Rundfunk”.
