Born in Münster/Westphalia in 1956, Klaus Ospald is one of the most renowned German composers of contemporary music. He studied composition in Detmold and Würzburg,...

Born in Münster/Westphalia in 1956, Klaus Ospald is one of the most renowned German composers of contemporary music. He studied composition in Detmold and Würzburg, and as a master student with Helmut Lachenmann. His works are played by internationally renowned performers and orchestras, and premieres of them are arranged by leading promoters and contemporary music festivals. Klaus Ospald has received numerous awards – most recently the International Hanns Eisler Scholarship of the City of Leipzig 2022. - This BR-KLASSIK CD presents Ospald's "Más raíz, menos criatura" in a live recording of a performance on November 22, 2019 in a musica viva concert from the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz, and also his "Quintett von den entlegenen Feldern" (Quintet from the remote fields), recorded on May 25, 2019 in the Laboratory for Fluid Mechanics and Turbomachinery at Coburg University of Applied Sciences. The ten-part composition "Más raíz, menos criatura" (loosely translated: "More root than man") ("Entlegene Felder III"/”Remote Fields III”) for orchestra, piano and eight-part chamber choir, based on the poem "El niño yuntero" (“The child as draught animal") by Miguel Hernández, was written in 2014/15 and revised in 2017. Ospald composed it as a commission from the SWR for the ECLAT Festival 2017, and it received its world premiere at the ECLAT Festival on February 5, 2017 at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart, with Yukiko Sugawara (piano), the SWR Vokalensemble and the SWR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Peter Rundel. The composition is part of a triad of works that Ospald wrote between 2012 and 2016 and placed together under the title "Remote Fields". This bundling together of works of different physiognomy is a basic characteristic of Ospald's oeuvre. Musical content is more important to him than performance standards or genre conventions. Such content determines the form and structure of the works and reflects the consciousness of a critical contemporary who has preserved his independence as an artist and human being, and who uncompromisingly defends the rights of the individual. The eight-part "Quintett von den entlegenen Feldern" for string trio, clarinet, piano and live electronics was commissioned by the SWR Experimental Studio in 2012/13, and revised in 2014. It received its world premiere (without live electronics) on May 31, 2014 at the SWR Studio Freiburg, Schlossbergsaal, with the Ensemble Experimental and its world premiere with live electronics on October 3, 2015 at the same venue by the same ensemble, featuring live electronic realisation by the SWR Experimentalstudio. It is important to Ospald that extended sounds become an integral part of the composition and are given their space. This form of live electronics requires a sound director in the performance who – like the musicians – "plays" the electronics according to the score.