shut up and listen! 2024
Thursday, October 10, 2024 @ echoraum
Klaus Lang: sei-jaku
For string quartet
with Koehne Quartett
sei-yaku für Streichquartett [2001]
fische. sterne
1
The best way to cook fish is not to cook it. Perhaps the most popular dish in Japan is sashimi, which is artfully cut and arranged raw fish.
The art of preparing sashimi is not to process and cook the raw fish as the starting material and thereby alter it, but to select raw fish, cut it, combine it and arrange it. The chef does not change the fish and does not add anything to it. He allows the unfolding of the given, of what was already present in the fish from the outset, and makes it accessible to the palate.
On the one hand, the impression that fish makes on the taste buds depends on the thickness of the pieces of fish cut off, and on the other hand on the way it is cut. The cutting of fish has developed into a strict art with a long tradition. The decisive parameters here are cutting pressure, cutting point and cutting speed.
2
The shining clarity of the stars in the darkness of the universe is unspeakably beautiful. Lost in the incomprehensible complexity of celestial geometry and yet: three letters are enough to formulate one of the most important theories about the universe. On the other hand, as you can see from the puddles in the mud, darkness is by no means a sure sign of depth, any more than complexity. Elegance and simplicity characterize important physical-mathematical formulas; their aim is to describe or create the Complex by simple means.
The Japanese pronunciation of the title is sei-jaku. I am greatly indebted to Hozumi Gensho Roshi for the title calligraphy and to Genkei Harry Weeks for his help in finding the correct characters.
[Klaus Lang]
Klaus Lang
* Born 1971 in Graz; lives in Steirisch Laßnitz. Klaus Lang studied composition and music theory with Hermann Markus Preßl, Beat Furrer and Younghi Pagh-Paan as well as organ with Otto Bruckner at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Klaus Lang loves tea. What he doesn’t like are lawnmowers and Richard Wagner. Klaus Lang does not use music as a means of conveying non-musical content, be it emotions, philosophical or religious ideas, political programs, advertising slogans, etc. Music is not a language for him. For him, music is not a language that serves to communicate non-musical content. It is a free acoustic object that stands on its own. In his works, sound is not used, it is explored through listening and it is given the opportunity to unfold its inherent rich beauty. If sound is only sound (and should not refer to anything else), it is precisely at this point that it becomes perceptible as what it actually is: as a temporal phenomenon, as audible time. For Klaus Lang, time as the actual material of the composer therefore constitutes a central element of music. Musical material is time perceived through sound, the object of music is the audible experience of time. Music is time made audible. (Klaus Lang)
Koehne Quartett
Joanna Lewis, violin | Anne Harvey-Nagl, violin | Lena Fankhauser, viola | Arne Kircher, violoncello
The Koehne Quartet, founded in 1987 by Joanna Lewis, is one of the outstanding interpreters of contemporary music in Central Europe. The quartet’s repertoire spans a wide musical spectrum from classical composers for string quartet to works of the 20th and 21st centuries. From the very beginning, the quartet has sought to work closely with the composers whose music it plays in order to achieve the most authentic and lively interpretation of their works. What began with works by Graeme Koehne – one of Australia’s most renowned and multifaceted composers – has since continued consistently with Austrian contemporaries such as Friedrich Cerha, Kurt Schwertsik, Francis Burt, Thomas Pernes, Gerd Kühr, Thomas Larcher and Wolfgang Liebhart. The Koehne Quartet’s working principle of breaking new musical ground together with the composer has been significantly influenced by their participation in master classes with the Alban Berg Quartet (Günter Pichler), the Amadeus and Brodsky Quartets, Hatto Beyerle and György Kurtág. The Koehne Quartet also works regularly with international jazz musicians such as Dave Liebman, Wayne Horvitz, Peter Herbert, Anthony Braxton, Georg Graewe, Max Nagl and Otto Lechner and with artists from the world music scene such as Marcel Khalife, Marwan Abado and Dhafer Youssef.