The combination of clarinet and string quartet, epitomised by such famous predecessors as Mozart, Brahms and others, is explored afresh by Beat Furrer in his new work intorno al bianco: “A temporality stretched to the extremes – the clarinet is integrated into the sound of the string quartet. In a constant accelerando, different aspects of the sound of the clarinet are brought into focus, with the clarinettist speaking vowels into the instrument, producing an inharmonious, complex, speech-like sound.” Clarinettist Bernhard Zachhuber and the string players from the Klangforum Wien are the protagonists in the premiere in Florence on 16 September 2016.

Furrer’s new work for double bass and electronics, Kaleidoscopic memories, explores the possibilites of rapid changes of perspective to interpolate different sonorities into each other. A recorded counter-part joins the richly coloured instrument – the double bass has other colours in its own register. It enters, says Furrer, other tonal spaces. “In the recorded passages the solo part is, as it were, splintered, grouped differently and, with decelerations, reversals, pushed together into a series of structured events, until at the conclusion this process is scanned backwards” – as in the changes of perspective in a kaleidoscope. The premiere was played by Uli Fussenegger (double bass) at the “Manifeste” Festival at IRCAM in the Centre Pompidou.

Marie Luise Maintz
(translation: Elizabeth Robsinson)
(from [t]akte 1/2016)