Logo: takte
Das Bärenreiter Magazin
  • News
  • Portrait
  • Music Theatre
  • Orchestra
  • Contemp. Music
  • Complete Ed.
  • Publications
  • Calendar
  • Contact

Deutsch wechsle zu deutsch

Dissolution and apocalypse Beat Furrer’s latest composition before its premiere in Hamburg

Beat Furrer (Foto: EvS/Manu Theobald)

Following the success of his new opera „Violetter Schnee“ at the Berlin Staatsoper, Beat Furrer has new projects in sight.

„Spazio immergente“ translates as „Immeasurable space“. Beat Furrer has already set a text of visionary breadth several times from Lucretius’s treatise De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), a work which contains astonishing reflections on the phenomena and nature of being. One of these passages also became the central point of reference of his last opera Violetter Schnee: „... so that the walls of the universe do not suddenly disappear into immeasurable emptiness like flames ... and nothing, no remnant remains – deserted space.“

The eight verses contain nothing less than a vision of dissolution and apocalypse, and form the starting point for Beat Furrer for a tonal unfolding into different spaces. His new work Spazio immergente III for soprano, trombone and strings translates the first version into a larger orchestral context. The first version interleaved the two voices, soprano and trombone and carried the text into different sonorous spaces – with voice, language, breath. Through a densely-woven intertwining of various dynamic processes at the beginning, modulating tonal colours and voice-like colourations in the trombone, a virtuoso polyphony is created. In the fourth of five sections, otherwise all sung in Latin, the text suddenly switches to German, accquiring a special sense of the present, quasi-spoken by both the performers. The divided string colours translate harmonic structures, a model of movement and the tonal textures of the two solo parts and intensify them.

 Marie Luise Maintz
(from “[t]akte” 1/2019) 

<- Back to: Orchestra

Deutsch wechsle zu deutsch

Orchestra

“The pure joy”. Frank Peter Zimmermann on Bohuslav Martinů’s violin concertos
Not always just the “Danse macabre”. The symphonic poems of Camille Saint-Saëns
Dvořák’s most popular sacred work. A new edition of the Mass in D major op. 86
Gold, silver, purple. Matthias Pintscher completes his “Shirim” cycle
Mahler’s spirits. Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini’s “Spiriti” for orchestra
„magic-story pro piano“. Bohuslav Martinů’s 4th Piano Concerto
What is truth? Miroslav Srnka investigates a big question
The poet speaks. Charlotte Seither’s orchestral work for Clara Schumann’s 200th anniversary
Dieter Ammann’s Piano Concerto now in Munich
Funeral rites. Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini encounters Gustav Mahler
A new take on the New World, Dvořák’s IX. Symphony edited by Jonathan Del Mar
Bohemian music
Mozart’s C Minor Mass in a new reconstruction. First performance with Kent Nagano
“mein gröstes werk”. The new edition of Beethoven’s “Missa solemnis”
Many mysteries solved. Beethoven’s Leonore Overtures in a new critical edition
ImprintData Protection