ANDREAS PFLUEGER – WORKS FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO
five pieces for two violins and piano (2012 / 2013)
The work, a composition commissioned by the »musica viva Basel« concert series, was premiered in 2013 on the occasion of a portrait concert at which only chamber music works by Andreas Pfluger were heard. It consists of five short movements: In all of them, small sound and/or rhythm cells - a kind of »musical nuclei«, which can also consist of just one note - develop into coherent, more complex musical sequences that either unfold or return to their original form fall back on the simple initial situation.
1 – A…
In this piece, the nucleus is a single tone. A three-bowed, rhythmically constantly shifting, heavily accented A triggers a more complex harmonic-melodic process in the form of a lyrical sequence, which is increasingly disturbed and destroyed by the dominant A.
2 - Fluctuations
Here solve the three tones g sharp''' / b'' / g'' ghostly, smeared sound sequences that interpenetrate, amplify, exaggerate, or even obliterate one another.
3 – waltz or something…
A waltz rhythm characterizes the course of this movement as a stylistic element (or nucleus) and appears again and again as a kind of »idée fixe«.
4-Meditation
Slowly intertwining spectral soundscapes penetrate each other here, constantly creating new timbres and flowing chords.
5 - Rhythms
This movement is based on a shift in emphasis to the point of urgent, obsessive impulses of an almost continuous sixteenth-note movement according to the algorithm of a Fourier series.
another wind for violin and piano (1989)
another wind is the first piece of chamber music that Andreas Pfluger composed for Katharina Schamböck. At that time she often played the famous Capriccio for solo violin The wind (The Wind) by Niccolò Paganini, and Pfluger took part in the hours of practice, nolens volens, as a passive listener. As a result, he had the desire another wind to compose, but with a piano part that is as virtuoso as the violin.
Meetings for violin and piano (1998)
Meetings was composed on the occasion of a chamber music concert in the canton of Aargau (Switzerland). In it, contrasting musical styles meet (Italian »incontrare«) as formative elements: noisy sounds merge into lyrical, almost melodic passages that are interrupted and overlaid by jazzy sequences. Meetings is rich in very different forms of expression. This work is also dedicated to Katharina Schamböck.
Sonata 1993 for violin and piano (1992 / 1993)
The Sonata 1993 was created in a phase of Andreas Pfluger's fatigue from the repetitive and slightly outdated avant-garde, which no longer deserved this name, but manifested itself in recurring innovative sound structures. This sonata is provocative in the sense that the composer dispenses with »avant-garde« compositional techniques and uses the classic sonata form in a direct and pure tonal language as an experiment. In 1996, Aleph Films commissioned Andreas Pfluger to orchestrate the 2nd movement for orchestra and solo violin for the production The Isle of the Dead (Die Toteninsel), a transmedial video production based on the painting of the same name by Arnold Böcklin. In it Katharina Schamböck played the solo violin appearing in the picture.
...stones... for violin solo (1996)
Andreas Pfluger also composed this virtuoso piece for Katharina Schamböck. In accordance with the wishes of the client, practically all the technical possibilities of the violin are exhausted: arc in front of, on and behind the jetty, pinched (also with the left hand), flageolets, improvised noises... Originally the work was called coprolite and is the result of the artistic processing of a rejected project funding application.
Andreas Pfluger
