Erhard Grosskopf: Pleiaden – KlangWerk 11

Grosskopf's handling of musical time
zu Pleiades- Seven Similar Pieces for Piano and Orchestra

Volker Straebel:
»As a constellation, the Pleiades are removed from time, just like Grosskopf's works, although as contemporary art music is committed to time and seems to deny it.
In the “seven similar pieces” there are no analogies to the Greek mythology of the seven stars, musical figures for hunters and the hunted, goal-oriented movements and developments will be searched in vain here. Instead, agogically and rhythmically internally structured sections are strung together, the harmony of which remains static. No matter how different their characters may be, the contrast created by the lying tone or opening connection defies traditional formal thinking. This refusal also corresponds to the large number of 15 to 19 sections in the pieces, which only last four minutes. Their duration is in a certain way contingent: their material materializes in time, but is not shaped in it.
The individual sections are always characterized by an almost persistent material economy and formal consistency. Both characteristics stand for Grosskopf's handling of musical time: as a category in which musical material unfolds, but not as an original object of compositional design. In this way, the sounds, like the Pleiades, are detached from time and appear as more geometrically spatial forms that require time to be perceived.«

How does a musician understand his role in Grosskopfs Pleiades?

Ursula Oppens:
»Well, I would like to compare it with Mozart: With Mozart you can hear the smallest mistake clearly. That's why you really have to concentrate, but if we play well then we can hear it and it's so coherent and musical and exciting. That's why you have to keep these two aspects in mind, so that you do your duty very attentively and at the same time you participate inwardly in such a beautiful piece.
Concertos can be a stage for everything from pure virtuosity to genuine chamber music, and this is definitely a chamber piece where the piano and orchestra are totally intertwined, and part of that experience is knowing this passage goes along with the violins, and now when I'm with the trumpets, you really think about the groupings you're in, and then you realize how much you become part of the orchestra. This is really exciting.
I now also notice this increased concentration when listening to other pieces by Grosskopf when playing. You never play on the bat. I think the purpose of it is that it makes the sound a little bit different than it would if it were simpler.«
(from the interview with MR Entreß on the occasion of the premiere)

A house for music

Erhard Grosskopf:
"As in the thought of body and mind, the body seems more distinct, more tangible, more measurable, and therefore more real, and yet the mind shapes the body as water and wind shape sand, so the spirit of a work of art can transform us by shaping our soul touched. Or to put it another way: as a composer, I am like an architect who builds a house for the music and hopes that the music will move into this house – not like the content into the form, but like the spirit into the soul.«

KlangWerk 11: Listening

Frederic Rzewsky (composer, pianist): "Very nice, somehow timeless..."

Helmut Lachenmann (composer): »Such colorful music – This is such a thoroughly thought-out piece that I almost somehow feel related to its sound world and its aesthetic concept, although I am probably on a completely different path. Especially with its "renunciation" of any tonal escapades, this music is new = totally fresh.«

Wolfgang von Schweinitz (composer): »KlangWerk 11 is a grandiose, fantastic piece, with all these rich, wonderfully listened to auratic sounds!«

Heinz Weber (sound artist): »›Air in air‹, a complex building with the same color as a prism is created: you can look at it, you can also go in and be surrounded by it. Architecture: yes - open, permeable: That's how the music can move in there.«

Frank Badur (visual artist): “It's a piece that I've listened to carefully on several occasions, that really appeals to me and certainly shows parallels to my visual endeavors.

Walter Zimmerman (composer): »Dangerous orchestral piece.«

George Katter (composer): "No 'mess' with the audience."

Carola Bauckholt (composer): "Great, these large-scale movements."

Dirk Baecker (sociologist): "Now I heard it - wonderful."

Christoph Metzger (music, art, architecture scholar): »To be heard for me in the context of the large color surface painting of a Rothko and Newman – expansions in the surface that are finely differentiated and invite deeper listening.«

Peter Eötvös (composer, conductor): »Two weeks ago I listened to the recording with the score and very relaxed listening to your beautiful, calm sounds. I was happy to keep your sound world in my memory.«

Jörg Birkenkoetter (composer): 'Just listened. First impression: wonderful music!«

Jan M. Petersen (visual artist): »That radically boosted my listening habits.«

Helmut Oehring (composer): »I was an enthusiastic listener. Fascinating music, this KlangWerk 11.«

Matthias R. Entreß (music writer): »I find it absolutely incomprehensible in its dignity and beauty. The 'virtues' - that no moment is repeated, that the individual events that emerge do not shake the continuum of the temporal, which expresses an enormous confidence. – A wonderfully unearthly foreign body.«

Peter Michael Hamel (Composer): "Very strong!"

(Comments after performances and radio broadcasts on hr, BR, rbb, DLF)

program:

Erhard Grosskopf (* 1934)

Pleiades - Seven Similar Pieces
for piano and orchestra (2002) 29:16

[01] I 04:43
[02] II 04:37
[03] III 03:52
[04] IV 03:34
[05] V 05:13
[06] VI 03:17
[07] VII 04:01

Commissioned by MaerzMusik/Berlin Festival
Live recording of the premiere, March 16, 2003 · MaerzMusik

Ursula Oppens, piano
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB)
Vykintas Baltakas, conductor

[08] KlangWerk 11 for orchestra, op. 64 (2011) 31:29

Live recording, January 18, 2017 Ultrasonic Festival Berlin

German Symphony Orchestra Berlin (DSO)
Johannes Kalitzke, conductor

Total playing time: 60:46

World premiere recordings

Press:

Under the title "Slow Stars", Tim Caspar Boehme writes in the taz of March 28.03.2019, XNUMX about Grosskopf's "Plejades - seven similar pieces for piano and orchestra": "Just as the stars usually move slowly ... the music slowly moves in these seven untitled pieces… Instead of heading towards a recognizable destination, as one does on a journey, these sounds seem to circle around one another and gradually drift away from one another, into the open.”

The author is also particularly impressed by the second composition on the CD, KlangWerk 11, and ends with the words: “Grosskopf spans a color space over a period of half an hour, if you like, that constantly changes , revealing new facets or perspectives. With sounds that seem completely left to their own devices. And which one is only too happy to leave to their own devices.”

You can read the full review read here.

March 2019

The Berlin composer Erhard Grosskopf (*1934) is one of the most prominent composers of his generation, even if he never achieved the level of fame of colleagues like Helmut Lachenmann or Dieter Schnebel. This may be because his aesthetic never had anything superficially radical about it. The fact that the sensual discussion of the structural connections between time, form and timbre is Grosskopf's very special quality is particularly striking in the extensive color palette of the large orchestral apparatus. Two exciting live recordings from the Berlin new music festivals MaerzMusik and Ultraschall provide intensive insights into Grosskopf's orchestral sound thinking. (…) If the placeless sound of the “Pleiades” occasionally seems a bit brittle, “KlangWerk 11” (2011) presents itself as a charismatic orchestral piece whose stationary yet multicolored fluorescent sounds are reminiscent of György Ligeti. A music of strange beauty, with dramatic inlays incorporated into its finely hatched surface.

Dirk Wieschollek