infotext:
SPACIOUS AND WEIGHTLESS As filigree and aesthetically balanced Eckert's scores are accommodating to the viewer, as decisively, almost pedantically, they demand of the performers an extremely differentiated spectrum of sounds and dynamic gradations that push the limits of what is feasible, mark the edges of perception and technical ability, but are binding are, extremely binding even. Gestures and the most concrete performance ideas are formulated in this way, just waiting to be transformed into sounds and thus brought to life, for example in a piece From the inside - grain for viola solo, which from the outset provides for ›breathless‹ scales between four and five times pianissimo and allows the single note to dissolve into a sound surface roughened by overtone spectra, which is inherently moving and yet almost monochrome. In this constant movement, trills resemble a vibration that only pauses for a short time. As in NEN VII for flute, cello and tape or in Shafts – les nuages d'automne for flute, viola and harp, at the moment the sound unfolds, the beginning of passing, of a permanent change of perspective, is noticeable. The calligraphic fragility of the writing is unmistakable in Eckert's scores. The notes are recorded on paper exclusively by hand, as the fixation of the imaginary sound concept seems to be part of the genesis of the work. As soon as the instrumental cast itself provides only an intimate chamber music formation, the score formats refuse to conform to the usual norms. The expansive and at the same time weightless nature of the difficult handwriting inevitably calls to mind Eckert's visual oeuvre, his ink drawings or the photo cycle light blackened, who makes light reflections on foil surfaces visible as a kind of ›negative shadow‹, specific moments of movement that permeate both his pieces and his pictures. For Eckert, the musical and graphic work goes hand in hand, so that his pictures can definitely be understood as a visualization of music. In order to make a sound happening in works with instruments and electronics concretely visible, Eckert first creates a so-called sonogram, which can show the temporal progression of frequencies within a period of time. This type of visual sound representation vividly demonstrates how crucial the overtone component is for the subtle change in a sound spectrum and thus represents a central moment in Eckert's musical work. Because for years the fragility and at the same time exactness of such a work structure have corresponded to his compositional concerns. Extreme sophistication, subtlety and richness of detail in the sense of inner complexity are characteristic of all his pieces. Sophisticated overtone spectra give his music and the moments – both inner and outer – a specific sonority, which in turn is an expression of the immanent structures. His photo cycle is analogous: as weightless and ethereal as these images appear, they are the result of the precisely calculated opposite, the result of material (foils) forced into certain layers and positions, which is exposed to light projections and thus gives the impression of immediate lightness. This conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy - this transformation of inner forces - creates movement impulses in Eckert's music that grip the listener, regardless of whether he can understand the process technically or not. Meret Forster |
program:
[01] 11:05 p.m Study on Nelly Sachs (2004/2008) for soprano, flute, harp, accordion, percussion, violin and double bass
[02] 07:59 p.m From the inside - grain (2003) for solo viola
[03] 10:30 p.m No VII (2007) for flute, cello and tape
[04] 15:04 p.m Shafts – les nuages d'automne (2002) for flute, viola and harp
[05] 05:29 p.m Sound Spaces II (1991/2000) for piccolo and tape
[06] 08:21 p.m field 3 (2005) for flute and harp
[07] 11:51 p.m like clouds around time (1996/1997) for soprano, flute, accordion and percussion
[08] 07:18 p.m threads 1st Part (2006) for flute, cello, accordion and harp
Total: 78:27
ensemble reflection K
Sarah Maria Sun, soprano ∙ Beatrix Wagner, flute ∙ Eva Ignatjeva, harp
Eva Zöllner, accordion ∙ Guillaume Chastel, drums ∙ Lenka Zupkova, violin
Kirstin Maria Pientka, viola ∙ Gerald Eckert, cello/conductor
Kirstjan Sigurleifsson, double bass
Press:
06/09
09.05.2009
The sublime physics of sounds
The composer Gerald Eckert makes them audible
There's something in the sound. Other tones, noises, rhythms, light or dark, dreams, fears, promises of happiness. You can combine tones with others to form melodies or chords, it's quick and easy to remember, you can take your catchy tune home with you. But that is like walking across a meadow and crushing heaps of life, differentiated, developed, sometimes highly organized life. It takes the explorer to show us this life and give us a sense of its worth and beauty.
The composer Gerald Eckert is an explorer of the inner workings of tones that is as patient as he is relentless. The fact that people in Berlin hardly know the music, or even the name of this man, is basically a scandal. Because Eckert not only writes perhaps the most sublime and differentiated scores of our time in terms of sound, he also structures the sound in a way that bears witness to the greatest intellectual tension and, as a result, is both fragile and definite at the same time.
He was born in Nuremberg in 1960 and initially studied physics and mathematics. He made music on the electric bass in a jazz rock formation, and later continued his experiments on the cello. He didn't write his first notes until he was 20, and he began studying composition with Walter Zimmermann and Nicolaus A. Huber at the age of 29. Today he lives in Eckernförde and spreads new music in Schleswig-Holstein with his “ensemble reflection K” and the “Provinzlärm” festival. On Thursday he presented two of his works in the “Composing at the Time” series at the “Hanns Eisler” University of Music, “Nothing, Lost Shadows” for ensemble and “Trial about Nelly Sachs” for soprano and ensemble.
You can feel Eckert's scientific influence at every moment. Perhaps his music is inconceivable without Webern's poetics of quiet, without Xenakis' mathematical approaches, without Lachenmann's tonal alienations. But Eckert reshapes all of this from the point of view of the physics of sound. He explores the overtone spectrums of the instruments down to the last detail, inventing daring techniques to make them audible, as multitones in the wind instruments, as microtonal harmonics in the strings, as inharmonious vibrations of a suspended sheet of thunder: this music constantly oscillates around the boundary between sound and noise . Behind this colorful, at the same time strangely veiled event, there are artfully veiled, multiply broken structures. Eckert is interested in the energy of the moment and how it transforms, how its colors change, how it moves in space.
How little is that said! What his music wants can be translated less into words than into images, which Eckert has been producing since 1989 using a wide variety of techniques, from ink to photography. They are images in which movement has taken place, which have absorbed time - for example in the abstract photographs as exposure time. The old dream of the avant-garde, to get out of the overload of culture and out of the cloudiness of the discourses that have always been present, has been realized in Eckert's music in one of its most beautiful forms.
Peter Uehling
06.11.2008
Sound spaces of chamber music
Eckert, Gerald: Chamber Music
Gerald Eckert (born in 1960) is not only a musician. With that alone he would hardly be able to compose as he does. Because early on he grouped his interests in physics and mathematics, painting, architecture and literature around music, which ranges from finely engraved to dense, intense sounds.
The latter area found its expression in the “Study about Nelly Sachs” (2004/08), which, alongside the compositions for instruments and tape (“Nen VII”, “Klangräume II”), leaves the strongest impression on the CD.
19.10.2008
Too much of a good thing?
Interpretation: 
Sound quality: 
repertoire value:
Booklets: 
The label NEOS offers those who want to take a closer look at Gerald Eckert's music ample opportunity to do so with a new, sonically excellent release. After corresponding productions released in recent years by col legno (2004) and edition zeitklang (2006), this is now the third portrait CD dedicated to the work of the composer and cellist who was born in Nuremberg in 1960 and now lives in the Baltic Sea resort of Eckernförde dedicated. The fact that this time there are no ensemble or orchestral works in favor of chamber music contributes to greater consistency, but the overall effect of the disc falls behind earlier productions. Because overall the record suffers a little from the musical and tonal restrictions associated with the selection of works. This is reinforced by Eckert's treatment of the topoi of new music, which are now ubiquitous in contemporary music, which is certainly not intended to be clichéd, but is sometimes a bit too intrusive.
They include playing on the edges of the hearing threshold and dynamic feasibility, which fortunately is occasionally interrupted by louder passages, but also the emergence of characteristic figurations and timbres or noises when using certain instruments or instrumental combinations, which occasionally tends to be formulaic. The fact that the vocal part in the 'Studie über Nelly Sachs' for soprano, flute, harp, accordion, percussion, violin and double bass (2004/08), which was not entirely convincing from a technical point of view by soprano Sarah Maria Sun, is due to the unoriginal compositional treatment affected by this seems all the more regrettable as this piece best illustrates the great skills of the composer in dealing with timbre transitions on an instrumental level: like Eckert, namely the colors of bowed percussion instruments or accordion (subtly realized by percussionist Guillaume Chastel and accordionist Eva Zöllner) imperceptibly into one another is extremely fascinating and proves enough how intensively he deals with the sound and the conditions of its creation.
In addition, however, other sound situations also appear again and again: the way in 'Ffäden' for flute, violoncello, accordion and harp (2006) accent attacks of the flute are supported by the harp entries contributed by Eva Ignatjeva is repeated in pieces like 'Field 3.' for flute and harp (2005), as well as the overblowing of flute tones, which is used more often due to its specific effect, or the way in which long tone durations are developed. As a listener, you get the impression that they are working with a limited repertoire of expressive moments, which is occasionally taken up again in a formulaic way. It may be true that – as Meret Forster writes in her short but far too little meaningful booklet essay – 'extreme sophistication, subtlety and richness of detail in the sense of an inner complexity' are characteristic of all of Eckert's pieces: the listener this is sometimes only communicated to a limited extent due to similar timbre progressions, especially since that certain something that can be perceived as a communicative element when perceiving Eckert's compositions in live situations and can give them a special tension, here - especially in 'wie clouds around the "Times Lay" for soprano, flute, accordion and percussion (1996/97) - missing.
In addition, the music, due to its peculiarities, limits the members of the composer-led 'Ensemble Reflexion K' to a narrow repertoire of techniques and therefore offers them little scope for the actual development of their abilities. While the violinist Lenka Župková and the double bass player Kristján Sigurleifsson are forced to stay in the background with their playing, this is evident in solo pieces such as Kristin Maria Pientka's gripping performance of 'Vom Innen – Kornung' for solo viola (2003) or Beatrix Wagner's virtuoso sound Composition 'Klangräume II' for piccolo and tape (1991/2000), what great interpretative potential is hidden here. For the sake of the performers and in view of the fact that the confrontation with the work of other contemporaries would have been positive as an alternative to Eckert's works, I would have chosen (as realized on the first ensemble CD released by Ambitus in 2003) for the ensemble that according to its own understanding 'concentrates, consistently, critically and conceptually with the work of the most diverse composers from Germany and abroad', a more varied program is desired. There would have been enough options for this, as one comes across such promising names as Nicolaus A. Huber or Gordon Kampe in the concert programs of the current year. The CD production could at least have been significantly enriched by this and by omitting one or the other of Eckert's works.
dr Stefan Drees
17.09.2008
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