12/2019
[…] Ne è risultato un pezzo dalle sonorità poderose e avvolgenti, con un carattere sinfonico, quasi wagneriano, contrame strumentali fitte, frenetiche (che ricordano il Boulez di Sur Incises), e l'effetto sonoro di pianoforti virtuali che circondano quelli reali , generando stranianti riflessi (che rimandano a Répons e …explosante-fixe…), with momenti di stasi colorati dagli echeggiamenti elettronici.
Gianluigi Mattietti
Critics Poll 2019
Always in the January issue, as in 2020, the Fono Forum asks its reviewers the question: Which five CDs impressed you the most in the past year? This time NEOS 11802 was named twice:
Susanne Benda sees Philippe Manoury's “Instructions for Time” as a captivating, crazy dialogue of mechanical and electronic virtuosity, “a Pied Piper-like sound orgy to astonish and melt away.”
Dirk Wieschollek writes: “Fulminant hubris for two real and four 'virtual' pianos. The sophisticated studio recording by WDR in co-production with the SWR Experimental Studio develops a tremendous drive.”
23.11.2019
Contemporary music, that's what this trio proves [Note: the author refers to a CD by the Trio Catch that was discussed at the same time], is not only a complex head and handiwork, but also overwhelming sensual pleasure for listeners and performers alike. The Grau-Schumacher piano duo does the same on their dazzling tour de force through Philippe Manoury's "Le temps, mode d'emploi": His CD, whose almost theatrical explosion has significantly promoted the SWR experimental studio, is virtuoso mental cinema for everyone senses. Who would have thought that two or three decades ago?
Suzanne Benda
Max Nyffeler regularly presents CDs of his choice under the “Beckmesser's Choice” section. In November 2019, the choice fell on Manoury's “Le temps – mode d'emploi”:
In "Le temps, mode d'emploi" Philippe Manoury once again shows courage for great form. He can afford it, because he is one of the most accomplished computer composers and knows how to transform conceptual thinking into exciting sound events. There are no snags in the almost one-hour piece. The live electronics multiplies the sounds of the GrauSchumacher piano duo into a four-channel spatial event, and thanks to a well-considered formal dramaturgy, the impression of self-sufficient electronic waving never arises - a rarity in a time when the compositional mind is often delegated to the machine. (...)
You can find the full article here.
Patrick Tröster wrote in the November 2019 issue under the title “Saitenschall, Saitenschwall – The GrauSchumacher Piano Duo inspires HOW TO USE by Philippe Manoury":
(...) Everything is alive on this CD recording! (...) Apart from the end, acoustically speaking, there are actually no breaks in this work. And therein lies the thrill of this composition and recording. With all the contrasting states of experience on the subject of time - stormy, calm, stretched, accelerated, circling around a point, wildly jumping back and forth, quiet, loud, measurable, rushing, subjective, objective - the listener never comes to rest due to the lack of pauses. Götz Schumacher and Andreas Grau summed it up.
On Saturday, September 14, 2019, Graham Rickson wrote in his column “Classical CDs Weekly”:
Or Various Ways to Describe Time, a brain-boggling hour-long “musical fresco” for two pianos and four virtual pianos, created with live electronics. Time, in Philippe Manoury's hands, is “the vessel containing and enveloping our lives”, its passing variously turbulent, troubled or calm. Pleasurable experiences whizz past in what seems like seconds, whilst tedious domestic duties go on forever. (…) NEOS's production values impress, doing full justice to a beguiling, haunting piece.
read the full article here
Gerardo Scheige wrote in issue 4#_2019:
(...) A listening pleasure is always the clarity of Andreas Graus and Götz Schumacher's highly concentrated and precise playing as well as the almost tangible sound pearls realized by José Miguel Fernández and Dominik Kleinknecht (SWR Experimentalstudio). With all acoustic transparency - equivalent to the artist name GrauSchumacher - the analogue and digital levels merge into a shapely meta-instrument. This becomes particularly clear, for example, in the enigmatic fifth or the extremely virtuoso seventh part of the composition.
Due to the storage medium SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc), it is also possible to listen to the work in its original multi-channel format with the appropriate hardware. And when after almost an hour, in which time has been stretched, compressed, grained, layered and divided, the last note fades away, the ear remains questioning and ecstatic at the same time. (...)
29.07.2019
plumbed
Just under an hour – Philippe Manoury doesn’t need any longer to explore the phenomenon of “time” musically. He is supported by the congenial GrauSchumacher Piano Duo. As is typical of the French composer's works, the duo lets two real-acoustic and four virtual, electronic-based pianos interact with each other. The time characters explored in eight sequences condense into a fascinating sonic cosmos.
Fritz Trumpi
28.07.2019
This is the first recording of a 58-minute score (2014) for two pianos and live electronics. Inspired by Stockhausen's Mantra and nodding to a Perec novel, Time, A User's Manual is an exhilarating study at once of the endless transformations of sonority and sound mass that technology allows and, more obscurely, of the ways in which any piece of music is time-bounded. Trills are a dominant feature, growing enormously towards the end, as though pure figuration has finally taken over.
Paul Driver
21.07.2019
A fresco about the forms of expression of the time
According to the composer, Philippe Manoury's 'Le Temps, mode d'emploi' for piano duo and live electronics is « a great musical fresco on different forms of expression of the time. » The two pianos are surrounded by four virtual pianos and a very complex device for the synthesis, processing and spatialization of sound. The almost hour-long piece was recorded for Neos by the GrauSchumacher Piano Duo and the Tonkünstler from SWR Experimentalstudio. The music is most haunting not in the virtuoso parts, which can sometimes be brutal when the sound of the piano duo is electronically processed and projected, but in the quieter or just quieter passages, when truly wonderful moods set in and the music is compellingly reflective becomes. – ♪♪♪♪
Remy Franck
www.pizzicato.lu
17.07.2019
Music by Philippe Manoury: Time is a matter of feeling
“A large musical fresco about different methods of shaping time,” is how Philippe Manoury (67) describes his work “Le temps, mode d'emploi” (Time, an instruction manual) for two pianos: he juggles for almost an hour French composer here with our subjective sense of time, uses live electronics to multiply the real concert grand pianos with virtual piano sounds from the speakers and alienate the sound into a bell-like quality.
Manoury's piano ode has found congenial interpreters in the GrauSchumacher Piano Duo, well-versed in everything from Bach to the latest music, and the team from the traditional SWR Experimentalstudio (live electronics): Whether raging tonal cascades or contemplative resting points, Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher unite in the First recording Studio precision with the concentrated energy of a concert - an intoxicating experience, even without listening instructions.
Awards & Mentions:
100 Best Records of the Year
Every year the Sunday Times publishes a list of the best 100 recordings of the year. The recording of Philippe Manoury's “Le temps, mode d'emploi” with the GrauSchumacher Piano Duo was included in the 2019 list.
German Record Critics' Prize
The jurors of the “German Record Critics’ Prize” association awarded the 2019 annual prize to the NEOS production “Philippe Manoury – Le temps, mode d'emploi”, recorded by the GrauSchumacher Piano Duo and the SWR Experimentalstudio.
At the beginning a pianistic-digital thunderstorm is brewing, at the end the tones only trickle softly from the loudspeakers. In between lies an adventurous journey through virtual soundscapes. Philippe Manoury, a composer with many years of experience in the field of live electronics, knows how to use the computer to make music that doesn't get boring. His time and space study "Le temps, mode d'emploi" expands the sound of the two pianos into an artificial hypersound that places the listener in the center of a dizzying musical event. The GrauSchumacher Piano Duo acts like a virtuoso, it supplies all the right colors, unleashes wild chases, crashing chords, scatters magical glitter. The production, which is demanding in terms of recording technology, benefits significantly from the work of the Freiburg experimental studio – and the fact that the work came into being at all is thanks to a commission from the Witten Days for New Chamber Music, which are always active at a high level. Sometimes everything just fits together!
(For the Annual Committee: Max Nyffeler)
https://schallplattenkritik.de/jahrespreise/1048-philippe-manoury-le-temps-mode-demploi
NEOS 11802
The jurors of the “German Record Critics' Award” association have recognized the NEOS production “Philippe Manoury – Le temps, mode d'emploi”, played by the GrauSchumacher Piano Duo and the SWR Experimentalstudio, by including it in its Quarterly Critics' Choice 4/2019.
From the beginning this music has something intoxicating and yet it is never foggy. With their inimitable love of the game, Andreas Grau and Götz Schumacher drive through a labyrinth, they are pursued and pursued. Hearing becomes pleasurable, timeless, right in the moment. Time stands still and then flies by in the next moment. How it works? The pianists give impulses to the digital playing field and have to react to its algorithms in other places by improvising. Sometimes technically virtuosic on the edge of playability, sometimes poetic in the deepest dark blue. This recording was created in the overall sound, in cooperation with the experimental studio, as a magical game with live electronics, which no one has mastered in its virtuosity like Philippe Manoury.
(For the jury: Margarete Zander)
https://schallplattenkritik.de/bestenlisten/1220-bestenliste-4-2019
