Romero / Zafraan Ensemble - Ins Offene - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This new WERGO album brings together first recordings in studio quality of works composed especially for Ensemble Resonanz. Composer Enno Poppe has always been drawn to string instruments because of the nearly infinite possibilities to vary their pitch, playing techniques, and sound qualities. Ensemble Resonanz, based in Hamburg, has received international acclaim for it's precise intonation, it's fresh interpretations of both contemporary and traditional works, and it's inquisitive openness to unconventional musical formats. Poppe's InchWaldInch [Woods] for four string quartets (2009/10) has been a permanent feature of the ensemble's touring repertoire for many years. With it's fractal relationships between the four strings of four instruments in four string quartet groupings, InchWaldInch gives us the impression of directly participating in the composer's thought processes. The collaboration with renowned soloist Tabea Zimmermann for Poppe's concerto InchFilzInch [Felt] for viola and chamber orchestra (2013/14) was particularly enjoyable for all concerned. Zimmermann combines technical virtuosity with a willingness to master unusual challenges in this work, she plays an endless and permanently shifting intonation curve within an amorphous atmosphere of 1/3-tone intervals. The result sounds like music from another world, and the inspiration came from Poppe's experiences with traditional Korean music. InchStoffInch [Material] was originally composed in 2015 for Ensemble Musikfabrik in Cologne using strings, woodwinds, and brass (available on WER 73952}, but in 2018 Poppe created the more homogeneous version for string orchestra heard here.

Mason's work is the result of an intensive exchange with the musicians of ENSEMBLE RECHERCHE. He leaves the Well-Tempered Sound to let floating states arise and disappear. At the tonal center is the piano, with an enraptured mood that appears like a flicker above the sounds of the ensemble. Mason works four-dimensionally with space and time. Sounds move along their paths like meteors, fade away and dive into infinity. He composes sounds, noises and spaces in the course of time. At the end of the piece, the cello is left all alone, lost in an ecstatic semi-improvisation, while the other instruments wistfully penetrate into the distance.

Yongbom Lee's music is characterized by continuous streams of sound and a finely balanced interplay between instrumental and electronic elements. Shaped by his intercultural background, Lee is particularly interested in the intersections and distances between contrasting concepts - such as the foreign and the familiar, or the conscious and the unconscious. Booklet author Leonie Reineke elaborates InchAmbiguity is another concept associated with the focus on spaces, a theme running through all the compositions on the album. Suspended states, associative developments, as when dreaming, and musical situations in which anything can develop from anything else recur time and again.InchThe work InchImaginary RoomsInch, performed by Ensemble Recherche, moves between a progressive narrative and fragmentary snapshots. In InchDépaysementInch, the composer again explores the coexistence of opposing ideas the first movement grants the musicians of the Broken Frames Syndicate improvisational freedom, while the second is written in a strictly traditional manner. The title piece, InchContinuous DeformationInch, for cello (Kyubin Hwang) and live electronics (Yongbom Lee), reflects his engagement with neuroscience - linking the performer's sound production and brain activity, and guiding listeners through overtone landscapes.