Nikolaus Brass: String Trios

THE THREE IS A WORLD OF ITS OWN
About writing and playing string trios

Klaus-Peter Werani: In your work there is a noticeable accumulation of pieces for classical chamber music ensembles, duos, trios, string quartets. We have now recorded your three string trios, written over a period of more than 30 years. What does writing »classical« chamber music mean to you?

Nikolaus Brass: I think the preference for the "classical" chamber music instrumentation is actually based on the "classical" role that chamber music has always played for composers - namely things that have been expanded in larger instrumentations, again into a narrower, sharper compositional focus bring to. Nowhere is a composer so challenged as in the limitation of means. For me, writing in a trio or in a quartet means exposing myself to the enormous potency with which these genres have been charged over the past 250 years. At first, however, I was completely naïve.

Klaus-Peter Werani: Your first trio came about before your first quartet.

Nikolaus Brass: I wrote my first string trio in 1981/82 to avoid the quartet. Naive as I was, I thought trio writing would be easier. As I then realized: a big mistake. I actually had no idea. I knew the Webern Trio, the Schönberg Trio and the absolutely incomparable Trio by Mozart, but otherwise? I had no experience. There, still "protected" by the instructions I had received from Lachenmann, I threw myself into a task whose scope I could not estimate. For me it was a piece of the beginning, hence the title: Morgenlob. A tender beginning: My first child had just been born. I designed a fragile, fragile, endangered world, better: a tender, questioning »coming into the world«. Seen in this way, the music has a certain narrative structure. The sparse use of quotations, such as »I am glorious, I am beautiful«, from Bach's Cantata No. 49, also contributes to this. The world premiere was in Darmstadt in 1984 during the summer courses, performed by the German string trio. It was only while working on this piece that I realized what a "hot potato" I had touched with the genre of string trio.

Klaus-Peter Werani: After that there was a longer break and your 1st string quartet in 1996 formally followed a new strategy.

Nikolaus Brass: Yes, here I first tried to lay a clear, manageable foundation through the short form and the three-part structure of the movements. The answer to that was my large-scale 2nd string quartet, which – I thought – would then be my quartet, and then that would be good. But that wasn't it, and the confrontation with trio and quartet didn't stop.

Klaus-Peter Werani: I see a clear relationship in your respective second works - whether for quartet or trio - compared to the first. While the first shows audible narrative strands, this continuity is broken in the second works. It is as if you had designed islands of sound, music without transition, fields that border but do not touch. Don't interact. How did this shape come about?

Nikolaus Brass: I wanted to contrast the narrative structures of my earlier pieces. I developed forms that consisted of inconspicuous, but nevertheless clearly configured musical modules that were designed metrically, harmonically, in their different density or gestural characteristics in such a way that they could be linked together almost endlessly. You can also call it a game with building blocks. In the second quartet and in the second trio, entitled Glanz, I worked like that, trying to write seamless music that changes from one state to another without "motivation", and in which only the sequence of the individual pieces at the end is somewhat can be seen from the whole. In addition, I was fascinated by the shimmer and the "shine" of the overtones that I could never quite control. A shine that eludes.

Klaus-Peter Werani: In your third and last string trio, one development seems important to me: the individual emerges more strongly. There are passages in which the individual instruments express themselves very clearly as individual voices, the others step back and remain silent.

Nikolaus Brass: That is a correct observation. But what seems peculiar to me is that the isolation of the voices in a trio has a different quality than when it occurs in a quartet context. For me, the trio always retains the character of unity, even in the emphasis on individual voices, the unity, while an isolation in the quartet quickly has the »Primarius-like« quality: one plays, the others accompany. On the other hand, every situation in a trio – even if, say, two are silent and only one is playing – remains a situation closely related to the trinity. It is as if the triad never dissolves, the three is always involved, it is a world of its own.

Klaus-Peter Werani: I feel the same way when playing in a trio. The equality of voices is even greater, much greater than in the quartet. Only when everyone plays as a kind of "Primarius" and contributes this attitude does this special unity develop, which is more individual and at the same time more closed than in a quartet. You need a bigger presence as a player for the trio. While I'm looking for homogeneity in a quartet, I'm looking for profile in a trio. There are really three individuals speaking.

Nikolaus Brass: But always out of a relation to the unity of the three voices.

Klaus-Peter Werani: Your third string trio lives out of impulse. How did it come about to write this work? There was no order.

Nikolaus Bass: All string trios were created without a commission. There were two reasons for the third: I wasn't satisfied with the second. All of a sudden, a whole group of compositions struck me as too "self-sufficient." By that I mean the - actually desirable - resting in oneself. Pieces that seem to be about nothing but themselves became suspicious to me. I thought I need to change shine. But that didn't work. I had to write a new play. The second, but closely related, impulse was a feeling of inadequacy towards myself as a composer: In many pieces I had repeatedly "let the flow run its course", not defining myself metrically and rhythmically, leaving a lot to the interpreter, always to the music given a lot of time. Now I wanted to write a rhythmically and metrically very composed piece, one that is perpetuated by a never-ending inner tension, a piece of pure energy.

Klaus-Peter Werani: What is the subtitle all about?

Nikolaus Brass: signs, drawings - drawings. The English word is important here: »to draw« also means to pull something out with effort. Bring something to light. In 2008, a few years before I wrote the piece, I had seen an exhibition by Richard Serra at Kunsthaus Bregenz: Drawings – Work Comes Out of Work. I was very impressed. And on my desk were small reproductions of some of these all-black images. These little reproductions got me going. I wrote music that made me think: As long as you can, don't let go. And even if the movement freezes, the tension remains. And in the background I imagined you, the TrioCoriolis, as possible interpreters - without even asking you. And then I thought: take a risk! What was the process of approaching the piece like for you?

Klaus-Peter Werani: You can't rehearse the piece for the exact vertical. You first have to shape these horizontal lines and develop trust in your own strength with which you have to »get through« this piece. You shouldn't charge it too much, everything should be full of energy, but it has to remain audible. This created a strong field of tension in us at first. I mean, it was only after a few performances and now during the production that we managed to find the balance, or that tension has dissolved.

Nikolaus Brass: Yes, now while listening I had a strong feeling: that these three pieces form something like a unit, that they - over a period of more than 30 years - unfold something like a thought. You can't know that when you're writing the individual work. I now see something of my identity in the trios.