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WHY A BRASS QUINTET? »One likes to associate a brass quintet with a musical jester troupe, perhaps wearing white sneakers and jumping around on stage in a choreographically organized manner. This is certainly something fine and has its justification. But it's not what the ensemble stands for," says Matthew Sadler, the London trumpeter of the Ensemble Fokus, which came together in Hanover in 2009 to continue their studies together with Mike Svoboda at the Musik-Akademie Basel. The ambition of the quintet is quite different: this musical formation should finally be taken seriously by listeners and composers alike! They want to be for brass quintet what the Arditti Quartet was (and still is) for string quartet: a standard-setting ensemble of contemporary music. The works on this recording and their execution are proof of this in sound. game changer. Hidden was contributed by the SWR for the »ars nova« series in Ravensburg 2016 Vassos Nicolau (*1971) and launched by the ensemble Focus. Nicolaou sums up his work like this: »I wanted to compose a wind quintet that sounds different from what one would expect from wind quintets – primarily through the almost universal use of mutes. These filter the actual sound and give the ensemble a metallic sound quality. The tuba turns out to be the real one game changer (›game changer‹) out – and it is Hidden, as this instrument is generally regarded as the least important in such an instrumentation, but turns out to be the most important here.« Luciano Berio (1925–2003), the only composer on this recording who is no longer alive, composed Call (1985, for two trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba) on the occasion of the opening ceremony of a shopping mall. In the piece, Berio anticipates the audience's reaction to the music itself, building in a meta joke. Short, effective and uncompromisingly modern, is Call nevertheless, it is probably the most catchy work of the six pieces presented here and it is no coincidence that it has become a standard concert opening for wind quintet. One of the great advantages of contemporary music is that the composers themselves can be consulted about the works, provided they do not refuse (as Galina Ustvolskaya did) to comment beyond the score. Benedict Mason (*1954) is thankfully not such a case. He wrote about his Brass Quintet (1989): »Since a brass quintet often has to fall back on arrangements, a concert can be just as enjoyable as that of a string quartet, but it can never fulfill the same demands on the repertoire. And here is a work so diabolical that you basically need an Arditti brass quintet - or at least demand that there should be such an ensemble. The piece demands a great deal of delicacy and sophistication, like a string quartet, over and above the expected robustness of a normal brass composition. The tuba in particular needs the grace of a pirouette-twisting baby elephant, so to speak stand out to produce. And yet everything is entirely intended for brass: the piece is not an arrangement and would not be suitable for a string quartet. Here we see the world of 'sessions', carefully dissected into pieces, with pauses for reflection... waiting. Lush chords and drops, licks and fills, like in improvised big band moñas, shreds of salsa picked up from the floor of the recording studio, all strictly controlled and with the highest demands on ensemble playing, often as quietly as possible, but without the need for mutes to help . Merengue jams slip sleepily in the heat, hints of son and cigar smoke dissolving in the overtone series, pacing up and down, in all instruments, in layers and in canon. A long development follows; here all possibilities of playing with mutes are explored - including the so-called hotel (or practice) mute for the faintest sounds very far (an effect, if you will, as if music is being heard on the TV from another part of the hotel). Back to the great outdoors, another classic: A Balkan band makes a brief appearance echoed in tricky time signatures, ›inegalité‹ and metrical shifts. After the piece languished for years, I'm glad that the Ensemble Focus has now taken on it with such sensitivity. The premiere took place in November 2014 - coincidentally on the 25th anniversary of the composition.« If every instrument or instrumental formation somehow has its Paganini Studies, Benedict Masons might Brass Quintet play this role equally well for brass quintet. The remarks of Pascal Dusapin (*1955) about Punch; Dyade pour quintet de cuivres are as brief as the work itself: »I stumbled across the title of the work – Italian for 'room' – in the book of the same name by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben and decided on it partly because I liked the sound of the word and partly because of the appropriate associations it made. What sounds in the work, however, is more likely to be described with the subtitle: dyad in this context means two philosophical principles that complement each other. However, the word can also be interpreted to describe a pair of related objects or two intertwined elements. Or in the biological sense also a chromosome consisting of two chromatids – why Rooms significantly dedicated to my twins Alice and Théo on their 2nd birthday (1991).« Knowing this, especially listeners with young children at home will discover a domestic scene of two toddlers whining – and then comforting each other – rather than a complex philosophical background. Radix (2013) was focused on by the ensemble Jarko Hartikainen (*1981) and in return dedicated to the ensemble. The composer describes his work as follows: »Radix explores the extreme fringes of what is technically possible for brass instruments. At its core, it is based on two techniques: air tones, where air is simply blown through the instrument without necessarily creating an identifiable pitch - and the so-called 'hand pop', where the open hand is struck on the mouthpiece. Depending on the position of the fingers, a sound emerges... ›Beauty‹ lies in overcoming the everyday. In this respect, to be beautiful is to be radical. ›Radical‹, in turn, can be traced back to the Latin root ›radix‹: ›the root of things‹. In the act of completely rethinking a fundamental aspect of everyday life, we can, ideally, discover something downright earth-shatteringly beautiful.« Sofia Gubaidulina (*1931) is widely recognized as one of the most important modern composers of the 20th century. Unfortunately, one looks in vain for a brass quintet in their oeuvre. But there are Quattro (1974) for two trumpets and two trombones. This expresses contemplation and explosiveness almost simultaneously, and the rests are almost as important as the notes. It is too good a piece not to be included here simply for the lack of horn and/or tuba. When it became apparent that, at least by the high standards of this recording, a non-trombone player could hardly do the second trombone part justice, Mikael Rudolfsson overdubbed his first part with the specially recorded track of the second. Jens F Laurson program:
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