Shimmering heat, a gentle breeze. A car drives along a highway and disappears on the horizon. The beginning of the solo double bass piece things happening refers to the impression of a film scene by David Lynch in the Mexican desert. Borboudakis constructs spaces. Sound spaces, spaces for association. Situations and relationships, moods and images, texts, words, and myths inspire the composer. This creation of sounds is closely linked to various processes of transformation, especially electronic processes. This can be understood by looking at the five solo works presented here. Noises, tones, phrases, motifs, chords, and gestures become sound aggregates. These move from one state to the next, clash with each other, and can be precisely localized.
Long-standing friendships with individual musicians from the ensemble der/gelbe/klang, intensive collaboration, and experimentation with the possibilities of each instrument allowed Borboudakis to write the pieces specifically for them. Thus, each piece tells its own story. They are mood pictures that confront the performers with their own limits—physically and mentally—and take the listeners on a journey. Synthetic alienation processes deprive the sound of its physicality, splitting it. This important stylistic device creates intensity and inner tension.
Programme
Minas Boboudakis (*1974)
[01] light & ashes for clarinet and electronics (2015)
[02] things happening for one double bass player (2021)
on the poem Wilson Opera Monologue by Nora Gomringer
[03] Chrysalis simultaneous variations for tempered and microtonal vibraphone (2024)
Threads for cello solo (2024)
[04] chanting threads
[05] dense threads
[06] invisible threads
[07] broken threads
[08] aerial threads
[09] Le cri de Marsyas for baroque oboe and electronics (2023)
Total playing time: 72:49
der/gelbe/klang Oliver Klenk, clarinet Sophie Lücke, double bass Mathias Lachenmayr, vibraphones Katerina Giannitsioti, cello Claire Sirjacobs, baroque oboe Mathis Nitschke, sound director
First recordings
Biographies
Minas Borboudakis was born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1974 and has lived in Germany since 1992. He studied piano and composition in Munich and Hamburg. His work has been recognized with awards including the Christoph and Stephan Kaske Foundation Prize and the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize. In his compositions, he deals with philosophical and mythological questions—for him, composing is a way of engaging in dialogue with humanistic themes and reinterpreting them in the present day. His musical idiom moves between emotion and intellect, poetry and realism. His music is characterized by impulsiveness, microtonality, rich timbres, and expressive gestures. His work focuses on large cycles such as ROAI I–V, an exploration of flow based on Heraclitus's phrase “Panta Rhei,” and Cycloids I–III for keyboard instruments, which deals with the question of circularity and constantly mutating repetition. In photonic constructions I–III (for orchestra and ensemble formations), he depicts the dual nature of light through oscillating sounds. In addition to numerous solo, chamber music, and orchestral works, music theater plays a central role, for example in liebe.nur liebe (2007, Bavarian State Opera), Enheduanna (2015, Glasgow School of Art), and Z (2018, National Opera of Athens). Borboudakis' music is performed in leading European concert halls such as the Berlin Philharmonic and the Elbphilharmonie, as well as at major festivals and concert series such as the Bregenz Festival and Bavarian Radio's musica viva. Performers of his music include the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian State Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as artists such as Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano, Jonathan Nott, and Constantinos Carydis. As a lecturer and music educator, he develops projects for young creative minds in collaboration with various institutions. Minas Borboudakis has been a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts since 2022.
der/gelbe/klang is dedicated to contemporary music in all its aesthetic diversity, curious, eager to experiment, and always on the lookout for contemporary forms of expression. Founded in 2020, the ensemble quickly became an important protagonist of new music in Germany. It has made recordings for Bayerischer Rundfunk and the NEOS label; for ZDF/ARTE, der/gelbe/klang recorded the music of Olav Lervik for F. W. Murnau's silent film classic Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror. Guest performance invitations have taken them to Austria, France, Azerbaijan, and Switzerland. Several works have been written for the ensemble, including compositions by Anahita Abbasi, Vykintas Baltakas, and Valerio Sannicandro. Guest conductors have included Vladimir Jurowski, Emilio Pomàrico, Pierre-André Valade, and Vimbayi Kaziboni. der/gelbe/klang is also active in music theater, collaborating regularly with the Bayerischen Theaterakademie August Everding, including a highly acclaimed performance of Philipp Venables' chamber opera 4.48 Psychose.
Direct contact with composers of the younger and youngest generations is fundamentally important to the ensemble. The development of cross-genre projects, especially those combining visual elements, is also central to its work. This expansion of the concept of concert performance is essential for the ensemble—a conviction that also led to the choice of the name der/gelbe/klang, after Wassily Kandinsky's ingenious concept of a holistic “stage composition.” In 2021, der/gelbe/klang was awarded the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize.
