I attended a total of three concerts for this year's MaerzMusik Festival. The last event I attended was a concert by the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, featuring four chamber works. The program is essentailly a "who's who" of the cutting-edge contemporary scene. That, coupled with my strong affinity for high-modernism, spectralism, and complex rhythmic structures, I thought that this concert was right up my alley.
The first piece was Tine Surel Lange's Apotheosis (2023), for contrabass clarinet, electric guitar, cello, double bass, and video. This is a multimedia work that explores the "organic" through synthetic and heavily processed sounds. The orchestration is bottom-heavy, focusing on the dark, grainy textures of the contrabass clarinet and the electric guitar’s ability to sustain and distort. The video isn't just a backdrop; it’s an integrated "instrument" that dictates the ritualistic pace of the music. I enjoyed this piece as it utilises deep, unusual timbres (woohoo for contrabass clarinet) and multimedia elements.
Then, they performed Ana Maria Rodriguez's Nomenclature of Colours (2024), for string trio, electronics, resonating gongs, and video projections. Rodriguez is known for her "algorithmic" approach to composition, often using electronics to extend the acoustic properties of instruments. This piece felt like a study in synesthesia, where the electronics and resonating gongs create a "halo" around the string trio, blurring the lines between pitch and pure colour. Different sections of the piece corresponded to different colours, and while I do not experience synesthesia myself, I thought that this was a close approximation.
After the break, there was Fang-Yi Lin's GUA (2024), for solo percussion, based on poems by Hu Chang-sung. This is a highly athletic and ritualistic solo percussion piece. The title and poetic inspiration suggest a narrative arc, but the music itself is abstract, focusing on the sheer variety of attack and decay possible in a modern percussion setup.
The final piece was Zesses Seglias' ...a drop on my fingers, two lips as a fuzz, a sun on our heads (is the pattern) (2026), for ensemble and optional light installation. This piece features "instrumental concrete" music, where the sounds of the instruments are used in non-traditional ways to create a fragile, flickering sonic environment, augmented by a light installation. I mean, it featured boxes filled with crumpled paper, and performers were required to make interesting sounds of atypical objects. This is perhaps the piece that I enjoyed the least, though I should say I still had fun listening to it.
Overall, I had fun with this concert. It felt like it is almost perfectly curated for me, or for someone who enjoys the "hardcore" contemporary aesthetic. It avoids the "holy minimalism" and the "neo-romanticism" that I typically find uninteresting. The heavy presence of multimedia (video and light) and electronics across the program ensured a sensory experience that matched my preference for complex, modern art.
