The outstanding Solistenensemble Reflexion K from Eckernförde, which performed as a duo in 2023, appears during this year’s Klangwerkstatt Berlin in orchestra size. It presents sound universes with a large ensemble: microtonal movements and swirls on the iridescent sound surface in Liisa Hirsch’s Autarkes (2020), sounds of great depth and power in Elnaz Seyedi’s Questo che a notte balugina (2023) and an exuberant wealth of timbres with constantly changing sound states in Gerald Eckert’s Sopra di noi … (niente) (2014). In addition, Trichter, Klee und Amsel (Funnel, Clover and Blackbird), a new work by Stefan Streich takes up Eckert’s specific large orchestration and leads it into completely different sound spaces.

The instrumentation of the last two pieces is exceptional: with 21 instrumentalists as large as a chamber orchestra – albeit almost entirely soloists in all parts, including the multiple strings – it is characterized by extreme timbres. The very lowest instruments are disproportionately represented: two contrabass clarinets, a contrabassoon, two bass or contrabass trombones, a double bass. And the five cellos are contrasted by only two violas and one violin. There is also a large percussion section with two low tam-tams, two large drums and low cymbals and gongs. This creates deep, shimmering soundscapes that can be felt as physically as they can be heard.

Elnaz Seyedi: Questo che a notte balugina (2023)
questo che a notte balugina
nella calotta del mio pensiero,
traccia madreperlacea di lumaca
o smeriglio di vetro calpestato,
non è lume di chiesa o d'officina
che alimenti
chierico rosso, o nero.
Solo quest'iride posso
lasciarti a testimonianza
d'una fede che fu combattuta,
d'una speranza che bruciò più lenta
di un duro ceppo nel focolare.
Conservane la cipria nello specchietto
quando spenta ogni lampada
la sardana si farà infernale
e un ombroso Lucifero scenderà su una
prora
del Tamigi, dell'Hudson, della Senna
scuotendo l'ali di bitume semi-
mozze dalla fatica, a dirti: è l'ora.
Non è un'eredità, un portafortuna
che può reggere all'urto dei monsoni
sul fil di ragno della memoria,
ma una storia non dura che nella cenere
e persistenza è solo l'estinzione.
Giusto era il segno: chi l'ha ravvisato
non può fallire nel ritrovarti.
Ognuno riconosce i suoi: l'orgoglio
non era fuga, l'umiltà non era
vile, il tenue bagliore strofinato
laggiù non era quello di un fiammifero.
– Eugenio Montale: Piccolo testament

Liisa Hirsch: Autarkes (2020)
In Greek, autarkés would mean “autarkic” – “self-sufficient” or “independent” – independent of external circumstances, but a quote from Tarkovsky’s film Stalker could expand this idea differently: "When a tree grows, it is tender and flexible. But when it is dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are companions of death. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being."

This music seeks a balance between fragility, listening, and underlying processes that form the outlines of an architectural form, perhaps only ruins of what could have been. Beginning with a slight glance at James Tenney’s Arbor Vitae, microtonal descents of the strings and piano overlap and converge together to connect all instruments in an ascending form. It was a strange transitional work before a longer compositional pause, a kind of conclusion in miniature form that brought together some of my earlier structures and whose result appeared even more dangerously fragile than I had imagined.
Liisa Hirsch

Stefan Streich: Trichter, Klee und Amsel (2024)
The use of extremely low wind instruments and cello-heavy strings in Trichter, Klee und Amsel is a very special “painting ground”. Gerald Eckert originally designed precisely this instrumentation as a sound space for his piece Sopra di noi ... (niente) and thus built a very characteristic “instrument”. I would like my use of this instrument and especially the very different “melody” that I play on it to be understood as high appreciation for Gerald Eckert’s work.

Trichter, Klee und Amsel is searching. So many things appear in the process, some very large and clear, and others veiled. In bright light and in fog only to be guessed, not known, only felt, perhaps not even there. The music is full of figures. They form, come to the foreground, and disappear again. Some become ornaments, are melismas in a great cantus firmus.

What is present, what is only imagined? And yet each enters into a dialogue with the others, makes room for reaction or lines up or simply follows a previous one. Seldom do two appear simultaneously. Perhaps a quiet glaring and a loud foggy one. Figures that face each other, act and react. Musical forms. Ghosts. We don't know.
Stefan Streich

Gerald Eckert: Sopra di noi … (niente) (2014)
Echoes of distant events, possibly barely interpretable traces, determine the texture of Sopra di noi … (niente).

The function of the echoes is then less that of a precise localization than rather that of a “description of existence”, which in turn is an expression of different, independent layers of time.

The diverse, constantly changing spaces correspond to the changing relations of the time levels, i.e., the “spaces” are images of the meeting of differently proceeding time layers, which thus receive their unique character in precisely those moments.

The incompatibility of proximity and distance remain ciphers standing for themselves; proximity as an expression of the moment of being, the time levels in their differentiation as – poetic – expression of distance.
...
Io venni in loco d' ogni luce muto,
I came to the place where all lights were silent,
– Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto V
Gerald Eckert