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LP
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ET 938-05LP
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After the orchestral piece KlangWerk 11 in 2022 (ET 933-04LP), Edition Telemark presents the second LP from Berlin-based composer Erhard Grosskopf (b. 1934), featuring his two string quartets nos. 3 and 4 in previously unreleased recordings by the renowned Pellegrini Quartet, and pressed on multi-colored quadratic mirage vinyl. Like all of his seminal pieces, these quartets -- written after one another in 1998 -- exhibit Grosskopf's principle of composing in a space instead of on a timescale, thereby eschewing the development of a dramaturgy and instead trying to make the listener forget a sense of time passing. He utilizes so-called sound processes: layers of differing lengths that are looped and stacked according to mathematical principles, resulting in circling harmonic constellations that come to an end only when their end points coincide. Despite being meticulously planned out, the actual musical phenomena that establish themselves with this method seem unpredictable to the listener. String quartet no. 3 (op. 50) uses seven such layers mapped to the four instruments, resulting in a length of about 30 minutes. String quartet no. 4 (op. 51) on the other hand consists of 12 short pieces (five quartets, three trios, and four duos) that use a simpler algorithm, allowing the listener to observe the process in close detail. Both quartets were performed by the Pellegrini Quartet (Antonio Pellegrini, Thomas Hofer, Fabio Marano, Helmut Menzler) at the UltraSchall Festival in Berlin in 2007 and 2003, respectively. This particular recording of quartet no. 3 is unreleased, while quartet no. 4 has never been released before at all. The LP is pressed on bespoke blue and crystal quadratic mirage vinyl, optically mirroring the sound process layers. Full-color sleeve with artwork by Julia Antonia and liner notes by Matthias R. Entreß. Includes a postcard with the sleeve artwork.
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LP
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ET 933-04LP
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Erhard Grosskopf (b. 1934) is a Berlin-based composer of contemporary music who has been active since 1963. His works include chamber and orchestral as well as electronic music, and have been performed in the West German pavilion at Expo '70, by various radio orchestras, renowned string quartets, and avant-garde groups such as Gentle Fire or Agitation Free. A thread that runs through all of Grosskopf's works is the idea of composing not on a timescale but in a space. Grosskopf views himself as an architect who places sounds at various positions in a room, such that the resulting music is not perceived as moving past the listener's ears in time, but rather the listener moves within it as if within a space. To achieve this, he utilizes sound processes that are looped and layered according to specific temporal structures, resulting in what he calls process music, an approach that he originally developed at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht for his electronic music and later expanded to instrumental works. However, Grosskopf doesn't just call his music abstract, he nevertheless strives for its spirit. In his own words: "As a composer I am like an architect who builds a house for music, hoping that music will move into it -- not like substance into form but like the spirit into the soul." Many recordings of his works originally remained unreleased and only recently, several CDs have appeared. This is his first LP, containing KlangWerk 11 for orchestra (2011), a work that epitomizes his method of building a sonic space, a sonic sculpture through sound processes. A different recording of the piece was published by Neos on a CD in 2018 (NEOS 11801CD). This is the first release of the world premiere of KlangWerk 11, played by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in 2013. Full-color sleeve with artwork by Julia Antonia and liner notes by Stefan Fricke.
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CD
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NEOS 12012CD
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The electro-acoustic works by Erhard Grosskopf offer a grand insight into the pioneering days of the large electronics studios. Grosskopf was able to experiment with state-of-the-art analog technology at the Instituut voor Sonologie at the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht; this is how "Dialectics" was created amongst others for the EXPO'70 in Osaka. In addition to the purely electronic version as it was heard in the German pavilion at the time, a performance with three live instrumentalists and tape is documented here: Eberhard Blum (flute); Hans Deinzer (clarinet); Vinko Globokar (trombone); Erhard Grosskopf (sound control). "Prozess der Veränderung" (Process of Change) and "Night Tracks" also originated in Utrecht in the early 1970s, where Grosskopf was a research assistant for a few months in order to be able to realize the compositions. The analog tapes were digitized for this publication by the Institute of Sonology, which is now based in The Hague. Performers: Eberhard Blum (flute); Hans Deinzer (clarinet); Vinko Globokar (trombone); Claude Lelong (viola); Erhard Grosskopf (sound control).
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CD
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NEOS 11801CD
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"I build a house of time proportions and sounds, and hope that the music moves into it" says Erhard Grosskopf, "not like substance into a form, but rather like the spirit into the soul." The approach to time and proportions is such a central theme in Grosskopf's music because he usually eschews traditional formal structures. This CD features two large, roughly half-hour orchestral works laid out in very different ways, played by renowned performers: the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester conducted by Johannes Kalitzke, and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Vykintas Baltakas. Also features Ursula Oppens on piano.
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CD
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NEOS 10706CD
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Performed by the Arditti Quartet. "As a composer I am like an architect building a house for music and hoping that music will move into this house -- not as content occupies form but as the spirit moves into the soul. A musical score is usually notated such that we can read the sounds vertically and time horizontally, with many possibilities for the symbols and methods. The organization into bars and the continuation into clearly perceptible beats have led to an idea of music in which the events of sound are arranged as if on a temporal string. In order to arrive at a completely different conception of music, we need only think of a situation in which the sounds are placed in different positions in a room without any clear temporal change such that the music that might result does not move past our ears, but instead we move within it as if within a space." As early as the 1960s, Erhard Grosskopf was making the spatial dimension a theme of his music. For example, in 1969 he composed a seven-channel instrumental-electronic work for the German spherical pavilion at EXPO '70 in Osaka (Dialectics) and in 1971 Hörmusik, the first spatial composition for the Berlin Philharmonic hall and its orchestra, about which Heinz-Klaus Metzger wrote thirty years later: "Space, which is what this score is about, is not the space in which it is realized but, on the contrary, the space it realizes; it produces it compositionally."
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