There are plenty of interesting connections between Berlin-based Frank Bretschneider and the Dane Ejnar Kanding. At a very basic level, the two composers have linked their artistic methods and distinctive characteristics by allowing each other to create new pieces out of existing compositions of their own. In two works on the CD, it is Kanding who creates new electro-acoustic pieces out of Bretschneider’s electronic music – i.e. music for acoustic classical instruments with electronic effects. In the third instance, it is Bretschneider who remixes one of Kanding’s old orchestral works.
This produces some quite surprising works with an exhilarating mix of stasis and pulse – of open enquiry and simple driving force – one that extremely precisely points to the respective backgrounds of the two contemporary musicians. The lives of Bretschneider and Kanding, ever since they appeared on the scene in the late 1980s, have been characterised by curiosity and openness as well as an urge to explore new territory along with people unlike themselves.
The three works on this CD are the result of a cooperation between Bretschneider and Kanding over the past five years. One between Kanding, with his enquiring artistic nature that has often produced a highly expressive, dense music that has been inspired by, for example, such existential poetry at that of Rainer Maria Rilke, and Bretschneider, with his straightforward, pulsating nature that often balances between something one absolutely has to sit down and listen to in order to get best out of, and fluid rhythms that one could even dance the light fantastic to. In principle, at any rate.
Dacapo 8.226540 | 2013
01. A DIFFERENT KIND OF TENSION
02. AUXILIARY BLUE
03. DIFFICULT SHAPES & PASSIVE RHYTHMS
Ejnar Kanding, Frank Bretschneider
Contemporánea:
Fritz Gerhard Berthelsen, bass clarinet
David Hildebrandt, percussion
Helianne Blais, violin
Irina-Kalina Goudeva, double bass
Recorded at Hildebrandt Studio & Mallorca Studios, Copenhagen, in November 2012
Recording by Ejnar Kanding (Auxiliary Blue and A Different Kind Of Tension) and George Vassilev (Auxiliary Blue)
Electronic tracks of Auxiliary Blue and A Different Kind Of Tension recorded by Frank Bretschneider at Studio klangFarBe, Berlin
Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythm is a remix of Ejnar Kanding’s orchestral work Vergeuder der Schmerzen (1995) as recorded at Tivoli Concert Hall, Copenhagen (the DKDM Symphony Orchestra and conductor Michel Tabachnik performing; courtesy of the Royal Danish Academy of Music). Remixed and recorded by Frank Bretschneider at Studio klangFarBe, Berlin (2007)
