Audible Interfaces Festival (review)

Even in Berlin, a town that sees concerts of new music practically every day, this mini-festival had something special about it. The three concerts performed by Berlin's Ensemble Mosaik attracted a diverse audience, not only the usual "friends and family" of the composers and performers, but also a broader audience ranging from youngsters in knitted caps to people from the art-opening scene. The venue was the vat house of what was once a functioning brewery, now transformed into a cultural center while retaining the essence of its original atmosphere.

Ensemble Mosaik is an initiative formed by graduates from Berlin's Hochschule der Künste. Since its founding in 1997, the ensemble has, under the direction of composer Enno Poppe, built a reputation both for high quality musical performances of the newest in new music—performances often prepared in close association with the (mostly younger) composers—as well as a knack for originality in the programming of their concert series. The Audible Interfaces event was the first time the ensemble invited composers from around the world to submit works using live electronics. The festival title provided a programmatic description of what the musicians wished to present to their audience: the means by which live electronics crosses (or treads on) the frontiers between what Ensemble Mosaik calls "the three fields of interpretation, improvisation, and installation." The ensemble was ably assisted in this enterprise by "tonmeisters" associated with the Electronic Studio at Technische Universität Berlin. The mixing console was as much a site of artistic virtuosity as anywhere else on these evenings.

The first concert presented premiere performances of Harald Muenz's The Self Composer (1999-2002) and Keiko Yamanaka's Resound (2001), as well as two older pieces: Marco Stroppa's Spirali (1987/88) and Claudy Malherbe's nonsun (1984). On the following evening, Arnulf Herrmann's Sextett (2000/01), Enno Poppe's Holz (1999/ 2000), and Jö rg Mainka's Skalenwirbel (1992/93) were performed. The final event commenced with a sound installation by Orm Finnendahl, which had also been presented as a concert dénouement on the first two evenings. In the closing concert we heard performances of Calving Ground by Ed Osborn (2002, world premiere), TEXTURE-MULTIPLE by Agostino Di Scipio (1993-2000, German premiere), as well as Mr. Finnendahl's Kommen & Gehen (2000), and a revised version of El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan (2001/2002) by Ana Maria Rodriguez.

Rather than reviewing all 12 works here, it seems more interesting to look at the means taken and goals followed in seven selected pieces, with a particular focus on the use of electroacoustic media.

The first piece in the festival, The Self Composer for sight-reading oboist and laptop computer by Harald Muenz (born 1965), marked one extreme in the use of computer technology. This concept piece is based around a collection of 23 orchestral excerpts from the oboe repertoire, prepared and stored in computer memory. Of these, two are selected at random immediately prior to a performance, with the computer generating a new part by combining elements from the two and the oboist sight-reading the result as it is displayed on the computer monitor. In this way, an open competition between performer and computer is created: human and machine play in unison. In the course of the three sections of the work, increasingly strong contrasts are staged: the noble timbre of the brilliant soloist (Simon Strasser) versus the rather cheesy synthetic computer sound; a more human (and approximate) intonation versus the mechanically perfect. However, the composition leaves one question open: is it (and to what extent) generally possible to succeed in opposing or breaking with the overpowering historical aura of tonal materials?

Arnulf Hermann (b. 1968) presented, with his Sextett for three strings, two winds, piano, and electronics, an essay on the difficulties of recollection and on the unnoticed restructuring of memories that takes place in the process. The third movement—entitled 8 Takte im Gegenlicht ["Eight backlit bars"]—is based on a passage of particular rhythmic and...