World premiere of the composer Bent Sørensen’s Ständchen – a work for Schubertian octet

World premiere of the composer Bent Sørensen’s Ständchen – a work for Schubertian octet
It is the American patron of culture Eleanor Eisen¬menger who has supported the commissioning of the work Ständchen by the Danish composer Bent Sørensen. The work is dedicated to the German Scharoun Ensemble, which also premieres it on 21st January 2007 at the Ultraschall Festival in Berlin. The Scharoun Ensemble is an octet with the instrumentation for which Schubert wrote his famous octet, and Sørensen’s work has therefore also been written for the Schubertian octet ensemble: clarinet, bassoon, French horn and string quintet. 
In Ständchen the sound of feet moving on gravel, hands being rubbed together and humming are used as sources of musical sound on an equal footing with the established instruments. 
These highly distinctive musical resources must however at no point be viewed as ‘effects’. All the sounds, whether they are produced by authorized or unauthorized instruments, merge into a classical form and become a serenade of small movements. 
On the visual side the premiere performance will also be highly effective. For it is the members of the Scharoun Ensemble themselves who, besides playing their beautiful instruments, also ‘play’ by moving their feet in gravel, humming and rubbing their hands together. 
The high standard of the Scharoun Ensemble is documented by the fact that the eight members of the ensemble are all also employed as musicians in the famous Berlin Philharmonic. Ständchen is to be premiered in the chamber music hall of the Berlin Philharmonia on 21st January 2007 at 8 p.m. Read more at www.berliner-philharmoniker.de

Related News