Ensemble Musikfabrik

Perspectives play with each other: “When I hear sounds with my eyes closed, I imagine spaces. When I see spaces, sounds are produced.” Both forms of perception and particularly their effects on each other have always fascinated Isabel Mundry, though the composer, born in 1963 in Schlüchtern in Hesse, also reflects the places and periods that established historical works of music, art and literature carry within them – an intertwining of historical influences. The latter becomes the focus of Mundry’s compilation work “Schwankende Zeit”, as here two pieces from François Couperin’s “Préludes non mesurés” arranged for an ensemble meet Mundry’s own tonal language: a creative dialogue that illuminates the structure of the contemporary listener’s perspective on pieces by the French Baroque master while leaving its own mark in the new compositions. In “Noli me tangere” for solo percussion and large ensemble, the composer was interested in “a meditation on the phenomenon of touch, that is only revealed if it is not equated with grabbing, grasping or holding.” The soloist and ensemble react to each other in sonic gestures that swirl through the space without synchronising: “It’s always about forms of resonance but never about convergence.” The trumpet duo “Figura” was ultimately inspired, in the composer’s words, by “Gregorian chant and its echoes in later, notated works,” transformed for the two instrumentalists into musical “gestures of adoption and adaptation.”