Ensemble Phœnix Basel

Coproduction HORNROH MODERN ALPHORN QUARTET & ENSEMBLE PHOENIX BASEL

The use of long signal horns in many mountainous regions of Asia and Europe points to a long history of cultural cross-fertilisation. The alphorn and similar wooden horns are played in Europe’s mountains from the Alps to the Carpathians.
The first written mention of an alphorn in Switzerland dates from 1527; an entry in an account book of the St. Urban monastery refers to “two batzen to a Valais man with an alphorn”.
In my new piece “Fichten” (spruces), the alphorn eludes specific local influences. The four alphorns represent, as it were, a Eurasian primal instrument, which is juxtaposed with an instrumental ensemble.
In five parts, a sound topography of the alphorns emerges, which is taken up by the ensemble and placed in ever-changing contexts. The ensemble develops continuously, moving into ever more distant regions. Yet it can never completely escape the foundation of the horns. (Martin Jaggi – 2025)

The Bavarian-born German composer Georg Haider writes about his work “Morpheus’ Atem” (breath of Morpheus):
My piece is entitled “Morpheus’ Atem”, 3 metamorphoses for 4 alphorns. Here is a rough outline of the concept of my composition:
As the subtitle says, the quartet consists of 3 movements that are similar to each other. In the first metamorphosis, all 4 players play on alphorns in F, so that even very close chords (quasi clusters) sound harmonious, as there are no beats due to the same tuning. In the second metamorphosis, 2 of the 4 players switch to alphorns in G flat, so that we have alphorns in both F and G flat. This results in sounds with beats, which makes it sound much more dissonant. In the last movement, the other two players also switch to alphorns in G flat, and we return to the harmonic sounds.
The idea behind this is that the first part is the state of nature before mankind. In the second part, man appears, who “subdues” nature like a tyrannical ruler (a brief nightmare in the long history of nature). The third part describes nature after mankind. It returns to a transformed state, but once again left to its own devices. (Georg Haider – 2009)

Enno Poppe has become one of the most frequently performed German composers and is also attracting worldwide attention as a conductor of new and recent pieces. As crazy and eccentric, as chaotic and at the same time organised as the finished structures of Poppe’s music may sound, they always show what they are made of: From a few threads or elements (quasi “motifs”) that are almost inconspicuous at first hearing. The listener’s attention is focussed on the tangible processes of transformation. The titles and sounds of his works are usually simple, direct and at the same time subtle. This is also the case with the composition “Stoff” for nine musicians. This perhaps refers to the textile structure of the threads that make up a fabric, but also to the “reading material”, because threads that appear and disappear again (musically-motively) are also a characteristic of the literary “nouveau roman”.

Joey Tan writes about her new work, which she will be writing for us:
“I don’t understand.” “What don’t you understand?” “It can’t be that the sounds – once they have been put into the world – disappear one day. But where are they when they are no longer with us?”
Yoko Tawada – “Opium for Ovid”

With the Ensemble Phoenix Basel (fl, ob, cl, hn, tpt, vl, va, vc) + Hornroh Modern Alphorn Quartet (4 alphorns) I see 12 individual musical personalities.
In Ensemble Phoenix Basel, the impulses and preferences of the individual musicians are always incorporated, realised and, above all, appreciated. The musicians of Hornroh also have diverse musical backgrounds. They come from classical music, jazz and the wind orchestra scene and all have different musical approaches.
Despite the differences in their musical personalities, both ensembles achieve performances of the highest calibre, because what brings the musicians together is their mutual respect for each other and for different perspectives. In music, as in society, diversity of thought and preference is a strength – it enriches the group, the ensemble playing and the work.
That’s why I decided to create a musical situation of mutual appreciation. Just as a chef extracts the best from each ingredient, in my new piece I also want to point out the inherent characteristics of the musicians, their playing styles and their instruments, as well as their preferences and backgrounds.
Perhaps the biggest difference between the two ensembles is their modernisation. The alphorn (although played on modern alphorns) is a primitive instrument and can only play pitches of its overtone series, whereas the modern instruments of Ensemble Phoenix Basel have been modernised over the years. They are louder, stronger and can also play chromatically, their tone colours are polished and refined. But for everything we gain, we also lose something. What have we lost by polishing the instruments? The clear difference between the two ensembles calls this into question.
I will explore these questions through melody, single long tones and loops.
As a composer from Singapore, I learnt classical music (as well as English language, classical ballet, Catholicism…) like a mother tongue, yet the roots have always been missing. The first time I heard a live organ was when I was 23 years old and doing the Erasmus programme in the Netherlands. And the first time I heard a cowbell with a cow was in 2020 in Todtnau. (We don’t have free-range cows in Singapore…)
I am looking for the origins of sounds, how they were used in the beginning, how they communicated across time and space, and most importantly – how I hear and understand them, and how I want to communicate through these sounds. (Joey Tan – 2025)

This programme brings together three very different works that all revolve around transformation: in terms of sound, form or content. Whether through natural sound experiments, micro-structural processes or an intercultural approach to listening – each piece tells of how music not only represents change, but itself becomes a space for change.

Program

A programme about space, sound and artistic attitude – with four very different perspectives on composing today.

In “A space to exist”, a composition commissioned by Ensemble Phoenix Basel, Eleni Ralli places the accordion at the centre – not only musically, but also spatially. The instrument moves between three spatially distributed groups, searching for its own place. It is about listening in space, about proximity and distance, presence and absence – and about what it needs in order to exist.

Younghi Pagh-Paan’s work “Im Sternenlicht” (In the starlight) takes its starting point from an old Japanese poem about retreating from the world. In a poetic language of sound, the composer creates an answer to the question of where one flees to when the “misery of life” catches up with one in solitude. Her music is at once tender, determined and spiritual – a sound meditation between heaven and earth.

Klaus Lang understands music not as language or an expression of personal emotion, but as a free, acoustic object. His compositions refuse any instrumental function. Sound is not used, but explored – as pure, audible time. Music is created as a radical form of presence: quiet, concentrated, without a message – and precisely because of this it is touching.

With the “Clarinet Quintet No. 1”, Isang Yun enters a new phase in his work: more lyrical, clearer, more structured. The clarinet takes on the leading role – as the voice of change, inspired by the Chinese yang principle. Yun lets it wander through the musical space in search of an “infinite melody” – as a symbol of breath, liberation and spiritual expanse.

Program

Musiksommer am Zürichsee

Kunst(Zeug)Haus Rapperswil

“The Absolute is the Whole.” This quote by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel comes to life at the Kunst(Zeug)Haus. We combine an exhibition, a concert, a spatial experience, and meditation into a single event. Morton Feldman’s “For Philip Guston” is a world unto itself, of unprecedented dimensions. In this work, motifs repeat and gradually transform, much like the changing light throughout the day. We begin at 1:00 p.m. and stay until 6:00 p.m. You choose when and for how long you’d like to stop by. You can listen, meditate, visit the IG Halle exhibition, move about freely, and decide for yourself how much of Feldman, modern art, and shifting perspectives appeals to you. A unique experience.

Philip Guston was a painter from the movement of “abstract expressionism”, which condensed on New York in the 1950s and 1960s – as a circle of artists, literary figures and musicians. Feldman – as well a member of this circle – once credited the painter friend with opening his eyes to sound as a direct, malleable medium, thus freeing him as a composer in the first place. Especially in the 1980s, Feldman made it a habit to write large dedication pieces for various artists, including “For Philip Guston,” written in 1984 for flute, piano and percussion. The source material of the commemorative piece, which lasts a good four and a half hours, is the sequence of notes in the name of John Cage, who introduced Feldman to Philip Guston in 1950. Guston commissioned Morton Feldman to speak the “Kaddish” prayer at his grave – after the two of them had not spoken to each other for the last eight years of Guston’s life. Feldman later stated that his own aesthetic fanaticism had been the cause of this break – and that he wanted the piece to follow the turn Guston had taken: to “stop asking questions.”

André Fatton

Morton Feldman, son of a Ukrainian immigrant family, was born in New York on January 12, 1926. In 1941 he began his studies with Wallingford Riegger and Stefan Wolpe. In 1949 Feldman met John Cage, which turned out to be one of the most inspiring encounters of his musical career. The result was an important artistic association in New York clearly critical concerning  the American music of 1950s. Other friends and exponents of the New York artistic scene of the time were composers Earle Brown and Christian Wolff, painters Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg, and pianist David Tudor. The painters influenced Feldman to find his own sound world, a sound world that was more immediate and physical than ever before. From this followed his experiments with graphic notation. However, since this kind of notation led too close to improvisation for Feldman’s taste, he was not satisfied with results. Therefore, he distanced himself from graphic notation again in the second half of the 1950s. In 1973 Feldman was appointed “Edgar Varèse professor” by the “University of New York” at Buffalo, a position he kept until the end of his life. In June 1987 Morton Feldman married the composer Barbara Monk. On September 3rd in 1987, he died at his home in Buffalo at the age of 61.

“For Philip Guston”

In the early 1980s, the late period of his compositional work, Feldman continued to engage in the process of “fusing materials.” His musical language is characterized by rhythmic “patterns” or melodic gestures that change slightly within recurring cycles. These melodic gestures or chords are often enclosed by silence (pauses in musical notation). Such moments of silence are part of the whole pattern or cycle. Feldman created large blocks of consciousness – an awareness of the moment, a memory of structures or of the state of being different or otherness, and consequently a “narrative style.” Feldman achieves a consistent style by setting certain parameters for all later pieces: for example, the tempo is usually quarters equal to 63 – 66 per minute, and the dynamics range from ppp to ppppp. The consistency extends into the graphic realm: each line of his scores is divided into 9 measures of equal length, regardless of the changing meter. From this period on he usually wrote chamber music works with a playing time of 45 to 60 minutes, even four- to five-hour pieces, such as “String Quartet II” (1983) or “For Philip Guston” (1984). He wrote a total of 9 works longer than 70 minutes.

Morton Feldman’s special polymetrics are another challenge for performers . He even applies this technique in orchestral works and in his opera “Neither” (1977). This method of composition is even more complicated by Feldman’s preference, beginning in the late 1970s – influenced by Anatolian carpet patterns – for a grid notation in which all measures are graphically the same length – regardless of the temporal duration of the measures. This results in a “non-simultaneity” of the notation, similar to that already found in the “Durations” pieces (1960/61), in which only the first sound begins simultaneously, but thereafter each instrument plays its own tempo. Feldman took the polymetric principle to the extreme in the trio “For Philip Guston”. The difficulty lies in the fact that the three instruments play for up to 9 bars with individual time changes, but afterwards they have to land in a coordinated way, because the polymetric passages of the 3 instruments always have in total exactly the same length.

In my new edition of the piece, I have tried to develop a notation that on the one hand facilitates the interplay of the instruments, and on the other hand leaves the polymetrics as Feldman composed them. In other words: each instrumentalist plays his part independently of the two other players, but can follow where the other two instruments are at any given moment. This means: three different playing scores have to be played: each with the corresponding meter of the three instruments.

Jürg Henneberger

Program