HERALD SCOTLAND

Saturday 22 June 2013

It's time to bring Baroque back to the symphony orchestras

Michael Tumelty Classical music writer

Saturday 22 June 2013

A hospital bed can be a good place in which to muse. There's not much else to do. And, having spent the last week or so incarcerated in such a bed, I've done a fair bit of musing. Disappointingly, through illness, I missed the end of the RSNO's winter season; and I would have been intrigued to hear Peter Oundjian's closing concert, particularly as it was one of his "project" concerts which, last season, excited such varied reactions with his lighting experiments in Shostakovich and his "picture postcard" presentation of Smetana's Ma Vlast.

I did catch the closing concert of the BBC SSO's season with conductor

Matthias Pintscher, the SSO's artist-in-association, who blew the audience away with a sensational performance of Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring. But what really struck me that evening was the first-half performance of Bach's Second Orchestral Suite in B minor, which received a poised, graceful and energetic performance, topped by the sheer brio
of its flute-dominated finale, intoxicatingly described by John Butt in his programme note as "the nearest Bach ever came to composing a musical souffle".
But what stimulated the Muse was a single fact that found itself reiterating in my brain: this is a symphony orchestra playing Bach, and symphony orchestras don't really play Bach any more. Granted, the BBC SSO reduced its string strength for the performance, which they played with eight first violins, six seconds, four violas, four cellos and a single double bass. But in its weight and drive, it was a symphony orchestra performance: there was no concession to "period performance" or the relative modesty of a chamber orchestra performance. It was a full-on symphony orchestra performance, and a hugely effective one at that. Why don't our symphony orchestras do this any more? Has the orchestral music of Bach, Handel, Corelli and many others and I include Vivaldi become totally marginalised by symphony orchestras, where big is best and Mahler is most?

And have our symphony orchestras themselves become period orchestras, trapped and limited within a time and style-frame of late 18th and, predominantly, weighty 19th-century repertoire? The issue is encyclopedic, and the surrounding landscape is littered with cans of worms. Very broadly, in the past 50 or 60 years, two things have happened: the rise of "period-style" performance, now more generally titled "historically informed" performance and, just as significantly, the unstoppable rise and all-permeating development of the chamber orchestra. With the development of period bands from scratchy ensembles of painful uncertainty into sleek virtuoso orchestras, opening windows on to alternative views of all classical period music (and, remember, their palette now extends to 19th-century limits with Mahler and Bruckner in their repertoire), suddenly the symphony orchestra as an instrument of baroque music performance seemed leaden and leviathan. The chamber orchestra, as a concept, has driven a coach and horses through the orchestral repertoire. One of the most electrifying moments of my career occurred, many decades ago, in a conversation with Ian Ritchie, then in charge of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, who outlined to me his vision of an SCO with "400 years of repertoire" in its portfolio. Now they've done it all, and have an endless repertoire at their command. I'm not even scratching the surface here; but, you know, I love hearing Bach on symphony orchestras and other ensembles. Years ago, in Baltimore, I listened to Yuri Temirkanov and the big Baltimore orchestra providing the accompaniment to a Bach keyboard concerto. It was like being hit by a symphonic tank. And I loved Joanna MacGregor's amplified Buenos Aires Bach. I would love to hear the RSNO strings powering through the Brandenburg Concertos. Get the right conductor, of the Pintscher/Sondergard ilk, and I bet the band would love it too. The rule today is simple: there is no rule; anything goes. C'mon, blow the symphony orchestra dust off Bach and play the damn stuff.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
Star Tribune May 26, 2013

Concert review: SPCO with conductor-composer Matthias Pintscher

BY WILLIAM RANDALL BEARD

Lovers of new music are being well-served this weekend by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Composer-conductor Matthias Pintscher leads the orchestra in the world premiere of his bereshit (In the Beginning) for Large Ensemble, heard Friday night at the Ordway Center. The SPCO co-commission has strong intellectual underpinnings, but carries the audience on a powerful and explicit musical journey. It began quietly, depicting a state of nothingness, the void before creation. A single note, F-natural on the double bass, echoed throughout the orchestra. Complex sounds began to emerge, primordial sounds. Then came the sense of something being created, emerging chaotically out of the morass. From there, the music seemed to organize itself, not into traditional melodies per se, but into solo utterances against the orchestral miasma. Principal second violin Kyu-Young Kim was particularly effective. The process of creation is never structured. It is by nature formless and in capturing that, the work had a few unnecessary longueurs. But it never seemed far from the chaos as the sounds evolved and transformed organically. This is the kind of piece for people who dont think they like contemporary music. Pintscher created nontraditional sounds but ones that made perfect sense in the riveting arc of the unfolding drama. In a wise bit of programming, the first half was a series of light miniatures, leaving the audience prepared for the heavy work to come. Pintscher conducted with a real sense of esprit and the orchestra played this music with the same finesse that they brought to bereshit. He captured the rapturous Romantic tone poem that is Mendelssohns Fair Melusina Overture, which summarizes the operas familiar tale of a water sprite. He did the same with two pieces from Mendelssohns incidental music to Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream. Faur and Debussy were represented by their unique takes on antique dance forms. Faurs Pavane, a French dance from the Renaissance, sounded ancient and hauntingly modern. In Debussys Sarabande from Pour la Piano, a stately reimagining of a Baroque dance, orchestrated by Ravel, the orchestra shimmered. The Deux Marches et un intermde by Poulenc began with the sparkling Marche 1869, a nostalgic evocation of the Belle poque. By the final Marche 1937, the impending war in Europe hung heavily over the music.

Der Tagesspiegel:

Like a Jack in the Box: The Deutsche Symphonie Orchester and Antoine Tamestit playin the Philharmonie Berlin
Fairy tale-like tones, gossamery mezzo-forte, crystalline sound at all times. Attention: Fragile! The Deutsche Symphonie rchester conducted !y "atthias #intscher in$ites you to dreamland % &ith 'a$el(s !allet musics )"a m*re l(oye) and Daphnis et Chlo +!oth ,-,./. This lulls indeed +merely the hypnotically !e&itching solo flute!/, the acoustic color, ho&e$er, !ecomes rather monochrome. 0ot until the !acchanalian finale starts does #intscher a!andon all initial restraint % like at the !eginning in #aul Dukas( Sorcerer's Apprentice &hen he kne& ho& to employ the dynamic economically cle$erly. A sculptural conductor &ho incessantly con1ures up images for one(s ears. 2specially Alfred Schnittke(s 3iola 4oncert from ,-56, the highlight of this e$ening in the #hilharmonie, !enefits from that.

7
Stage and Screen:

Inner Cinema
The Deutsche Symphonie Orchester conducted y !atthias Pintscher plays "orks o# Dukas$ Schnittke and %a&el
This concert of the Deutsche Symphonie rchester is actually ill-fated: riginally principal director Tugan Sokhie$ &as to conduct the concert &hich &as supposed to consist fifty-fifty of &orks of 'ussian and French composers. Then, ho&e$er, Sokhie$ had to cancel !ecause of family reasons. "atthias #intscher filled in and replaced a piece !y #rokofie$ &ith a piece !y another French composer, #aul Dukas. The intended !alance for the e$ening &as destroyed, the signs concei$a!ly infa$ora!le. 8ut then suddenly something une9pected happens: This someho& impro$ised concert sho&s the orchestra at the highest le$el of its capa!ility, its dramaturgy is e9ceedingly compelling and offers interpretations of partially &ell-kno&n &orks &hich make one listen attenti$ely. A!o$e all, ho&e$er, it retains a nearly electrifying suspense % from the first to the last note. 7 Those are narrati$e, also illustrating &orks &hich are to accompany images and in any case to create suchlikes in the listeners( imagination. Dukas( Sorcerer's Apprentice is e9emplary for this: From the first to the last second it is profoundly e9citing ho& #intscher !uilds up musical suspense, does not let it fade at any time and ho& he makes the !asic structure of this piece percepti!le. The orchestra plays forceful and articulately and has a transparency &hich makes e$ery single note, e$ery single instrument audi!le. #intscher has the orchestra make strong accents, he also does not fear a!rupt shifts and sharp edges. :e focuses on the contrasts in the score and creates something close to a soundtrack for silent mo$ie &hich does not need a screen. The drama a!out the sorcerer(s apprentice &ho nearly perishes !y his o&n magic finds clear and haunting images in the listener(s imagination. ;ater something similiar happens &ith 'a$el. Shimmering and fairy tale-like Ma mre l'oye comes in, !uilds up a tremendous dynamic &hich here also creates a sort of cinema for one(s ears. Again #intscher focuses on the contrasts, lets different sentiments collide &ith each other and e9ploits the e9tremes !et&een loud and <uiet masterfully to create an almost seiza!le suspense. The transparency he creates is fascinating, the sound that is composed of e$ery single one(s crystal clear playing is sparkling, the soli of the different instruments are highly precise. =t is the same thing &ith Daphins et Chlo: Scarcely one has heard the famous da&n of the !eginning this thrilling: The utterly

self-e$ident transition from the gentle, fragile, a structure seeking !eginning to the radiant triumph, from the fragmentary impressionism to the iridescent sound palette. #intscher proofs his sense for a cle$er dramaturgy, for the dramatic $alue of musical contrasts here, too. Fast and precise changes of sentiments, $olume and tempo characterize the playing. The de$elopment of force in the third mo$ement is nearly painful !efore it ends amidst a moment of highest tension. :ighlight of the concert, ho&e$er, is the only piece that originated &ithout te9tual source or an e9tra-musical concept, !ut still !enefits the most from #intscher(s inner cinema: Alfred Schnittke(s 3iola 4oncert. The orchestra is most of the time restrained and only comes to the fore &hen the score demands it. =t pro$es to !e a precise accompanist and commentator of the musical happenings&ith the soloist in the center. 7 =n Tamestit(s and #intscher(s hands Schnittke(s piece !ecomes a human drama, in &hich hope and desperation, lo$e and pain al&ays !elong together and e$en need each other. 7

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
Teatri Online April 23, 2013

Pintscher-Blacher a Santa Cecilia, Roma

BY NAME

A great success for the debut of Pintscher enshrined in thunderous applause of the audience Doppio debutto come compositore e direttore dorchestra per Matthias Pintscher Ravel, Stravinskij, Pintscher: per il nuovo appuntamento della stagione sinfonica, a Santa Cecilia va in scena un programma interamente dedicato al Novecento musicale. Al debutto sul prestigioso podio romano, il giovane (classe 1971), richiestissimo Matthias Pintscher, decisamente molto autorevole nel dosare con energia e sicurezza le sfumature del programma, complice anche lOrchestra di Santa Cecilia, di ritorno da una recente tourne europea. Leleganza della suite di Ma Mre lOye (cinque pezzi infantili) di Ravel apre un programma alquanto eterogeneo: qui Pintscher illumina con tocco leggero lOrchestra nella vivacit espressiva in cinque celebri fiabe, dalla lentezza delicata della Pavana (di rinascimentale memoria) della Bella addormentata del bosco di Perrault, alla suspense di Pollicino, fino allImperatrice delle Pagode colorata della vivacit pentatonica di un mondo lontano e colorato, alla contrapposizione sonora giocata nella Bella e la Bestia fino alla gravit del Giardino fatato. Un piccolo gioiellino che lascia poi spazio al primo Stravinskij della serata, il Concerto in re per violino e Orchestra. E qui simpone non solo lintegerrima qualit dellOrchestra, ma soprattutto il virtuosismo, mai sfacciato, del fuoriclasse (anche lui tedesco) Kolja Blacher con lo Stradivari Tritton del 1730: fra guizzi e umori di ogni genere, il violino mantiene un dialogo concitato e serrato con i fiati, viaggia fra la drammaticit, lironia e la brillantezza del Capriccio finale, fra gli applausi del pubblico. Doppio debutto di Pintscher non solo come direttore, ma anche come compositore di Towards Osiris (del 2006): uno studio per orchestra in prima esecuzione italiana ispirata alla violenta cosmogonia egiziana sulla leggenda di Osiris e Isis, fratelli gemelli e amanti. Il fratello Seth, invidioso, uccise Osiris, spargendo per la valle del Nilo i pezzi del suo corpo smembrato, ma Isis ricompose i pezzi donando a Osiris nuova vita Ecco Towards Osiris (uno studio per Orchestra di sette minuti, che Pintscher stia lavorando a un altro corpus?) rappresenta con estrema veemenza la forza e la violenza fratricida di Seth, ne ripropone la crudelt inusitata della frammentazione (la presenza dirompente della tromba), per approdare a una ricomposizione attraverso le percussioni con crescente senso drammatico. E nellanno in cui ricorre il centenario della prima della Sagra della Primavera di Stravinskij, il programma chiude con la fortunatissima Suite da concerto (del 1945 da cui Balanchine mont una nuova versione del balletto per il New York City Ballet nel 1949) de Luccello di fuoco: e qui, nella fiaba russa della lotta fra il Bene (lo zarevic Ivan) e il Male (il mago Katschej), Pintscher si dimostra autorevolissimo direttore dando il meglio di s e delleccellente Orchestra in un tripudio di colori fra spettacolarit, ritmi fiammeggianti e intensamente frenetici in un crescendo maestoso e folgorante. Un bel successo per il debutto di Pintscher sancito dagli applausi fragorosi del pubblico.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
South Florida Classical Review March 31, 2013

Pintscher leads New World in bracing program of German modernists

BY DOROTHY HINDMAN

Saturdays Sounds of the Times concert at New World Center presented complex music by three of todays top German composers, conducted by the youngest of them, Matthias Pintscher. In a tribute to his teacher Hans Werner Henze, who died last October, Pintscher put the New World Symphony through its paces for the adventurous audience. First up was Wolfgang Rihms Will Sound, written for the American ensemble The Alarm Will Sound in 2006. Pintschers strong gestures and concise cuing conveyed a physicality echoed in Rihms punchy, pointillistic work. With bright splashes of kaleidoscopic colors over slower-moving harmonic swells in the brass, ferocious energy and concentration from the chamber group delivered a tight concert opener. The most traditional work on the program, Henzes programmatic Symphony No. 8 (1992) takes its inspiration from Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream. The Allegro Moderato captures Pucks worldwide flight seeking a magic flower. Opening filigrees in winds, harp, percussion, and brass morphed rapidly and substantially into dense orchestration. Henze uses instrumental families to delineate his polyphony, but the constant layering of additional material quickly led to maximum saturation, undercutting the idea of wind and speed. The Ballabile, based on Queen Titanias infatuation with the donkey-headed Bottom was a lurching, macabre dance with cleaner lines that goes on too long. The scherzo featured singing string lines and bravura passagework from trombonist Santiago Novoa and tubist Joshua Lee. The Adagio, based on Pucks closing speech, purports to seek calm. Opening with gentle strings, it devolved much too quickly into a swirl of moods. Among the highlights were melodic exchanges between winds and strings, and winds and harp. However, many impressive solos were covered in the thick texture, which needed more clarity and definition from Pintscher. While every moment was shaped, there was a lack of the overall trajectory required to make a stronger impact. The finest and most progressive work on the program was Pintschers own Reflections on Narcissus. Cast in five continuous movements for cello and orchestra, the work is a 2005 retooling of a cello and chamber ensemble piece he composed at age 20 for Henze. From the percolating opening for percussion, the work evolved in consistently inventive timbral structures, with attacks and decays spread between instruments for a trick-of-the-ear effect. Young soloist Joshua Romans sweet intonation in the extreme high register of the cello was impressive, but as the texture grew, Roman was too often buried, emerging only here and there. Romans aggressive launches in the second movement resonated in chain reactions throughout the orchestra, building into a frenzy. In the more transparent third movement, Romans lyrical lines traversed the entire cello range, with a show-stopping melody in artificial harmonics, answered by wavering winds and pulsing strings. Romans masterful timbral shading was fully revealed in the unaccompanied opening cadenza of the fourth movement. Sudden shifts from aggressive sawing to sustained harmonics and understated ripples of sound culminated in a blistering run off the edge of the fingerboard, answered by tutti color bursts edged with percussion. The fifth movement was the most inspired, featuring Pintschers trademark delicacy in quiet passages that suspended time. An elegiac character was poetically conveyed as Romans languorous solo echoed throughout sections of the orchestra, most poignantly with New World cellist Maaike Harding.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
Herald Scotland March 4, 2013

BBC SSO, City Halls, Glasgow *****

BY MICHAEL TUMELTY

If you wanted to follow a strand in the BBC SSO's dazzling concert on Thursday night with its artist-in-association, Matthias Pintscher, conducting, it was laid out for you, from the literalism of Weber's Invitation To The Dance, to the myriad dance and waltz implications of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus Overture and the battering, driving finale of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, "the apotheosis of the dance", as Wagner described it. On the other hand, the "concept", if I might call it that, was a useful tool which allowed two masterworks, usually only found these days in Gubbay-type programmes, to sneak back into a proper, full-blown classical concert and receive full-on performances from a band playing its mind out for the conductor. Whatever the perspective, it worked extremely well, not least because Pintscher has an idiomatic grasp of the Viennese tug-and-pull ethos of the music. In between these came an astonishing performance by Johannes Moser of Lutoslawski's wonderful Cello Concerto, a multi-faceted character piece that essentially boils down to a David and Goliath battle between soloist and elements of the orchestra, not least the brass and especially the brazen trumpets, which persistently try to shriek and blast the cello into submission. Ultimately they fail, and the cello's near-serene implacability prevails. The performance, packed with wit, humour, lyricism, violence and electric action scenes, might just have featured the best cello playing I have encountered. Pintscher's Beethoven Seven, with the band at white heat, was brilliantly gauged in every movement, the drive powering up from the bottom of the orchestra, and loads held in reserve, which Pintscher unleashed in a whirlwind, unstoppable performance of the finale.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
IonArts December 15, 2012

Matthias Pintscher Portrait at the Phillips

BY NOAH MLOTEK

Sought after by the worlds top orchestras for both his compositions and his conducting, Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971) fit the bill for the Phillips Collections Leading European Composers series. His music, brought to life Thursday night with intimacy and precision by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), displayed a subdued fragility that belied its creators star power. The concert presented four of Pintschers pieces along with two conversations between him and Phillips music director Caroline Mousset. Pianist Phyllis Chen opened with on a clear day (2004), a shimmering, gossamer solo work that introduced the elements of Pintschers style: a relaxed, breathable tempo; hushed dynamics punctuated occasionally by outbursts; and, instead of linear development, a sense of subtle, gradually unfolding shifts in perspective. Next was Study II for Treatise on the Veil (2005) for violin, viola, and cello, followed by Study III (2007) for violin. The two pieces, inspired by a monumental Cy Twombly abstraction, shared a similar structure. At first, the instruments strings were muted by paper clips, sounding otherworldly, vague, submerged in a dream. It was as if all tone had been removed from the sound, with only mechanical, ambient noises left behind: fingers sliding over strings, wood creaking under chin, a fractured panorama of scratches, squeaks, and overtones (that is, all the background elements we normally dont pay attention to, but which are always present within an instruments sound, and which combine to make up its distinctive color). After attuning the listeners ear to these sounds, Pintscher has the performers trade their paper clips for conventional mutes, and gradually bits of musical phrases start to emerge, as if from behind a veil. The instruments have recovered their usual voices, but we have been given new ears to hear them. They appear transfigured: a simple, held note on the cello is irradiated and multiplied by the layering of our new perspectives on it. As Pintscher commented, he wanted to show the inner life of one stroke. The concert closed with Dernier espace avec introspecteur (1994), composed for accordion and cello after studying an installation by Joseph Beuys. The fundamentals of Pintscher's style were evident even in this early work. Like the other pieces, it elicited a preternatural silence in the room, so that ambient noises such as the accordion's heavy "breathing" could serve effectively as elements of the music. Here again the instruments sounded stifled, as if submerged in a strange atmosphere. They struggled to find their voices and sing together, and at times they met tenuously on a brief common pitch or rhythm before diverging once more on their separate vagrancies. Beyond the intricate soundscapes and captivating human interactions present in Matthias Pintscher's music, as well as ICE's inspired, painstaking performance of it, a greater and more enduring value lay in its power to awaken new forms of attentiveness in the listener. Pintscher, ICE, and the Phillips deserve commendation for a luminous evening.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
Washington Post December 14, 2012

Review: Phillips Collection concert showcases Matthias Pintscher

BY ANNE MIDGETTE

Youd think the composer Matthias Pintscher who had a concert devoted to his work at the Phillips Collection on Thursday night might be familiar to Washington music lovers by now. Christoph Eschenbach opened the first subscription concert of his National Symphony tenure, in 2010, with a major work by Pintscher, the HerodiadeFragmente. And Pintscher himself conducted a concert that included one of his own works at the National Orchestral Institute in 2011. But theres a disconnect between contemporary composers and audiences. Even when a composer is as good-looking, articulate and talented as the 41-year-old Pintscher, a couple of isolated performances arent enough to breed familiarity. And because of the international and anonymous tone of the biographies managers write about their artists, audiences reading about Pintscher in the Phillips Collection program had no way of knowing he had ever had anything played in Washington at all. So Thursdays concert was a welcome (re)introduction to one of Europes leading lights. The Phillips Collections concert series focusing on living European composers is a fine complement to the museums main mission, and Pintscher is a particularly apt subject; much of his work is influenced by the visual arts. The four pieces performed were variously inspired by Agnes Martin (on a clear day, from 2004), Cy Twombley (Studies II and III for Treatise on the Veil, from 2005 and 2007), and Joseph Beuys here channeled in Derniere espace avec introspecteur, composed in 1994 for the unusual combination of cello and accordion. The pieces performed by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, one of the stalwarts of the newmusic scene were intimately scaled, delicate, detailed and intense; the composer himself, in remarks to the audience, observed that it was a lot of music to hear at one sitting. The first Treatise on the Veil study, a trio for violin, viola and cello, so well evoked the little chicken scratches of Twombleys scribblings, performed with paper clips muting and warping the sound from the strings until they became miniscule little gray lines themselves, that the performance space was reconfigured with the musicians at the center of the room, surrounded by the audience so that everyone could hear what was happening. Pintscher noted to the audience that it really did sound like a drawing, and he was right like a drawing made by scraping through white paint, scratched out and hard-won, striving to leave a mark. Pintscher has a remarkably acute visual sense; each of the pieces really did evoke the artist who inspired it. Phyllis Chen gave a calm, lapidary reading of the Agnes Martin work, which was also serene and small but more linear; while both of the Treatise on the Veil studies the second was for violin solo, performed by David Bowlin were itchy and insistent, the trio gradually swelling as the performers removed first their paper clips, then their mutes, but never quite reaching a normal dynamic level. And the Beuys piece, a much earlier work, had the plump, craggy opacity of Beuyss various objects, enhanced by the unfamiliar presence of the accordion, played by the virtuoso William Schimmell. Alongside the cello, the accordion appears a clown in tails, but at the same time a voice of untapped sonorities; it emitted high sustained wires of thin sound at the edge of hearing, as well as fat dark squalls, while the cello (played elegantly by Katinka Kleijn) chattered and skittered around it. It was an evening of work that was both challenging and worthwhile probably enlightening to everyone in the Phillipss crowded music room.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
Philadelphia Inquirer December 11, 2012

After Cage, a new type of musical silence

BY DAVID PATRICK STEARNS

No two composers have made so much of silence as John Cage and Matthias Pintscher - though separated by decades and arriving at the absence of sound from different philosophical hemispheres. The latest chapter of the Cage: Beyond Silence festival, celebrating the centennial of the composer who institutionalized silence as an expressive entity, was cheek-by-jowl with Curtis 20/21, the Curtis Institute's modernmusic group. The Curtis guest conductor was the 41-year-old Pintscher, a frequent visitor here who takes German modernism into ever more subtle terrains. The student performers also had extensive coaching from modern-music specialists eighth blackbird, the ensemble in residence. The composers' respective silences can't be heard the same way. Cage's music grows out of it. Silence is the bedrock. With Pintscher, sound leads to silence, sometimes as a logical outgrowth of a musical idea. Cage's silence requires fundamental nonintellectual acceptance - along with whatever breaks the silence. With Pintscher, you're contemplating what the silence means. The main Pintscher piece on the Curtis program Sunday at Gould Rehearsal Hall was the 2006 Verzeichnete Spur for chamber orchestra and double bass soloist (of sorts) that used subtle electronic effects suggesting echoes of echoes. It was introduced as a piece that explores "the line between this life and beyond." Sometimes, you had the illusion of silence even though there was an undercurrent of sound that might be called an electronic wake. Much of the rest of the sounds were muted. Percussion instruments were lightly brushed with bows. You heard a gesture suggesting the ominous flapping of giant wings (which seems to be Pintscher's signature). By no means was the piece entirely dreamy: The savvy bassist Nathaniel West had a hugely eventful cadenza, made even more so by a good deal of electronic refraction. The other Pintscher piece was a solo piano work, on a clear day, suggesting the contemplative Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu with a needed editor. Andrew Hsu played it like Debussy. The biggest work on the program was the ultradense Schoenberg Chamber Symphony No.1. Often, it can sound like Brahms in a trash compactor. Given the fluid sensibility of Pintscher's own works, it's no surprise that Schoenberg's music flowed with overlapping, simultaneous ideas. The wildest card on the program was Arpge by Italian composer Franco Donatoni (1927-2000), whose name is heard much more than his music. The piece was a series of musical modules, each with a combustible manner and contrasting sound worlds. But what could've sounded like avant-garde channel surfing all seemed to belong together, particularly in Sunday's well-considered performance. The Cage concert Friday at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral had selections from Cage's Song Books played by the BSC, a contemporary music group formed by Bhob Rainey. Since Cage songs often leave so many fundamental decisions to the performers, The BSC played them simultaneously with Cage's Variations III and Christian Woolff's Edges. It's possible, then, that the concert was more about BSC than the composers (who would probably approve).

The charm of the 90-minute performance was the group's attachment to warm, retro sounds that middle-aged Cage would have known, such as the Theremin and electronic tracks with quaint radio static, all meditatively folded together with lots of atmospherically breathy effects by trumpeter Greg Kelley and Rainey on soprano saxophone. I felt perfectly at home in this sound environment, and wondered afterward if the concert could be called "authentic instrument Cage." Probably not. Rainey's group began in Boston, a town with a strong antiquarian streak, where people like to build their own electronic instruments. And theirs just came out this way.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
ArtsATL November 12, 2012

ASO review: Guest conductor Matthias Pintscher deftly showcases orchestras strengths
BY MARK GRESHAM

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra continued the autumn leg of its subscription season this past week with concerts led by composer and guest conductor Matthias Pintscher that featured guest violin soloist Karen Gomyo. In Friday nights performance at Symphony Hall, Pintschers own eight-minute study Towards Osiris opened the concert. The name of the piece, written in 2005, refers to the fact that it was a preparatory study for a longer work, Osiris, completed two years later. Pintscher described his inspiration, rooted in Egyptian Matthias Pintscher is hailed as the brightest young talent mythology, in this 2010 video. Its a brilliant on the German composing scene. work of textures and contrasts, in a style that is still current aesthetic fashion in Western Europe think Ensemble InterContemporain, the contemporary chamber orchestra founded by Pierre Boulez in 1976, which has tagged Pintscher as its new music director. Painstakingly orchestrated, and fastidiously conducted by Pintscher sans baton, Towards Osiris featured copious extended techniques for the often greatly divided strings (see this sample page on the composers website). It also had some well-executed standout passages for the large percussion section (six players plus timpanist) and an absolutely jaw-dropping trumpet solo played brilliantly by Karin Bliznik. Next up was Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major (K. 219) by Mozart, written in 1775 when he was 19 years old. With the orchestration for two oboes, two horns and a modest string section far smaller than in Pintschers piece, some members of the orchestra who were not performing the Mozart came out to sit with the audience to hear Gomyo play. Gomyo is a serious and dramatically intense violinist, in her bodily movements as much as in the sounds she makes. But while she is a good violinist, her performance did not electrify. It was at first hard to put a finger on why, but it seems that she focuses

Matthias Pintscher
ArtsATL November 12, 2012 page 2 of 2

her great intensity upon the microcosm, the careful shaping of individual notes, so much that it came across as overly affected and at the cost of conveying larger musical gestures. What is baffling is that in audio samples on her website of Bach, Barber, Piazzola and the like, Gomyos manner of playing pays off musically and does not feel overdone. But with this particular Mozart concerto, on this night, it felt wrong. A contributing factor may be that Pintscher seemed somewhat less assured as an accompanist than when conducting the orchestra alone. I would be interested to hear Gomyo again under different circumstances with different repertoire. After intermission, the full orchestra returned to the stage for the evocative Rapsodie espagnole by Ravel, followed by music from Stravinskys 1911 ballet The Firebird in its 1945 incarnation as an orchestral suite. Both pieces showed off the ASO extremely well, allowing opportunity for individual players and sections to have featured moments. Notable in the Ravel piece was a cadenza in the first movement (Prlude la nuit) for two clarinets, played by Laura Ardan and William Rappaport, echoed nine bars later by bassoonists Carl Nitchie and Elizabeth Burkhardt. There was also a langid, winding English horn solo plaintively played by Emily Brebach at about two and a half minutes into the concluding Feria movement. In the Stravinsky, there was a pair of noble horn solos played by Brice Andrus, a lyrical bassoon solo in the Lullaby section played by Nitchie, and a brief pair of bold up-and-down trombone slides played in exceptionally smooth arcs by Nathan Zgonc, among many notable moments. This is the kind of colorful large-orchestra repertoire that the ASO musicians can really dig into with satisfaction and communicate to the audience. During the ovations, Pintscher took great care to acknowledge individual players and sections among the orchestra. Its the right thing to do because, when it comes down to the essentials, its the body of musicians who are the orchestra, regardless of whatever kind of institution it is wrapped within. Just as fans know the members of a major-league baseball team, ASO audiences ought to better familiarize themselves with the individual artists who together make possible an inspired orchestra.

PRESS RELEASE Matthias Pintscher appointed Music Director of the Ensemble intercontemporain
Paris, June 22, 2012 Following the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Ensemble intercontemporain on June 20, 2012, Chairman Henri Loyrette announced the appointment of Matthias Pintscher to the position of Music Director, beginning in the 2013-14 season, for an initial period of three years. He will succeed Susanna Mlkki, who has assumed the post in 2006. German-born conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher, 41, now based in New York City, is well known throughout the world of contemporary music. Since his 20s he has been in the forefront of composers commissioned to write for leading orchestras, from the Chicago Symphony to the Berliner Philharmoniker and ensembles from the Ensemble Modern to the Ensemble intercontemporain. This summer, the Cleveland Orchestra will premiere his new work Chute dtoiles - commissioned by the Roche Foundation - at the Lucerne Festival, followed by November premieres in Cleveland and New York Citys Carnegie Hall. He is currently Artist-inAssociation at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, a title which was conferred upon him following a single appearance to conduct a studio recording of Mendelssohns Italian Symphony. Matthias Pintscher now guest conducts major orchestras throughout the United States, Australia and Europe. Founded in 1976 by Pierre Boulez, who remains its Honorary President, the Ensemble intercontemporain is one of the best known contemporary music ensembles in the world. The Ensemble intercontemporain is a model of a new orchestral ensemble, specifically intended to promote, advocate and experiment with modern and contemporary 20th and 21st century musical idioms. Its core of 31 soloists plays a wide range of ensemble literature in all combinations of instruments. Matthias Pintscher succeeds its distinguished list of former music directors, beginning with composer-conductor Peter Etvs (1979-1991), David Robertson (19922000), Jonathan Nott (2000-2003) who became first guest conductor from 2003 till 2005 and most recently Susanna Mlkki (2006-2013).

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QUOTES I am very excited about my nomination as the next music director of the Ensemble intercontemporain, an orchestra that has exerted a strong influence on my musical upbringing as a contemporary musician. Feeling very rooted in Paris for a long time and strongly nourished by the French culture and music, this seems to be a perfect fit for me at this point of my life. I feel very inspired by this new perspective of creating a new and energized vision for the music of our time and its relation to the repertoire of the 20th century, together with the expectation to shape together with my fabulous musicians and colleagues a strong artistic image of the Ensemble intercontemporain and its role in todays society. Matthias Pintscher

I have known Matthias Pintscher for a long time, and have conducted several of his works. Ive been impressed by his development as a conductor recognized by top orchestras in both Europe and the United States. I believe he has the ability and many of the qualities needed to take on the responsibility as musical director of the Ensemble intercontemporain. I also know he has the passion, and that the musicians and members of our team are ready, to open with him a new chapter in our history. I am thrilled by this appointment which will lead the Ensemble into a new artistic era, and give it a major new artistic asset for the future. Pierre Boulez Honorary President From September 2013, a new musical era in the history of Ensemble intercontemporain begins, under the musical direction of Matthias Pintscher. Since the memorable concert he conducted in Paris in December 2011, and through meetings taking place during the last months, he has convinced us of his interest to innovate in the classic instrumental tradition, of his willingness to re-invent the shape of concerts, of his curiosity and desire to involve artists from other disciplines in our activities, all of which will nourish a new artistic design. The musicians, the Ensembles board, and the team are all very happy to welcome back a composer/conductor as musical director of the Ensemble intercontemporain. Herv Boutry General Director

jbrill@opus3artists.com

Matthias Pintscher OPUS 3 ARTISTS Jonathan Brill +1 (212) 584-7518

Ensemble intercontemporain press officer Valrie Weill / IMAGE MUSIQUE +33685227466

valerie.weill@imagemusique.com!

#!

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
Bloomington Herald-Times June 18, 2012

Review: IU Festival Orchestra

BY PETER JACOBI

The Festival Orchestra played like a festival orchestra on Friday evening, offering the audience in the Musical Arts Center an extraordinarily well-prepared feast of Beethovens Symphony Number 5, Stravinskys Petrushka, and towards Osiris, a work of very recent vintage written by the guest conductor. His name is Matthias Pintscher, and he certainly scored on his first-ever visit to Bloomington. The orchestra, though constituted only a matter of weeks ago, sounded veteran and amazingly unified. Because Maestro Pintscher opened with his own piece, something unfamiliar, audience response built slowly. The short, seven-minute-or-so composition received a friendly but restrained reaction. Its music, however meant to reflect both a contemporary painting Pintscher admires and the Osiris myth itself is stunningly clever, featuring percussion-favoring and very skillful orchestration; in subtle content, towards Osiris suggests mystery, danger, and destiny. One yearns to hear it again. Petrushka was up next. Its reading was a revelation, a stirring reminder of Stravinskys greatness. The landscape of this ballet score is amazingly fertile thematically, acutely sculpted orchestrally, and keenly delineated so that every motif stands out, no matter how multi-layered the music becomes. Pintscher highlighted the sculpture and made sure the musicians accented each theme from another, each rhythm from another, each soloist or instrumental grouping from another. The performance was transfixing. As the Beethoven Fifth unfolded, one could imagine Beethoven himself wrestling with the music, struggling to express what was troubling him at the time: family circumstances, oncoming deafness, and the depressing reality of a Napoleon on the rise, not as the champion for liberty that Beethoven first believed he would be but as dictator. The performance was absolutely fresh, almost as if the symphony was newly created. It was technically alert, too, and interpretively riveting, very exciting to hear. The audience roared approval.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
Barenreiter June 12, 2012

Matthias Pintscher Awarded 2012 Roche Commission

Franz Welser-Mst Conducts the Premiere Performances of Chute d'Etoiles in Lucerne, Cleveland and in New York at Carnegie Hall Pintscher Leads US Premiere of Ex Nihilo with Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra as well as Performances at Indiana University, New York Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Kln Philharmonie, and Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra Matthias Pintscher has been awarded the sixth commission in the history of the Roche Commissions initiative for a new work to be premiered at the Lucerne Festival in summer of 2012. The work, Chute detoiles, for two trumpets and orchestra, receives its world premiere performance on August 25, 2012 by The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Franz Welser-Mst during the orchestra's residency at the Lucerne Festival. The US premiere performances of Chute detoiles are scheduled for November 8 and 10, 2012 at Severance Ha ll in Cleveland, and the Carnegie Hall premiere follows on November 13. Chute dtoiles (Falling Stars) takes its title from a work by German artist Anselm Kiefer previously exhibited at the Monumenta 2007 exhibition in Paris. The works depiction of seven houses and three sculptures is a meditation on humanitys divine connection with the cosmos. Pintscher writes, We are made up of elements of the cosmos. And so we carry within ourselves the infinitely large as well as the infinitely small. The perfor mances feature Cleveland Orchestra musicians Michael Sachs and Jack Sutte. Michael Sachs has been principal trumpet of the orchestra since 1988. Jack Sutte joined the orchestra as second trumpet in 1999. Established in 2003 as an innovative model of collaborative cultural sponsorship, Roche Commissions is a partnership between the Swiss-based biotech company Roche, the Lucerne Festival, The Cleveland Orchestra and Carnegie Hall. Previous Roche Commissions have been awarded to Toshio Hosokawa, George Benjamin and Sir Harrison Birtwistle among others. This announcement marks the start of a busy summer season for Matthias Pintscher and his music. On June 8, Pintscher led the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in the US premiere of his Ex Nihilo for chamber orchestra. He travels to Indiana University to lead the Jacobs School of Music Festival Orchestra in his towards Osiris on June 15 in Bloomington, Indiana. Pintscher's summer schedule is filled out with conducting appointments at the Kln Philharmonie (May 25), the BBC Scottish Symphony, where he leads their Matthias Pintscher Focus Weekend (June 22-23), The Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra (July 21-22) and the New York Philharmonic (June 29, 30), where he joins conductors Alan Gilbert and Magnus Lindberg in the New York professional premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausens landmark 20th-century masterpiece Gruppen at New York City's Park Avenue Armory. Visit http://www.brenreiter.com and http://www.matthiaspintscher.com for more on the life and work of Matthias Pintscher More details can be found on the Roche Commissions prize at http://www.lucernefestival.ch.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
ThirdCoast Digest June 8, 2012

MSO: No one sounds tired at the finish line

BY TOM STRINI

The Anton Webern we dont know the 21-year-old Romantic got a rare hearing Friday, at the MSOs matinee. Guest conductor Matthias Pintscher led the Milwaukee Symphony through Im Sommerwind, a lush and dreamy meditation one might mistake for Mahler, or for Richard Strauss in a pastoral frame of mind, with a whiff of Debussy in the mix. This is Webern pre-Schoenberg. This music embodies the serenity of a summer day in the country, the stirring of leaves with the light breeze, the shifting light, the drift of white clouds in a blue sky, and feelings conjured by such a day. Weberns sound world, borne on far -extended but essentially traditional tonality and melody, is a world apart from the free-floating harmonies and gestures of Pintschers own Ex Nihilo, given its U.S. premiere Friday. But the works are akin; both are more about aura than structure. Pintscher introduced Ex Nihilo by saying that the moment of disorientation upon waking in a dark, strange hotel room inspired the piece. Its groanings, mutterings and sputterings, its sshh of breath flowing through tubing without producing a pitch, its percussive pings and rattles, and its slow accumulation of density over 12 minutes do, indeed, suggest forms slowly taking shape in the dark. Ex Nihilo (From Nothing) intrigues for its wonderland of sounds. Pintscher advises to approach it as a sound garden, as an exercise in awareness more than in following an unfolding structure. Hes right about that; the strange growths in this garden exude exotic charm and shift consciousness. (Just for the record: Pintscher had to re-start Ex Nihilo, because a cell phone rang during the very quiet early moments of the piece. Do remember to turn them off.) Pintscher is a very accomplished conductor, and the orchestra responded eagerly to both him and the music on this unusual program. Ex Nihilo and Im Sommerwind turn on the orchestras ability to make individual sounds and sonorities compelling. The players, alone and by section, showed just the hair-trigger awareness this music requires. Todd Levy, the MSOs principal clarinetist, played the feature role in Aaron Coplands Concerto for Clarinet and Strings, with Harp and Piano, from 1948. Copland wrote it for Benny Goodman. The cadenza, which links the two movements, and the finale are jazzy, but the first movement is an extended aria. An abundance of large melodic leaps make its lyricism elusive, but Levy gathered them into the most exquisitely lyrical legato lines. In some ways, that was more difficult that the firecracker virtuosity of the cadenza and finale, which Levy burned through with great verve. The orchestra part isnt that hard, in terms of getting around the instruments. But shifting meters, toe -stubbing syncopations, cross-rhythms and devilish placement of entrances make the second movement enormously tricky. The MSO played it with great confidence and vigor, assisted by a conductor who commanded the score and conducted it accurately, vigorously and specifically. This orchestra has played with such assurance almost all the time for a good 10 years now. The big advance in the last season or two has come in awareness and subtlety of tone color. The multi-hued Carnegie Hall program (Debussy, Messaien, Chen) might have made the players even more acutely aware of this aspect of music, which also happens to reside at the top of Pintschers list of musical concerns. All of this informed a reading of Stravinskys The Firebird, in the original ballet version, that shimmered, glowed, glowered and crackled with special brilliance.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
ThirdCoast Digest June 7, 2012

This Week at the MSO: Composer-conductor Matthias Pintscher

BY TOM STRINI

Weber, Strauss, Mahler, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Bernstein composers all. And conductors, too. You dont see much of that these days. Matthias Pintscher, the Milwaukee Symphonys guest conductor this weekend, is a throwback. Pintscher, a you thful 41, will lead the MSO through Weberns Im Sommerwind; Stravinskys Firebird (complete ballet score from 1910); Coplands Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra, with Harp and Piano (featuring MSO principal clarinetist Todd Levy); and the U.S. premiere of his own Ex Nihilo. Pintschers score is still warm from the printing press. He composed the 12 -minute work for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, which gave its first performances in January, with the composer conducting. Pintscher, a German-born, New York-based citizen of the world, is the Scottish Symphonys Artist in Association. (The MSO originally announced Pintschers larger Towards Osiris for this p rogram; Ex Nihilo replaces it.) A number of Pintchsers works reside on YouTube (including Towards Osiris, but not Ex Nihilo its too new.) I sampled several; the music struck me as atonal, gestural, free-roving and mostly delicate. The gestural, free-roving part applied to his conversation, as well, conducted late Wednesday afternoon at Clear at the InterContinental Hotel. Pintschers enthusiasm for all things musical is charming, and he is very articulate. The bowl of pretzels and nuts on our table proved more illustrative than nutritious, as Pintscher placed three pretzels on the table to demonstrate his approach to composition. These would be my materials, he said, of the pretzels. Theyre like characters in a play. I develop them a little. After a while, they start to talk to each other. It takes a lot of work to conceive the characters, to define the qualities of the individual objects. Then you conceive the drama and get more specific about the plot. But you always remain open detours and surprises, because thats where the real music is. And there you are. During this discourse, he moved the pretzels around some. They ended up in a neat stack. Note that all this is metaphoric; the drama in Pintschers music, at least that without text, is abstract, not narrative. The characters arent necessarily themes. They might be a complex of shifting clusters, or a quick gesture. But they are identifiable. In Cy Twomblys paintings, Pintscher said. The eye always attaches to something. I do that, too. (Hes intent on viewing the excellent Twombly at the Milwaukee Art Museum during this his first visit to Milwaukee.) Pintscher was born in Marl, Germany, in 1971, and played the violin as a youth. At 16, he went to the Detmold Hochschule fr Musik, Hannover. In 1990, he met the influential composer, Hans Werner Henze, who invited him to study at his summer school in Italy. Pintscher received his first orchestral commission a year later. He won many prizes, scholarships and fellowships, and his career as both a conductor and composer accelerated quickly in Europe. He lived in London, Israel and in Paris before moving to New York in 2008. Hed spent some time in Cleveland in 2000-02, as composer in residence with the Cleveland Orchestra. From the time I was 13 or 14, I was fascinated by all things French, he said. I think you can hear the relation to France in my music through Debussy and Ravel, of course, but also from French architecture. The consciousness of

Matthias Pintscher
ThirdCoast Digest June 7, 2012 page 2 of 2 detail is a very French thing you can look at one detail of French building and get a sense of what the whole thing is like. He spoke at some length about his Hrodiade Fragmente, for soprano and orchestra. In the key detail, just two clarinets play a single note each, a quarter-tone apart. Thats my harmony. Sometimes, you have to cut out a window and let the music become extremely simple, Pintscher said. A composer must be aware of how to stretch and compress time. Harmony does that much more than tempo. Pintscher spoke of a certain type of freedom, of letting go. It applies, in his mind, to both composing and conducting. My composition students are often very intent on their systems and generating notes, he said. But really, everything is about resonance about releasing the sound. You cant force sound out of an orchestra. Im obsessively precise about notating the music, but thats only so the player can transform it through great freedom. Im not the prototypical composer who locks himself in a room. I like performing and building relationships with musicians and orchestras. It nurtures my writing.

Matthias Pintscher
The Australian March 19, 2012

German masters mix virtuosity and wit, with a touch of melancholy

BY EAMONN KELLY

THIS year's Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Master Series opened with the return of two German-born artists, conductor-composer Matthias Pintscher and violinist Kolja Blacher. Blacher has been a regular and consistently impressive MSO soloist during the past decade, demonstrating lucid yet subtle interpretations and an intensely expressive technique. On this visit, he is presenting three diverse concert programs, including Stravinsky's infrequently heard Violin Concerto. Complementing this spiky dose of virtuosity, wit and occasional melancholy, Pintscher directed an alert MSO through the episodic extremes of Paul Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Hector Berlioz's intimately nuanced Symphonie fantastique. Pintscher conducts with a suave demeanour and an energetic and precise technique. He is equally alert to the smooth delivery of grand structural lines and opportunities for sudden bolts of articulation, dynamic shift and mood change. The Dukas was delivered as a seamless sonic thread, weaving an enthralling path between shimmering calm and outright chaos. Berlioz's programmatic symphony was given a dynamic performance, with bold articulation, expansive phrasing and moments of boisterous abandon. Described in the marketing material as a "sorbet" between these musical favourites, Stravinsky's Violin Concerto is anything but a palate-cleanser or sweet delight. Technical hazards, including fiendish doublestops and flitting runs, drastically impede the soloist's attempts to create cohesive and attractive lines. Few soloists have managed the even greater challenge of elevating the jagged entries of the outer movements above mere pyrotechnics or acerbic outburst. Blacher handled the challenges superbly, maintaining steady bow contact, pristine sound quality, and fluent phrasing throughout. With astute support from Pintscher, Blacher calmly emphasised the jaunty rhythms and brash jocularity of the outer movements, smoothly handled the second movement's fluctuations between skittish crunch and slinky caress, and achieved poignant lyricism during the third movement's melodic digressions. The Stravinsky gave only a glimpse of Blacher's artistry; no doubt the remaining two concert programs will allow an even greater view of his capabilities.

Matthias Pintscher
Sydney Morning Herald March 17, 2012

MSO revels in big-top atmosphere

BY CLIVE OCONNELL

POSSIBLY intentionally, the first of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's Master series concerts this year held a consistent undercurrent of the circus. In the opening work, the connection lay both in and outside the music: the Sorcerer's Apprentice by Dukas with its infectious, lolloping trio of bassoons irresistibly bringing to mind Mickey Mouse's apprentice shaking hands with Leopold Stokowski in Walt Disney's Fantasia of 1940. Under Matthias Pintscher, the MSO gave a bouncy performance. Kolja Blacher took the solo line for Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, where the opening Toccata movement brings to mind the big top through its thinly strident jauntiness. Its most appealing segment, the second Aria, brought a welcome melodic finesse into play. A work that's not often heard and you can understand why, even after this generous and accomplished performance. The great Berlioz symphony enjoyed a similar expansiveness, Pintscher piling on the energy and colour thickly. Still, the strings showed excellent ensemble and the woodwind solos could rarely be faulted. And I will always be thankful to this conductor for giving a pair of unabashedly flatulent tubas an unimpeded prominence in the spinetingling phantasmagoria of a finale as Berlioz's infernal circus hurtles down the Champs-Elysees.

Matthias Pintscher
The Australian March 8, 2012

Doing Igor Stravinsky justice

BY MURRAY BLACK

Sydney Symphony Violin: Isabelle Faust. Conductor: Matthias Pintscher Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. March 7.
THIS concert celebrated Igor Stravinsky' 1961 Australian visit. According to the program notes, on his first glimpse of the vast red-roofed expanse of Sydney's suburbia from the air, he remarked: "Looks like impetigo". Stravinsky's music could be as caustic as his tongue. In the wrong hands, his violin concerto can sound abrasive. Fortunately, violinist Isabelle Faust found the right balance of virtuosic brilliance and expressive intensity. When she last performed here in 2009, I remarked upon her clear, focused sound. She sustained this again, along with a pure, lean tone just right for the work. The outer movements (Toccata and Capriccio) feature some fiendishly difficult solo passages. Faust whizzed through the extended double-stopping and harmonics with impressive dexterity and clarity. By contrast, her sure sense of line created poignant accounts of the two ruminative Aria movements. As Meet the Music presenter Andrew Ford pointed out, the orchestral accompaniments are more like a series of chamber-music ensembles. Conductor Matthias Pintscher maintained exceptionally good balances with Faust while illuminating the imaginative instrumental colours and often acerbic effects. Instead of the violin concerto, Stravinsky conducted two numbers from The Firebird in his Sydney concert. Pintscher was more generous, offering the complete 1945 suite. Here, Pintscher's scrupulous control over detail was cleverly balanced with enough expressive freedom to realise the score's fairytale exoticism. The woodwinds shone with their sinuously phrased solos and evocative colours. Displaying tight-knit ensemble throughout, the orchestra's alert rhythms invigorated the Scherzo and Khorovod while their emphatic unison attack generated explosive power in the Infernal Dance and Finale. Similar virtues were on display in Ravel's Mother Goose Suite that opened the concert. The players' welljudged tempos, polished sonorities and lilting rhythms brought affectionate warmth and graceful beauty in equal measure. Textures were clear and well-defined while still capturing the shimmering, half-lit elusiveness of Ravel's orchestral palette. The concert's other work was Pintscher's towards Osiris (2005). Motivic shards rippled across the orchestra,

sometimes suddenly erupting and subsiding as tutti fortissimo geysers, sometimes barely perceptible as eerie pianissimo wisps. Although employed for different purposes, his orchestration was as ingenious as Stravinsky's and Ravel's. The way Pintscher demolished and reconstructed his material created a taut, propulsive inner logic that compelled the audience's attention. One suspects Stravinsky would have been intrigued.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
The Herald Scotland January 13, 2012

Joining the dots

Matthias Pintscher joined the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra as a house conductor in 2010.
Last year the orchestra created a brand new role for him: artist-in-association. Not composer, not conductor; the point is, this artist does both. "I'm not here as an expert on contemporary music or the Baroque," he says. "I'm trying to connect the dots in between. Whether I'm conducting Brahms or Schoenberg or my own music it's all the same. The BBC Scottish has given me the trust I need to explore. That's a very rare thing." In person Pintscher is as precise and eloquent as the music he writes. The day of our interview he's arrived on a red-eye flight from New York and rehearsed for six hours, but he's still clean shaven and sharply dressed. "Meet at the stage door in four and a half minutes," he says after rehearsal; I get there in just under five and he's patiently waiting. Across the road he orders a glass of chilled white wine and speaks with the kind of Euro-American suave that makes me muddle my words. This week and next Glasgow audiences have our first prolonged visit from Pintscher-the-artist; he conducts Stravinsky's Firebird (yesterday afternoon), Schoenberg's Erwartung (Monday afternoon) and, next Thursday, the premiere of his first BBC SSO commission, Ex Nihilo. It's an ideal showcase: "Every contemporary composer has some connection to Stravinsky," he says, "and to the Second Viennese School, for that matter. The dots between these concerts should be easy to connect." Pintscher was born in 1971 in small town West Germany. He began playing the violin at nine and joined the local youth orchestra. "Being surrounded by the physical sound, learning how to blend into something bigger than myself - I was hooked," he says. He discovered the orchestra as his instrument and began to write, "cramming page after page with thousands of notes". At 18 Hans Werne Henze took him under his wing as a close friend; by 22 he had written three symphonies. He had also, like Henze, left Germany for good. "Why?" He chooses his words carefully. "The country lacks a sense of joyfulness. By now, having lived away for so long, I've entirely stripped away my German roots." First he moved to London, then to Paris, where his music picked up a "strong French sensibility". But rather than laying down new roots he kept travelling. At heart, he says, he's a wayfarer. Artistically the tactic seems to have worked. Pintscher's music refuses to be tied by nationality or stylistic dogma; his is a distinct voice with a distinct and very successful market on both sides of the Atlantic. His commissions come from the world's A-listers: Berlin, Vienna, Cleveland, ensemble modern, ensemble intercontemporain - And yet he says he doesn't write to please. "No stylistic school, no. Nor do I write for the sake of novelty. I hate the term avant-garde too military. And anyway; avant quoi? What's the big fetish about being new? Maybe I'm inventing a crazy bassoon multi-phonic, or maybe somebody invented it yesterday in Japan. Who cares?" In 2008 he moved to New York. "For love," he says, "and there I felt at home for the first time in my life." He lives in the Upper West Side, composes at a huge architect's desk overlooking the Hudson. "Water, sunlight and space - I

Matthias Pintscher
The Herald Scotland January 13, 2012 page 2 of 2 spread out my manuscripts and can see the sonic paths I'm treading." He's within walking distance of the Lincoln Centre and an easy commute to teaching at New York University. At 40, he says, things are "very, very good". He's also cunningly placed to indulge his other habit: contemporary art. "I collect it, sell it, am generally quite obsessive with it," he says. It strikes me that when Pintscher talks about music he uses almost exclusively visual terms the link in his mind seems borderline synaesthetic. "Certainly there's a profound connection there," he agrees. "Many of my works have been strongly inspired by contemporary art." For all his success and sophisticate cool, at times Pintscher is humble. He says he can't write a piano concerto; "I'm too aware of history totally locked by my knowledge of what has been achieved by the great piano concertos. Plus my writing for the piano is lousy." He also admits that, though his music is famously detailed, he has spent the last five years striving for a simpler aesthetic. "Sound should capture a listener. Pop music does it all the time and we don't feel guilty to indulge and get emotional. Classical music should prompt the same response." "It's why I love minimalism, which allows listeners to bring to it what they want. These days I'm trying to avoid writing anything too prescriptive. I want to invite people in like leading them into a gallery then leaving them alone to absorb and respond in their own way." "Ultimately I want to be more economical. It's a lifelong struggle, not something I've achieved yet. Often I look at new works, including my own, and wonder why there's so much on the page. The greatest moment in a huge piece can be the quietest, just two clarinets playing the same note while the rest of the orchestra is silent. It's about perspective, something that fascinates me. Yes, another thing stolen from visual arts." Ex Nihilo has been advertised as a companion piece for Brahms's Third Symphony, but Pintscher lets us in on a secret. "I'll be honest: it's not. I have never accepted a commission that ties my music to one specific event. I'm proud to be able to say that. And I've never tailored a piece for specific musicians. My music is very precise, the notation is almost obsessively precise, but then I detach. I want to see how different performers bring it to life. "A new piece is a statement about where I currently am. And currently I've been conducting a lot of Brahms. So if there's something that relates to Brahms 3 it's this: how the inner voices expand to fill the contours of the outer voices. Brahms is a master of inner voices." Beyond that, Pinscher describes Ex Nihilo as a study of the "inner life of sound, how a form starts from nothing and unfolds in front of our ears. I wanted to show music in its rawest state; layers start to shape it then, once a solid form has emerged, the piece ends. That's why I chose the Latin name: something that comes from nothing." Matthias Pintscher and the BBC SSO are at City Halls, Glasgow, on Monday afternoon and Thursday evening.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER
Chicago Reader June 3, 2011

ICE on CD
BY PETER MARGASAK

More challenging and more rewarding than the Adams disc is a new album featuring the work of the German composer Matthias Pintscher. ICE performed a program of his music at New York's Miller Theatre last October and within a day or two the superb Kairos label asked ICE to record some of the pieces, including Sonic Eclipse. On the first movement of that piece, trumpeter Gareth Flowers blows unpitched breaths through his instrument, a technique widely used in free improvisation these days (pioneered by folks like Axel Drner and Greg Kelley). The first two parts of the composition, "Celestial Object I" and "Celestial Object II," are solo features, respectively, for Flowers and French horn player David Byrd-Marrow, and the third movement, "Occultation," superimposes elements from the first two parts the "eclipse"with passages both in sharp registration and general opposition. An earlier work called "A Twilight's Song" features soprano Marisol Montalvo singing the poem of the same name by E.E. Cummings (the Miller concert featured ICE soprano Tony Arnold, who performs at Saturday's MCA event), and a performance of the intense choral piece She-Cholat Ahavah Ani (Shir Ha-Shirim V) by SWT Vokalensemble Stuttgart rounds out the CD.

Matthias Pintscher
The Pioneer Press March 10, 2011

SPCO program propelled by contrast

BY RON HUBBARD

While watching Matthias Pintscher conduct the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at Minneapolis' Temple Israel on Thursday night, I found myself thinking about Isaac Newton's third law of motion. You know, the one about every action having an equal and opposite reaction? In both his original compositions and his interpretations of others' work, Pintscher is devoted to emphasizing contrasts and conflict. It's an intriguing approach, and it made for some interesting music making on Thursday. Lest you think that the orchestra was performing pieces rife with rage and intra-ensemble shouting matches, you should know that two of the classical repertoire's most sweet-spirited works were on the program: Maurice Ravel's lively "Le Tombeau de Couperin" and Beethoven's ebullient Eighth Symphony. Both sounded like festive folk dances in the hands of Pintscher and the SPCO, who gave each a lithe and joyous rendition, the conductor emphasizing quick shifts in volume level and tug of wars between sections of the orchestra. But the centerpiece of the program most clearly stated Pintscher's approach. His 2009 work, "Songs from Solomon's Garden," is an adaptation of the "Song of Songs" (from the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, depending upon your faith) that looks at love from many levels. Sung in Hebrew by bass-baritone Evan Hughes, it transformed from something melodious into a torrent of sound during which every instrument became percussion. However, Pintscher was again determined to throw things into stark contrast, so the rattle and hum often quickly subsided to reveal whispers of nightmarish unease, with darting figures tossed back and forth between the players. While there was little tenderness in the music to match the text, it's a haunting soundscape that finds the composer releasing his inner John Cage. And Hughes sung it splendidly, although the orchestra sometimes surged over him like a spring flood. The piece has an antiphonal framework, one section of the ensemble often echoing themes originating in another. That approach held through the concert-closing performance of Beethoven's Eighth, on which conductor Pintscher brought out how much of the symphony can sound like exclamations and replies, action and reaction. It was a thought-provoking take on a work that is too often presented in fluffy fashion.

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The Scotsman February 8, 2011

Classical concert review: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

BY KENNETH WALTON

Matthias Pintscher's influence on the BBC SSO as its artist-in-association, even at this early stage, is proving extraordinary. For not only is Pintscher's own music fascinating his Songs from Solomon's Garden was a major component in Saturday's Hear and Now concert but his influence as a conductor and programme planner is equally inspirational. What better to set such a tone than Webern's timbral deconstruction of Bach's fugue a masterly example of fragmentation and unification from The Musical Offering, which members of the SSO performed with precision. Every single work that followed bore that same polarising quality, each in its own way. Pintscher's songs settings in Hebrew from the biblical Song of Solomon and sung in this UK premiere by the powerful baritone Evan Hughes were an electrifying follow-on to Webern. The supersensitive orchestral writing proved a tingling illumination of the more earthbound vocal line. The combined effect was mesmerising. The first half ended with a violin concerto written and performed by the American David Fulmer. The discreet use of electronics and the shadowy presence of the harpsichord add an ethereal dimension to a work otherwise buzzing with translucent dynamism. Fulmer himself delivered the solo line with dizzying energy. The seven movements of Michael Jarrell's Instantans are Webernesque in their brevity, but are as this taut, explosive performance proved characterised by a breadth of expression that is intrinsically overt and expansive. Zimmermann's stoical Stille und Umkehr sketches for orchestra rounded off a stunning programme. Pintscher's design and approach to presenting modern music has shades of Pierre Boulez about it. How promising is that?

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The Guardian February 7, 2011

BBC SSO / Matthias Pintscher

BY KATE MOLLESON

Taking on Matthias Pintscher as Artist-in-Association last year confirmed the BBCSSO's place among serious new music ensembles. The 40-year-old German composer-conductor has attracted attention since his early 20s for writing dense and detailed sound worlds, but he's at heart a romantic, fond of conducting Berlioz and Debussy and able to treat thornier stuff with the same broad expression. He has strong links with the European and American new music scenes, links that judging by this concert, the first in his new role with the SSO will serve the orchestra well. We heard three UK premieres, the most impressive of which was by Pintscher himself. Songs from Solomon's Gardens sets the ancient Hebrew Shir ha-Shirim, which Pintscher describes as "the most beautiful, intimate and intricate love poetry ever written", each word "like a prism which scatters the expressive content in various directions". The same could be said about the music. Clusters of close-knit sound brim with volatile energy that flits through the orchestra, always bright and shifting. Baritone Evan Hughes sang with warmth and gravitas, though occasionally his richness was lost in the mix. The other guest was American violinist-composer David Fulmer, 30 this year and, like Pintscher, deadly precocious. His Violin Concerto is clever but unsettled, overwhelmed by what an orchestra can do not ready to accept that one piece can't capture it all. After the interval came Michael Jarrell's Instantans, dating from 1986 and sounding it, full of brute, tarnished energy. The evening opened with Bach arranged by Webern and conducted by Pintscher and closed with Zimmermann's final orchestral work, written shortly before his suicide and strung around a dull drone that peters out to heartbreaking nothing, leaving only the meek whimper of a bowed saw.

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Philadelphia Inquirer January 28, 2011

A conducting debut in a fine new music program

BY DAVID PATRICK STEARNS

Since new-music concerts should, by definition, be unimaginable, Matthias Pintscher's program Wednesday at the Kimmel Center can't technically be called the event of one's dreams, since it couldn't have been envisioned. But you get the idea. The German-born, New York-based composer might be called a neo-modernist, or simply an extremist in many respects. He made his local conducting debut with the Curtis 20/21 Contemporary Music Ensemble in a concert presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Imaginatively conceived, smartly sequenced and brilliantly executed, it created a logical progression of thought, from Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks concerto on through Henze's Neapolitan Lieder, Ravel's Trois poemes de Stephane Mallarme, and Pintscher's Songs From Solomon's Garden. Stravinsky was played with the sort of heterogeneous interplay few would risk: The more independent its moving parts, the more likely a train wreck in performance. Despite some roughness, no reading I've heard has been so smart and witty, almost like stand-up comedy in the abstract. Conductors rightly give much attention to entrances, but Pintscher also gave exits an extra snap that felt like the coda to a joke The pieces that followed had conceptually similar but stylistically diverging interplay among far-reaching musical elements, as well as an evolution of instrumental effects from black and white (Stravinsky) to vivid color in Henze. Those songs, written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, are also vocally astute but gleefully depart from the norm with compact, through-composed construction, long instrumental preludes, plus endings that find different ways to be inconclusive. Dissonance is fleeting, but harmonic uncertainty was rampant and poetic - at least under Pintscher. The Ravel songs show the composer looking deep into the future, which created a perfect bridge to Pintscher's music. The text for his piece is from the Song of Solomon, respectfully set to music with sharp expressive contours tailored for Thomas Hampson, who premiered it last year. Lighting levels at the Perelman Theater were too low to follow the 17 stanzas of printed text with much certainty, though the composer's instrumental scoring flooded the ear with his typical sound world: shuddering percussion, muted brass, short solos by harp and violin played at extreme parts of their ranges, swirling for extended passages around one note, quietly sounded like a sonic beacon. Performances by student singers were beautifully prepared. In Henze, Julian Arsenault had a wonderful soft-grained baritone reminiscent of Petre Munteanu. Jazimina MacNeil brought much mezzo allure to the Mallarme text in the Ravel songs. Most remarkable was Evan Hughes, whose penetrating articulation of the Hebrew text made you glad Pintscher's false endings were in fact false.

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Cleveland Plain Dealer November 4, 2010

Difficult new score proves seductive with Cleveland Orchestra, guest cellist
BY ZACHARY LEWIS

Patience, as in life, is a virtue in music appreciation. Dismiss a work or performance too quickly and you're very likely to miss the point completely. The temptation to tune out was high at Severance Hall Thursday, when the Cleveland Orchestra and cellist Alban Gerhardt gave the U.S. premiere of Matthias Pintscher's "Reflections on Narcissus." But those who stuck with the thorny, 35-minute piece probably found themselves seduced in the end, won over by the work in its totality. Although the score, completed in 2005, is often raucous and noisy, the performance Thursday under Pintscher himself wasn't so much hard on the ears as slippery, offering precious little to grasp. Mostly, like the watery mirror in the myth on which it's based, the music came as a stream of enticing but quickly-vanishing effects and colors. The narrative, too, was far from straightforward. From its five continuous movements, one merely took away the sense of a rise and fall. Required was a fresh mentality, an approach to the work as a happening rather than a presentation and development of ideas. This was one of those scores best enjoyed live. Like the fabled image of Narcissus, Gerhardt was impossible to resist. Between eerie sighs, howling screeches, and agitated sprints, the cellist, performing from memory, made for a spellbinding protagonist. Matching his steely intensity in several head-to-head bouts was principal cellist Mark Kosower. Percussion played nearly as vital a role. Out of its ranks came such curious and evocative sounds as gurgles, spurts, rumbles, and crashes, suggesting aquatic activity and heightening the impact of dramatic peaks. "Reflections" may not have been easy to love, but the experience in sum made submitting to its acrid embrace more than worth the effort. Patient listeners also were rewarded with three musical treats as readily delightful as "Reflections" was prickly: Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and Ravel's "Alborada del Gracioso" and "Mother Goose" ballet. Like Pintscher's concerto, all three are steeped in fictional tales. But leaving them to Pintscher made artistic as well as programmatic sense; the complexity of his own music has made him a astute interpreter of music in which precision and grace are paramount. In "Mother Goose," the conductor kept the orchestra light on its toes as well as limber, free to sculpt phrases in search of maximum emotional value. Throughout, too, he wielded a broad palette of dynamics, while the woodwinds turned in too many charming solos to count. Likewise, the standouts in "Apprentice" were the bassoons, who made hay with their unforgettable main theme. But their peers in the brass and strings were also key, rounding out a dramatic, highly animated scene. Even patience came into play again. With "Apprentice," most listeners probably knew what was coming, and the best strategy was to simply wait and let the music take you by surprise.

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The New York Times October 22, 2010

Molding Sound to Behave Like a Solar Eclipse

BY ALLAN KOZINN

Matthias Pintschers music whispers far more often than it shouts. But when this imaginative 39 -year-old German composer and conductor wants an ensemble to produce a big sound, he is not shy about asking its percussionists to supply a generous helping of thunder, sometimes supported by full-throttle, harmonically dense contributions from the brasses and woodwinds. Mr. Pintscher was the subject of the Miller Theaters first Composer Portraits concert of the season, on Thursday evening, and the four pieces on the program conveyed a sense of the extremes at which he works, as well as the peculiar sensibility that drives his music. What appears to interest him most is texture, but as soon as he finds an alluring one it could be a delicate, repeated arpeggio, sparkling softly at the top of the keyboard, or the blend of an airy flute, a not-quite-on-the-note violin tremolando and metallic percussion he has it morph into something else. The most ambitious score here was Sonic Eclipse (2010), a three-movement work built around a fascinating structural notion. The first two movements celestial object I and celestial object II are essentially brief concertos, the first for trumpet, the second for horn. In the finale, occultation, elements of the first two movements are overlaid an idea suggested by the mechanics of a solar eclipse. The result is a colorful, energetic movement in which the trumpet and horn lines are alternately independent and interlocking. The mostly introspective trumpet writing, played with nuanced virtuosity by Gareth Flowers, begins with a toneless figure air blown through the instrument, with a rhythmic undercurrent created by depressing the valves and includes muted passagework that toward the end explodes into a rhapsodic solo. The French horn part in celestial object II, more assertive from the start, explores the instruments full range, from growling bass notes to more ecstatic high pitches. David Byrd-Marrows tour of the lines intricacies and quick figuration was stunning and assured. But if the trumpet and horn lines naturally commanded the attention, it was not because the orchestral scoring, with its continuous, otherworldly texture shifting, lacked attractions of its own. Mr. Pintscher drew a vivid performance from the expert musicians of the International Contemporary Ensemble. He also led the group, with the flexible soprano Tony Arnold, in a twilights song (1997), a fluid E. E. Cummings setting. Mr. Pintschers vocal writing is wedded to the poetrys spirit, if not its surface. In a twilights song, that meant plenty of octave leaping to capture the stark emotionality that underlies Cummingss meditative verses. His setting of an Octavio Paz poem, Un despertar (An awaking) , from 2008, is more subdued, and was performed gracefully by Evan Hughes, a bass-baritone with a light, appealing timbre, and Cory Smythe, the pianist who also played on a clear day (2004), the gentle, soft-edged piano work that opened the program.

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Cleveland Plain Dealer June 6, 2010

Cleveland Orchestra highlights new music with exhilarating Composers Connect event
BY ZACHARY LEWIS

Boy soprano Asher Wulfman was the featured soloist in "With Lilies White" by Matthias Pintscher, one of four contemporary pieces featured on Saturday's "Composers Connect" event with the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall.

REVIEW In the orchestral world, the only thing rarer than a concert of contemporary music is one that sells out. But the old saw that new pieces scare away listeners may be headed to the door like an offended patron after Saturdays marathon presentation by the Cleveland Orchestra.
Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Free and informal, the special evening drew capacity crowds to Severance Hall while exemplifying a viable forum for the music of today and providing a rich, diverse experience unlike anything else on the orchestras calendar. Titled Composers Connect, the event consisted of two hour -long concerts featuring four works made for Cleveland by the orchestras Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer Fellows. Matthias Pintscher, one of the composers, conducted and spoke from the stage.
In between the two main concerts, a quintet performed Louis Andriessen's "Workers Union." The group consisted of drummer Dylan Moffitt and Cleveland Orchestra members, from left, Scott Dixon, Mark Jackobs, Maximilian Dimoff, and Marc Damoulakis.

All four works called for large orchestras, but Pintschers With Lilies White was particularly elaborate, demanding three sopranos, Photo by Roger Mastroianni a boy soprano, and percussionists posted around the hall. But if the 2002 piece was busy, it was also effective, evoking in cinematic, spine-tingling definition the visions of a man slowly dying.

Matthias Pintscher Cleveland Plain Dealer June 6, 2010 Page 2 Within a tumultuous orchestral environment of wails and shrieks, 7th-grader Asher Wulfman intoned text by Derek Jarman with chilling purity and directness. Sopranos Sarah Davis, Kathryn Brown, and Cleveland native Susan Botti (one of the composers) surrounded him with ghostly moans. Music and text by Renaissance composer William Byrd produced jolting contrasts between old and new, and the faint final sound of rustling wood suggested a spirit floating away on the wings of birds. Just as compelling, in a different manner, was Bottis Translucence, from 2005, the nights friendliest and most sheerly beautiful score. Where others seemed intent on overwhelming, Botti persuaded with soft elegies, ethereal interludes, and a vigorous, lumbering dance, all steeped in poetry by May Swenson. The orchestra brought off the vivid music brilliantly, and Pintschers conducting readily conveyed form and direction. Such structural elements proved elusive in the other entries, Concertate il suono by Marc-Andre Dalbavie (2000) and On Comparative Meteorology, by Johannes Maria Staud (2009). The latter, especially, inspired by the writing of Bruno Schulz, offered few points of entry and little substance beyond curious colors and visceral punches. Like Lilies, Dalbavies Concertate stationed players around the hall for antiphonal effects. His, though, were more explicitly the point, and the works most compelling moments were when percussive reverberations and sighing horns met in midair, like trapeze artists. Elsewhere, the piece was less gorgeously disorienting, urgent and slithering without apparent focus. Those who hung around during the hourlong interlude witnessed a spectacle even rarer than two back-to-back concerts of modern music. For 15 exhilarating minutes, five musicians playing amplified instruments thrashed out Louis Andriessens Workers Union, a loud, gnarled piece where rhythms are firm but pitches are not. It was like heavy metal, only heavier, and the wildest aspect of an event one sincerely hopes becomes tradition. http://www.cleveland.com/musicdance/index.ssf/2010/06/post_63.html

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The Scotsman 18 May 2010

Classical review: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

BY KENNETH WALTON

BBC SCOTTISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CITY HALLS, GLASGOW

IF SATURDAY'S Hear and Now programme was intended to whet our appetites for the arrival next season of the BBC SSO's new artist-in-association, Matthias Pintscher, then it worked a treat. The young German presented a programme aimed at exposing the two sides of his musicianship conductor and composer that will dominate his forthcoming formal relationship with the SSO. Firstly, there's Pintscher's own very distinctive music, which is like a breath of fresh air literally, at times. Celestial Object 1, for solo trumpet and orchestra, opens with the player (Mark O'Keefe) puffing air into his trumpet. Before long, though, its strange and distant audibility comes into focus, a patchwork of spacey instrumental textures and gestural phrases that bubble with mutational intent, their natural objective being the music's ripe, golden climax. The same process underlines Transir for flute and chamber orchestra. Soloist Sebastian Wittiber articulated its alluring serenity with a delicacy and intimacy that was mesmerising and quietly intense. Much of the magic of these performances stemmed from Pintscher's authority as a conductor, which was equally instrumental in shaping works by Varse and Wolkgang Rihm that completed a superb programme. When did we last hear Varse's Intgrales delivered with such searing definition? When did we last hear the same composer's seminal chamber work Octandre performed at all? Let's have much more of this bold ambition from Pintscher when he officially takes up his post. http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment/Classical-review-BBC-Scottish-Symphony.6298011.jp

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Herald Scotland 17 May 2010

Conductor is instrumental in concert success

BY CATHERINE ROBB

Recently appointed as the BBC SSOs artist-in-association, on Saturday evening Matthias Pintscher conducted his concert debut with charm and self-assurance. During his interview in the first half, Pintscher described the orchestra as a delicate instrument in itself it is evidently one he knows how to play. The orchestra opened and closed as a reduced ensemble, with the sharp and insistent rhythmic sounds of Edgard Varse. Octandre (1923) and Intgrales (1925), although angular and percussive, were performed with an intimate quality that gave rare melodic passages their own space and the climaxes room for growth. This subtlety was again evident during the performance of Wolfgang Rihms Verwandlung 3, which had a Strauss esque hint, adding to its already philharmonic intensity. The concert, recorded for Radio 3s Hear and Now contemporary music composer portrait, not only displayed the technical ability of the SSO, but also showcased Pintscher as an expressive composer. Celestial Object 1 delved into a world of subtle textures, where solo trumpeter Mark OKeeffe was denied a typical brass -like concerto, and instead interacted with different sonorities and sounds. Transir for solo flute was unremarkably similar: self-indulgent and more gestural than concrete. Although the evening could have suffered from the slightly disjointed programme, it did not. The SSO emerged with an fluidity which made for an approachable interpretation. Under the baton of Pintscher we were offered a welcome departure from exclusivity and guided through demanding music with an air of modest confidence.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/music-reviews/conductor-is-instrumental-in-concert-success-1.1028097

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra April 14, 2010

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 75th Anniversary Season

The BBC SSO has produced the best concert season by the corporation in at least 30 years. with the biggest, and arguably the strongest, house team of conductors in the UK.
THE HERALD, 13 APRIL 2010

66 concerts and events across Scotland and in Europe The orchestra stars in a new four-part series for BBC Two Scotland German Composer and Conductor Matthias Pintscher becomes the orchestras first Artist-in-Association and Andrew Manze takes up post of Associate Guest Conductor 5 World Premieres from some of Scotlands leading composers, including James Dillons epic Nine Rivers Special 75th Anniversary Broadcasts and Concerts

In its 75th Anniversary Year, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO) presents its widest ranging and most ambitious concert season to date. The artistic leadership of Chief Conductor Donald Runnicles and Principal Guest Conductor Ilan Volkov, is augmented with the addition of German Composer and Conductor Matthias Pintscher as the orchestras first Artist-in-Association, and Andrew Manze officially takes up his post as Associate Guest Conductor. The orchestra will present music at the core of the symphonic repertoire, with special projects devoted to religious music, music from Great Britain and works by the great romantics including Wagner and Brahms. It maintains its position as one of the premier contemporary music ensembles in the UK by presenting five new works by Scottish Composers, including the world premiere of James Dillons ambitious sequence Nine Rivers. It will present 66 concerts and events across Scotland, in London and in Europe, including a tour to Germany and Austria, and performs with some of the worlds leading soloists including violinists Midori and Janine Jansen and trumpeter Hkan Hardenberger. It will present a series of 75th Anniversary Broadcasts and Concerts and will star in a new four-part series for BBC Two Scotland. Director of the BBC SSO, Gavin Reid 75 years is a landmark anniversary for any artistic organisation, and this past year has been one of the most artistically momentous ones in the history of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. The chemistry between the orchestra and Chief Conductor Donald Runnicles has set fresh artistic benchmarks and Ilan Volkov, now our Principal Guest Conductor, continues to bring his unique perspectives to familiar repertoire and new works. We are delighted that this special chemistry extends to the two newest additions to our musical family, Andrew Manze and Matthias Pintscher. Through our concerts and broadcasts, the BBC SSO continues to bring great music and great performances into the homes of thousands of people across the world, and to mark our birthday celebrations we unveil to you a

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra April 14, 2010 page 2 of 4 concert season that I think any orchestra in the world would be delighted to present and one that we that the orchestras founder, Ian Whyte, would be proud of. New Series for BBC Two Scotland The orchestra will star in a new four-part television series for BBC Two Scotland Talking Music, looking at the work and lives of the professional musicians who make up one of the UKs leading orchestras. Each episode focuses on a different aspect of orchestral life: Conductors: featuring Donald Runnicles, Ilan Volkov and Jessica Cottis (Conducting Fellow at the RSAMD and assistant to Donald Runnicles). Soloists: soprano Lisa Milne, violinist Nicola Benedetti and Belle and Sebastians Stuart Murdoch. Composers: James MacMillan, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Paul Leonard-Morgan. BBC SSO Players: violinists Amy Cardigan and Alice Rickards, principal trumpet, Mark OKeeffe and the orchestras longest serving member, cellist Anthony Sayer. As well as being broadcast as four 30 minutes programmes on BBC Two Scotland, the series will also be made into twelve 10 minute films available online for teachers, students and music-lovers. The broadcast date is to be announced. Augmented Artistic Team Chief Conductor Donald Runnicles and Principal Guest Conductor Ilan Volkov are joined this season by two new team members, Associate Guest Conductor, Andrew Manze and the BBC SSOs first Artist-in-Association, Matthias Pintscher. Andrew Manze, one of the leading baroque musicians in the world, instantly clicked with the orchestra stating that the BBC SSO plays music as I dream of hearing it. He will conduct, and present, several performances throughout the season. The BBC SSOs first Artist-in-Association is New York based composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher. One of the foremost of the new generation of composers, Pintscher has already worked extensively with some of the worlds great orchestras including the New York and Berlin Philharmonics, conducting the great classics as well as his own superb compositions. The BBC SSO will unveil some of his work at a special portrait concert on 15 May this year. Glasgow City Halls The BBC SSOs flagship Thursday Night Series from its home at Glasgow City Halls comprises 15 concerts across four distinctive themes: Romantics Unbound: Exploring the passion of the great 19th century composers, including Brahms and Wagner with a special concert performance of Act 1 of Wagners Die Walkure. This Sceptred Isle: Four programmes of British music, including both of Waltons symphonies and Brittens Piano Concerto, all broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra April 14, 2010 page 3 of 4 Sacred and Profane: exploring the connection between a composers spiritual life and their orchestral works, including Brahmss greatest work, the German Requiem, continuing the highly-successful partnership between the BBC SSO and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. Flights of Inspiration: highlighting how composers as diverse as Tchaikovsky, Bartk, Debussy and Birtwistle have found inspiration in myriad ways from religious faith, to literature or the support of a patron. An integral part of the Thursday Night Series are the pre-and-post-concert Preludes and Codas; an opportunity to learn more about the music and musicians, or to enjoy a little extra music from soloists after the main programme. Prelude speakers will include presenter of the Today programme James Naughtie in conversation with Donald Runnicles, composer Sally Beamish and Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh and current Chair of the Scottish Arts Council. Coda performances include pianists Ronald Brautigam and Steven Osborne, mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill, accompanied by Donald Runnicles, and cellist Lynn Harrell. In addition to the Thursday Night Series, are the popular series of Afternoon Performances and recordings for Radio 3s Discovering Music. Concerts in the Afternoon Performance series will feature exclusive performances from some of BBC Radio 3s New Generation Artists. Across Scotland The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra will present a full season of six concerts at the Music Hall in Aberdeen, with Donald Runnicles opening and closing the season. The BBC SSO continues its close association with the Edinburgh International Festival with three performances including the opening and closing concerts; John Adams El Nio and Mahlers Symphony No.8. As well as its appearances at the Edinburgh Festival, the BBC SSO and Donald Runnicles present three concerts in the Usher Hall, including a concert performance of Act 1 of Wagners Die Walkure. The orchestra will also perform in Inverness and Ayr, and again collaborates with Scotlands other orchestras to present the Scottish Orchestras Series at Perth Concert Hall. Details of the BBC SSOs performances at the 2010 BBC Proms will be announced on 22 April. Soloists and Conductors The orchestra presents a roster of exceptional guest talent throughout the season including violinists Janine Jansen and Daniel Hope, pianist Nelson Freire, cellist Lynn Harrell and arguably the worlds leading trumpet soloist Hkan Hardenberger. One of last seasons stars, soprano Heidi Melton returns to sing the role of Sieglinde in Die Walkure, and two of Scotlands leading musical exports return - pianist Steven Osborne and mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill. Violinist Nicola Benedettis association with the BBC SSO goes back to her triumph in the 2004 BBC Young Musician of the Year, and she performs the Beethoven Violin Concerto for the first time in Scotland. At the Edinburgh International Festival, the orchestra will be joined by internationally renowned artists including violinist Midori, baritone Willard White, bass John Relyea and sopranos Hillevi Martinpelto and Erin Wall. The orchestras staff conducting team is complemented by guest appearances from Vassily Sinaisky, Andrew Litton, John Storgrds, Stephen Bell and the BBC SSOs former Associate Principal Conductor Martyn Brabbins. New Music Recognised as one of the worlds great contemporary music ensembles, the BBC SSO continues its unwavering support for new music and for Scottish composers. In May 2011 it will give the world premiere of a new work by one of the most significant composers in the world today, Helmut Oehring. His new work, a BBC Commission created especially for the unique ambiance of the Old Fruitmarket, is for spoken voice, solo cello and orchestra, and is based upon Edgar Allan Poes The Pit and the Pendulum. In addition to the music of Matthias Pintscher and the new music it will

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BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra April 14, 2010 page 4 of 4 premiere in its specialist new music series Hear and Now, the BBC SSO presents no fewer than five world premieres from five Scottish composers Stuart MacRae, Sally Beamish, Helen Grime, Edward McGuire and James Dillon. In November, the orchestra will give the world premiere of one of the most ambitious artistic collaborations presented in Scotland, Glasgow-born composer James Dillons epic sequence Nine Rivers. Commissioned by organisations including IRCAM, the BBC and Glasgow 1990 City of Culture, and never performed in its intended form, it is presented here in collaboration with Glasgows Concert Halls, using both the Grand Hall and the Old Fruitmarket at City Halls. The orchestra will be joined for this work by the renowned American percussionist Steven Schick, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Sound Intermedia and the BBC Singers. The orchestra will also perform works by John Adams and gives the world premiere of a new work by the winner of the 2009 Aberdeen Music Prize, May Kay Yau. 75th Anniversary Celebrations The orchestra celebrates its 75th Birthday with a special concert from City Halls on Thursday, 2 December 2010, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 with additional celebrations planned on BBC Television. Under the baton of Martyn Brabbins, the concert will feature Nicola Benedetti in Beethovens Violin Concerto. The orchestra begins its birthday celebrations on 11 June at City Halls, when it presents its third annual LISTEN HERE!, a big weekend of free concerts and music-making events including a unique chance to sing excerpts from Mozarts Requiem. For the fourth successive year it will also present its hugely popular Christmas at the Movies concert at City Halls, as well as its annual Christmas themed concerts in Aberdeen and Ayr. Austro-German Tour From 23-28 October 2010 the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Donald Runnicles, and violinist Janine Jansen, will embark on a six concert tour of Austria and Germany. Beginning at the Audimax in Regensburg, and ending at one of the most prestigious venues in the world, the Konzerthaus Vienna, the orchestra and its Chief Conductor perform in some of cities where Donald Runnicles made his international reputation. On the prospect of the tour, Donald Runnicles said: Perhaps the jewel for us is the prospect of the tour we are making to Europe with Janine Jansen as our soloist, a good friend and colleague. In touring Germany and Austria, my old stomping grounds, with the BBC Scottish I will be enormously proud to be at the helm of this orchestra. Online The BBC SSOs presence on Facebook and Twitter have given it the fastest growing online community of any orchestra in Scotland, and in a drive to bring its unique content to audiences in a range of ways and on multiple platforms, it will continue its Concert Visualisation project, where selected performances in the season will be filmed and made available for audiences to enjoy online.

BBC SCOTTISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA APPOINTS MATTHIAS PINTSCHER AS ITS FIRST-EVER ARTIST-IN-ASSOCIATION
From Th e H e rald (Scotlan d ) - A pr il 12, 2010 WALL TO WALL BLOCKBUSTERS B l o c k b u s t e r s , t wo b i r t hdays and a bombshell
BY MICHAEL TUMELTY

No Scottish orchestra, in the current wave of new-season launches, has failed to come up to the mark. But the BBC SSO, unveiling its new concert programmes today, has produced not only the best concert season by the corporation in at least 30 years; it has produced a set of programmes that are downright sensational. Chief conductor Donald Runnicles will take five concerts himself in the 15-concert Thursday night series, launching the season with the ultimate blockbuster when he conducts the complete first act from Wagners opera The Valkyrie, which, as a stand-alone piece, is the greatest, most electrifying set-piece in the entire Ring cycle. Soprano Heidi Melton and tenor Stuart Skelton will sing the brother-sister-lovers roles of Sieglinde and Siegmunde. As if that wasnt enough intensity for one evening, Runnicles will preface the Valkyrie with Sibeliuss molten Violin Concerto played by the great Dutch violinist Janine Jansen. Then, in week two, Runnicles keeps the voltage high by powering into Beethovens Eroica Symphony, while Jansen, staying on for a fortnight, plays Brahmss Violin Concerto. And believe me, it rolls on like that. Runnicles, on subsequent visits, keeps it big with a momentous programme that includes Brahmss German Requiem for which he will be joined by the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. The temperature stays high as we hear his Brahms Two and Mahlers Ruckert Lieder with Karen Cargill. And, for the first time, Runnicles gives us his take on French music with a sweeping programme that includes Dutilleuxs Cello Concerto, Debussys Images, Ravels Mother Goose and the warhorse Bolero. It is, quite frankly, a season of wall-to-wall blockbuster events as the other house conductors pile in. Ilan Volkov has three programmes, including Bruckners mighty Fifth Symphony, Elgars Second and Tchaikovskys explosive Fifth. The SSOs brilliant new associate guest conductor, Andrew Manze, has one evening concert in the new season, though hell be doing daytime concerts, too (details to come). Picking up the Brahms thread that runs through the season, hell conduct the Fourth Symphony, which will probably be a total revelation. That Brahms thread has been capitalised on in a uniquely BBC way. The Beeb has commissioned two top Scottish composers, Sally Beamish and Stuart MacRae, each to write a piece inspired by a Brahms symphony. Andrew Manze will conduct the Beamish, Runnicles the MacRae. The season will also celebrate the 75th birthday of the SSO with an amazing concert which will be conducted by former SSO staffer, BBC favourite and one of the most versatile of British conductors, Martyn Brabbins. The programme will have the premiere of a new work commissioned from Helen Grime, the Scottish composer whose star is soaring. It will also feature Nicola Benedetti with Beethovens Violin Concerto.

Matthias Pintscher
The Herald (Scotland) April 12, 2010 page 2 of 3
Brabbins, in a triumphant return to his old band, will also conduct both of William Waltons symphonies across two concerts, as well as a recent piece by Glasgow composer Martin Suckling, and, in a sensational concert with soprano Susan Gritton, a performance of Brittens Les Illuminations along with the first concert performance of three further songs from the Rimbaud cycle, discovered only recently and orchestrated by Colin Matthews. Britten features again in another programme in an English music series when Steven Osborne plays the dazzling Piano Concerto, for the recording of which Linlithgows finest won the Gramophone Award. That concert will be conducted by Vassily Sinaisky, who will also give a Russians take on Vaughan Williamss Fifth Symphony. Another favourite guest conductor (not room for many in a crowded house of staff conductors) is the brilliant Andrew Litton who, along with all the others, will keep the emotional temperature way up high with Sibeliuss First Symphony, as will the superb chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, John Storgards with Sibeliuss symphonic poem The Wood Nymph and Bartoks great Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta. OTHER star soloists appearing in the season include pianist Ronald Brautigam playing Mozart, Anthony Marwood and Lawrence Power with a rare performance of Brittens Double Concerto for Violin and Viola, violinist Daniel Hope directing and playing Bachs A minor Concerto, Johannes Moser playing Elgars Cello Concerto, Hakan Hardenberger playing Birtwistles scorching Endless Parade, cellist Lynn Harrell playing the Dutilleux with Runnicles and the great Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire playing Beethovens Emperor Concerto with Volkov. On top of all this there will be five concerts in the SSOs hugely popular, massively attended Afternoon Performance series (details to come). With a new criterion of integration, every one of these will feature a BBC New Generation Artist. The BBCs unique contemporary music series Hear and Now will also unfold its details in due course. Which brings us to the other birthday. James Dillon, the Glasgow-born hard man of modern music, will be 60, and the BBC SSO is going to stage a performance of his Nine Rivers, a huge series of nine works that has been attempted but never yet played complete. The running time is four hours, and the forces will include the SSO, a solo percussionist, and the percussion super-group, Les Percussions de Strasbourg. The Dillon specialist conductor Rolf Gupta has been engaged to get the whole thing done for the first time. And there will be more birthday Dillon. Which leaves the small matter of the bombshell. With the biggest, and arguably strongest, house team of conductors in the UK with Runnicles, Volkov and Manze, the BBC SSO today announces that it has made yet another appointment. He is the German-born, New York-based conductor and composer Matthias Pintscher. He is a red-hot property. Out of the inner circuit hes not that widely-known, but he operates at the top level of the music business. He wrote one of the satellite pieces Simon Rattle commissioned to go with Holsts Planets. The Berlin Philharmonic commissioned him to write a piece for Claudio Abbados 75th birthday, which he also conducted. He has a new song cycle for Thomas Hampson and the New York Philharmonic being premiered this week. He is writing a piece for the Cleveland Orchestra. He conducts all of these orchestras. He also conducts the Ensemble Intercontemporain. He is also a teacher with professorships at the Curtis Institute, the Juilliard and New York University. And, in a total coup, the BBC SSO has nabbed him and created for him a new post of Artist in Association. The antennae are always out, said Gavin Reid, director of the SSO, explaining that they have been looking for a successor to former composer in association Jonathan Harvey. The chance of getting Pintscher would enable the Beeb to broaden the remit as the German is as much a conductor as a composer. They brought him over privately for some non-public Radio 3 sessions in the studio, during which he conducted a Mendelssohn Four that, said Reid, was absolutely exquisite. And they pounced, creating a new and flexible post where Matthias can make an impact on different levels.

Matthias Pintscher
The Herald (Scotland) April 12, 2010 page 3 of 3
Pintschers new post will start in the autumn, and hes straight into the winter season with a programme of Messiaen, Mozarts Prague Symphony and Stravinskys complete Pulcinella ballet score. But before that Pintscher will be here next month to take a Hear and Now Portrait concert which will feature his own music alongside pieces by Edgard Varese and Wolfgang Rihm. Securing him is a gobsmacking coup for the SSO. Thats it, said Gavin Reid, looking like the Cheshire Cat. We have our team. Ill stop collecting now.

Matthias Pintscher
The New York Times 19 March 2010

Music Review | New York Philharmonic

Modernism for an Egyptian Myth

BY ALLAN KOZINN

Looking at the program that Christoph Eschenbach and the New York Philharmonic performed at Avery Fisher Hall on Thursday evening, you might think that the only link among the three works was between Bergs Violin Concerto and Schoenbergs arrangement of Brahmss Opus 25 Piano Quartet. Berg, after all, was Schoenbergs disciple, and his concerto combines Schoenbergs 12-tone method with a current of Romanticism that ties it to the Brahms. In the Brahms itself, the musics 19th-century harmonies are tempered by Schoenbergs overtly modernist brass and percussion touches. But as it turned out, the programs 21st-century curtain-raiser, Matthias Pintschers towards Osiris (2005), though couched in a harmonic and rhythmic language far denser than Bergs or Schoenbergs, had at least tenuous connections to both works. Mr. Pintschers score was inspired by the myth of Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of fertility, who is murdered and dismembered by his brother, Set, the god of war and chaos, and reassembled and revived by his sister-wife, Isis. Just as Schoenberg used his Brahms orchestration as an opportunity to experiment freely with contemporary sonorities that pull the music far beyond the implications of the original, Mr. Pintscher saw the possibility of using intense dissonance and a freewheeling, virtuosic approach to orchestration as a way to get to the emotional heart of the Osiris story. This version of the work goes only part of the way: towards Osiris is a study for a larger piece, Osiris (2007). But it traces the arc of the story, starting with an impenetrably cacophonous introduction that captures Sets anger and violence, and ending with a serene, rising string figure that suggests Osiriss transformation by Isis. Compressed as the story is, Mr. Pintscher covers considerable ground in his alluringly amorphous woodwind writing, dazzlingly tactile percussion scoring and passages in which orchestral colors morph constantly. The Berg, if not as overtly programmatic as Mr. Pintschers score, has a subtext: Bergs sorrow over the death of Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler and her second husband, the architect Walter Gropius. And just as the atonality of the Pintscher melts in its concluding bars, the Berg ends with a transfiguring set of variations on a Bach chorale. Mr. Eschenbach and Pinchas Zukerman, the soloist, offered a surprisingly tepid reading of this emotional work. Mr. Zukerman produced a centered tone and gave the line some color singing here, bitter there but his phrasing was easygoing and distant. The orchestra sounded as if its thoughts were elsewhere too.

The Brahms-Schoenberg was an entirely different story. The work itself is full of surprises: the piano writing is so fully integrated into the orchestration that if you did not know the original, you would be hard pressed to imagine it. Mr. Eschenbach and the players reveled in its extremes, particularly in the marchlike section of the Andante con moto and the blustery brass and percussion scoring in the finale, in which the orchestra was at its vigorous best.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/arts/music/20phil.html

ARTISTS
T 212.584.7500 info@opus3artists.com www.opus3artists.com

PINTSCHER
Melbourne Symphony Orchestras 2009 Metropolis Festival: Press

MATTHIAS

Matthias Pintscher, who has just made a successful conducting debut directing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestras 2009 Metropolis Festival with a varied 3 concert program of cotemporary works, including several of his own, has composed a new three-part cycle for ensemble with sonic eclipse. The rst part, celestial object I, will be premiered by the Scharoun Ensemble in the concert Hommage an Claudio Abbado on 20 May in Berlin presented by the Berlin Philharmonic. Part II, celestial object II. will be given in September 2009 at the Berliner Philharmonikers summer academy in Zermatt Switzerland, where Pintscher will be composer-in-residence, as well as conductor of several programs. Pintscher composed the third part, occultation, for Klangforum Wien on the occasion of the groups 25th anniversary, It will receive its premiered in 2010 in Witten as part of the complete cycle.
THE AUStRaLIaN

Pintschers batonless conducting style is precise, minimalist and curiously delicate, typically involving symmetrical arm gestures, a pincer grip and raised little ngers. The orchestra responded marvellously well to conductor and repertoire, and there were few apparent imperfections despite the extreme technical demands and complex extended techniques involved.

Matthias Pintscher
The Austrailian May 8, 2009

Contemporary series regains direction

BY EAMONN KELLY

IN 2004, Markus Stenz completed his seven-year term as chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Among the youthful German's achievements was the development of Metropolis, an annual contemporary music series that proved surprisingly popular. Stenz's influence on Metropolis's programming was unashamedly pronounced and much of the success of the series came down to personal presentation of the material, blending suave charisma with an obvious enthusiasm for the repertoire. Since Stenz's departure, Metropolis has lurched along in a relatively rudderless fashion. Incumbent chief conductor Oleg Caetani has focused on his own strengths and interests, leaving management to determine the fate of the series. In 2007, inspired curatorial guidance briefly returned, with Australian composer Brett Dean devising a program that, aesthetically, recalled Stenz's interests and featured, as frontman and conductor, laid-back and likable Scottish composer James MacMillan. Developing the composer-curator model, the MSO has adopted a radical new approach. A 38-year-old German composer and conductor, Matthias Pintscher, long the darling of ageing European modernists, has been allowed to devise and present a program that pivots on his own works, his compositional inspirations and composers he calls colleagues and friends. Pintscher followed three principles: to introduce music little known in Australia; to present diverse soundscapes; and to share his aesthetic. There was a touch of naive Eurocentricity about the first principle, underestimating the breadth of Australian listening experience and overlooking the heavy dose of European modernism Stenz programmed during his tenure. The soundscapes chosen by Pintscher were certainly diverse, many works involving extreme internal contrasts of tonal coloration, orchestration and mood. There was also a reasonable mix of compositional styles: five written before 1985 (Webern, Zimmerman, Boulez), three substantial works by Pintscher, two by older European colleagues (Sciarrino, Jarrell) and two fresh Australian works (by Elias Constantopedos and Lorenzo Alvaro). Pintscher's batonless conducting style is precise, minimalist and curiously delicate, typically involving symmetrical arm gestures, a pincer grip and raised little fingers. The orchestra responded marvellously well to conductor and repertoire, and there were few apparent imperfections despite the extreme technical demands and complex extended techniques involved. Pintscher seems drawn towards music with explicit intellectual underpinnings, here featuring works inspired by poetry, archeology, science, etymology and ethics. His evocatively titled works Osiris and Reflections on Narcissus use mythology for inspiration, conceptual frames on which to hang abstract compositional material that is generally too oblique to be interpreted programmatically. Stylistically, his music straddles several branches of European modernism,

Matthias Pintscher
The Austrailian May 8, 2009 page 2 of 2 tempering angst and gloomily intense intellectualism with masterful, expressive and occasionally uplifting orchestration inspired by 20th-century French traditions. The strength of this series was a renewed emphasis on personality. It featured an individual musical perspective delivered with relative autonomy by a young and charismatic conductor. If sustained in future years, a popular phoenix may emerge from the bleak, post-Stenz ashes of Metropolis.

Matthias Pintscher
The Age May 6, 2009

Clarion call of trumpets heard through Metropolis

BY CLIVE OCONNELL

IT WAS trumpets all the way at the first of the official Metropolis concerts last Saturday evening. The four-part program came to a firm conclusion with Osiris, an orchestral meditation by this year's presiding eminence, conductor Matthias Pintscher. A major work due to its formal substance, finely tuned spectrum of colours and fierce searching-out of interpretative defects, this solid score served more as a kaleidoscope of individual timbres and ensemble combinations than an illustration of the Egyptian myth, Geoffrey Payne's first trumpet line the chameleonic fabric's most substantial and memorable component. Pintscher seemed happy with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's efforts, although one passage for exposed first violins in unison proved rather painful for its clumsiness. The night's other trumpet focus came in Bernd Alois Zimmermann's concerto Nobody knows de trouble I see, Tristram Williams recapitulating the marked success he enjoyed as soloist with this score during the 2007 Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards in Perth. More at ease this time round, Williams gave full measure to the score's free-wheeling improvisatory suggestions, the frantic activity of its climactic pages transmitted with impressive verve. Pintscher began the evening with Salvatore Sciarrino's multiphonic-rich Archeologia del telefono, in which snips and repeated fragments painted a mildly amusing picture, ending oddly with the Nokia ring tone. Young Australian composer Elias Constantopedos heard his Moda performed under a very aware director who kept fluent control over its shifts in context and emotional patterns.

Matthias Pintscher
Arts Hub May 5, 2009

Review: Metropolis 2009: Osiris - Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

BY RONALD MCCOY

Drama, humour and myth well all expertly combined in Saturday nights Osiris, the first of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestras concerts in the annual contemporary music concert series Metropolis, under the direction of guest conductor and programmer Matthias Pintscher. The Merlyn Theatre at the Malthouse is quite an intimate environment, which became especially apparent in the second half of the programme when the audience seems on top of the musicians when the full orchestra is utilised. I suspect that people who go to Metropolis are great music lovers, who really enjoy getting up close and personal with the orchestra and this is certainly a great occasion to do so. The opening offering, the Australian premiere of Salvatore Sciarrinos Archeologia del telefono: Concertate for 13 instruments, was a gentle start to the evenings program presented by a reduced size ensemble. The carefully counterpointed, sparse themes create an almost timeless atmosphere so that the humorous finales wonderf ul irony was not lost on the audience. The World premiere of Elias Constantopedoss Moda offered listeners the chance to follow one of the successful participants in the MSOs Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program for young Australian Composers which was reported previously in Arts Hub. Moda explores the meaning behind the term fashion in popular culture, contemporary art, music and film drawing on diverse 20th century musical and visual trends. The juxtaposition of diverse, fragmented imagery provided a welcome up tempo contrast to the concerts opening. Contemporary music makes great demands on musicians which were truly put to the test when Tristram Williams trumpet was guest soloist in Bernd Alois Zimmermanns one movement trumpet concerto Nobody knows de trouble I see. The richness of musical ideas and form of this dramatic work provided an intensely dramatic journey, with Williams breathtaking musicianship and artistry keeping the audience on the edge of their seat, dragging them kicking and screaming through deeply troubling existential struggles that shaped the twentieth century. I was particularly fascinated on how the use of highly structured themes and forms still resulted in a sense of chaos, insecurity and angst Finishing the program was the Pintschers own deeply mythical work, Osiris. Mirroring the original story that the work takes its name from, this challenging work uses musical language to illustrate and explore one of the deepest archetypes, that is, of life and death. Small scale musical fragmentation, juxtaposition and reanimation contrast with the overall shape of the composition. Complexity infused this work, in terms of its structure, technique and detail. One of the great shames of contemporary music, is that pieces often only get one hearing, and this is a piece that I would really like to hear again to try and get my head around it.

Matthias Pintscher
Arts Hub May 5, 2009 page 2 of 2 Every Metropolis concert is a journey, and this was no exception. Great diversity of emotions, themes, depth and sound made this concert thought provoking and entertaining, thanks to the careful programming choices and skillful conducting of Matthias Pintscher (whom Im sure will end up as a crowd favourite by the end of this series). The Metropolis series also gives a rare chance for the MSO musicians to demonstrate the depths of their technical skills. If you want to hear great music played by great musicians, Metropolis is the one of the highlights of the Australian contemporary music scene

Matthias Pintscher
Austrailian Stage Online May 4, 2009

REVIEW: Osiris | Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

BY DANU POYNER

It's basically impossible not to enjoy a performance by a symphony orchestra, no matter what they're playing. The rich, stirring sounds wash over you and never fail to warm the soul. To attend a performance by an internationally renowned orchestra such as the Melbourne Symphony in an intimate setting such as CUB Malthouse is an even greater treat. It should come as no surprise then that the second of MSO's Metropolis 2009 Series concerts - Osiris - was as great a joy as you would expect. The Metropolis Series is a chance to hear a diverse range of works that have not been widely performed. The young but accomplished German conductor Matthias Pintscher has programmed the 2009 Series, tracing his formative influences in the French tradition and combining this with some of his own works as well as new works commissioned as part of the MSO's Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program. The Osiris concert comprised four very different works. The first, the Australian premiere of Archeologia del telefono, composed by Salvatore Sciarrino, could be regarded as a musical history of the telephone and its human context. It's a composition that's as odd as it sounds, especially towards the end as orchestral instruments mimic the sounds of dial tones and mobile phones, but you can't help but be taken in by the soundscape. Moda, by Sydney composer Elias Constantopedos, is an entirely different affair. At just 26 years old (the same age as this reviewer), Elias is something of a wunderkind, graduating from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Honours in 2005 and having already composed and produced several full-length dance works in collaboration with dance choreographer Vicki Van Hout. Moda was commissioned as part of the MSO's Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program and Elias was in attendance for its world premiere performance as part of the Osiris concert. Asked by conductor Matthias Pintscher what he believes is the identity of a 21st century Australian composer, Elias, looking relaxed and sounding decidedly Australian, says Australia is part of a global community and he must therefore look all over the world for inspiration. Inspiring stuff indeed, as is Moda itself, an exploration of musical fashions and trends from throughout the 20th century. It has the feel of a film soundtrack; varied styles but with a theme running throughout. The third composition, entitled Nobody knows de trouble I see, is a one-movement trumpet concerto by Bernd Alois

Matthias Pintscher
Austrailan Stage Online May 4, 2009 page 2 of 2 Zimmermann. It's based on an African-American gospel song and accordingly a Hammond organ was wheeled onto the stage to evoke the sound of a Gospel church. The mood of the composition is dark yet proud, with a moving performance on trumpet by soloist Tristram Williams (who in his spare time, somewhat incongruously, is part of an electro-acoustic band called DIODE.) The eponymous final composition is a work by conductor Matthias Pintscher. Another Australian premiere, Osiris is inspired by the story of the Egyptian God who was murdered and torn into pieces by his brother Seth, before being reassembled and brought back to life by his wife (and sister!) Isis. The work begins with a wholesome totality of sound and traces the story musically through mournful sorrow and then intricately, piece by piece, that original sound is rediscovered, though as a reflection of what has occurred, it doesn't sound quite the same or as wholesome as before. Osiris, both the composition and the concert overall, was a wholesome, if at times somewhat challenging, delight. If you enjoy listening to a live orchestra perform (and who doesn't?) but you'd like to try something a little different, take the opportunity to see the final two concerts in the Metropolis Series 2009. Each performance is something uniquely special.

Matthias Pintscher
The Austrailian May 8, 2009

Contemporary series regains direction

BY EAMONN KELLY

IN 2004, Markus Stenz completed his seven-year term as chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Among the youthful German's achievements was the development of Metropolis, an annual contemporary music series that proved surprisingly popular. Stenz's influence on Metropolis's programming was unashamedly pronounced and much of the success of the series came down to personal presentation of the material, blending suave charisma with an obvious enthusiasm for the repertoire. Since Stenz's departure, Metropolis has lurched along in a relatively rudderless fashion. Incumbent chief conductor Oleg Caetani has focused on his own strengths and interests, leaving management to determine the fate of the series. In 2007, inspired curatorial guidance briefly returned, with Australian composer Brett Dean devising a program that, aesthetically, recalled Stenz's interests and featured, as frontman and conductor, laid-back and likable Scottish composer James MacMillan. Developing the composer-curator model, the MSO has adopted a radical new approach. A 38-year-old German composer and conductor, Matthias Pintscher, long the darling of ageing European modernists, has been allowed to devise and present a program that pivots on his own works, his compositional inspirations and composers he calls colleagues and friends. Pintscher followed three principles: to introduce music little known in Australia; to present diverse soundscapes; and to share his aesthetic. There was a touch of naive Eurocentricity about the first principle, underestimating the breadth of Australian listening experience and overlooking the heavy dose of European modernism Stenz programmed during his tenure. The soundscapes chosen by Pintscher were certainly diverse, many works involving extreme internal contrasts of tonal coloration, orchestration and mood. There was also a reasonable mix of compositional styles: five written before 1985 (Webern, Zimmerman, Boulez), three substantial works by Pintscher, two by older European colleagues (Sciarrino, Jarrell) and two fresh Australian works (by Elias Constantopedos and Lorenzo Alvaro). Pintscher's batonless conducting style is precise, minimalist and curiously delicate, typically involving symmetrical arm gestures, a pincer grip and raised little fingers. The orchestra responded marvellously well to conductor and repertoire, and there were few apparent imperfections despite the extreme technical demands and complex extended techniques involved. Pintscher seems drawn towards music with explicit intellectual underpinnings, here featuring works inspired by poetry, archeology, science, etymology and ethics. His evocatively titled works Osiris and Reflections on Narcissus use mythology for inspiration, conceptual frames on which to hang abstract compositional material that is generally too oblique to be interpreted programmatically. Stylistically, his music straddles several branches of European modernism,

Matthias Pintscher
The Austrailian May 8, 2009 page 2 of 2 tempering angst and gloomily intense intellectualism with masterful, expressive and occasionally uplifting orchestration inspired by 20th-century French traditions. The strength of this series was a renewed emphasis on personality. It featured an individual musical perspective delivered with relative autonomy by a young and charismatic conductor. If sustained in future years, a popular phoenix may emerge from the bleak, post-Stenz ashes of Metropolis.

Matthias Pintscher
The Age May 6, 2009

Clarion call of trumpets heard through Metropolis

BY CLIVE OCONNELL

IT WAS trumpets all the way at the first of the official Metropolis concerts last Saturday evening. The four-part program came to a firm conclusion with Osiris, an orchestral meditation by this year's presiding eminence, conductor Matthias Pintscher. A major work due to its formal substance, finely tuned spectrum of colours and fierce searching-out of interpretative defects, this solid score served more as a kaleidoscope of individual timbres and ensemble combinations than an illustration of the Egyptian myth, Geoffrey Payne's first trumpet line the chameleonic fabric's most substantial and memorable component. Pintscher seemed happy with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's efforts, although one passage for exposed first violins in unison proved rather painful for its clumsiness. The night's other trumpet focus came in Bernd Alois Zimmermann's concerto Nobody knows de trouble I see, Tristram Williams recapitulating the marked success he enjoyed as soloist with this score during the 2007 Symphony Australia Young Performers Awards in Perth. More at ease this time round, Williams gave full measure to the score's free-wheeling improvisatory suggestions, the frantic activity of its climactic pages transmitted with impressive verve. Pintscher began the evening with Salvatore Sciarrino's multiphonic-rich Archeologia del telefono, in which snips and repeated fragments painted a mildly amusing picture, ending oddly with the Nokia ring tone. Young Australian composer Elias Constantopedos heard his Moda performed under a very aware director who kept fluent control over its shifts in context and emotional patterns.

Matthias Pintscher
Arts Hub May 5, 2009

Review: Metropolis 2009: Osiris - Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

BY RONALD MCCOY

Drama, humour and myth well all expertly combined in Saturday nights Osiris, the first of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestras concerts in the annual contemporary music concert series Metropolis, under the direction of guest conductor and programmer Matthias Pintscher. The Merlyn Theatre at the Malthouse is quite an intimate environment, which became especially apparent in the second half of the programme when the audience seems on top of the musicians when the full orchestra is utilised. I suspect that people who go to Metropolis are great music lovers, who really enjoy getting up close and personal with the orchestra and this is certainly a great occasion to do so. The opening offering, the Australian premiere of Salvatore Sciarrinos Archeologia del telefono: Concertate for 13 instruments, was a gentle start to the evenings program presented by a reduced size ensemble. The carefully counterpointed, sparse themes create an almost timeless atmosphere so that the humorous finales wonderf ul irony was not lost on the audience. The World premiere of Elias Constantopedoss Moda offered listeners the chance to follow one of the successful participants in the MSOs Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program for young Australian Composers which was reported previously in Arts Hub. Moda explores the meaning behind the term fashion in popular culture, contemporary art, music and film drawing on diverse 20th century musical and visual trends. The juxtaposition of diverse, fragmented imagery provided a welcome up tempo contrast to the concerts opening. Contemporary music makes great demands on musicians which were truly put to the test when Tristram Williams trumpet was guest soloist in Bernd Alois Zimmermanns one movement trumpet concerto Nobody knows de trouble I see. The richness of musical ideas and form of this dramatic work provided an intensely dramatic journey, with Williams breathtaking musicianship and artistry keeping the audience on the edge of their seat, dragging them kicking and screaming through deeply troubling existential struggles that shaped the twentieth century. I was particularly fascinated on how the use of highly structured themes and forms still resulted in a sense of chaos, insecurity and angst Finishing the program was the Pintschers own deeply mythical work, Osiris. Mirroring the original story that the work takes its name from, this challenging work uses musical language to illustrate and explore one of the deepest archetypes, that is, of life and death. Small scale musical fragmentation, juxtaposition and reanimation contrast with the overall shape of the composition. Complexity infused this work, in terms of its structure, technique and detail. One of the great shames of contemporary music, is that pieces often only get one hearing, and this is a piece that I would really like to hear again to try and get my head around it.

Matthias Pintscher
Arts Hub May 5, 2009 page 2 of 2 Every Metropolis concert is a journey, and this was no exception. Great diversity of emotions, themes, depth and sound made this concert thought provoking and entertaining, thanks to the careful programming choices and skillful conducting of Matthias Pintscher (whom Im sure will end up as a crowd favourite by the end of this series). The Metropolis series also gives a rare chance for the MSO musicians to demonstrate the depths of their technical skills. If you want to hear great music played by great musicians, Metropolis is the one of the highlights of the Australian contemporary music scene

Matthias Pintscher
Austrailian Stage Online May 4, 2009

REVIEW: Osiris | Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

BY DANU POYNER

It's basically impossible not to enjoy a performance by a symphony orchestra, no matter what they're playing. The rich, stirring sounds wash over you and never fail to warm the soul. To attend a performance by an internationally renowned orchestra such as the Melbourne Symphony in an intimate setting such as CUB Malthouse is an even greater treat. It should come as no surprise then that the second of MSO's Metropolis 2009 Series concerts - Osiris - was as great a joy as you would expect. The Metropolis Series is a chance to hear a diverse range of works that have not been widely performed. The young but accomplished German conductor Matthias Pintscher has programmed the 2009 Series, tracing his formative influences in the French tradition and combining this with some of his own works as well as new works commissioned as part of the MSO's Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program. The Osiris concert comprised four very different works. The first, the Australian premiere of Archeologia del telefono, composed by Salvatore Sciarrino, could be regarded as a musical history of the telephone and its human context. It's a composition that's as odd as it sounds, especially towards the end as orchestral instruments mimic the sounds of dial tones and mobile phones, but you can't help but be taken in by the soundscape. Moda, by Sydney composer Elias Constantopedos, is an entirely different affair. At just 26 years old (the same age as this reviewer), Elias is something of a wunderkind, graduating from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with Honours in 2005 and having already composed and produced several full-length dance works in collaboration with dance choreographer Vicki Van Hout. Moda was commissioned as part of the MSO's Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program and Elias was in attendance for its world premiere performance as part of the Osiris concert. Asked by conductor Matthias Pintscher what he believes is the identity of a 21st century Australian composer, Elias, looking relaxed and sounding decidedly Australian, says Australia is part of a global community and he must therefore look all over the world for inspiration. Inspiring stuff indeed, as is Moda itself, an exploration of musical fashions and trends from throughout the 20th century. It has the feel of a film soundtrack; varied styles but with a theme running throughout. The third composition, entitled Nobody knows de trouble I see, is a one-movement trumpet concerto by Bernd Alois

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Austrailan Stage Online May 4, 2009 page 2 of 2 Zimmermann. It's based on an African-American gospel song and accordingly a Hammond organ was wheeled onto the stage to evoke the sound of a Gospel church. The mood of the composition is dark yet proud, with a moving performance on trumpet by soloist Tristram Williams (who in his spare time, somewhat incongruously, is part of an electro-acoustic band called DIODE.) The eponymous final composition is a work by conductor Matthias Pintscher. Another Australian premiere, Osiris is inspired by the story of the Egyptian God who was murdered and torn into pieces by his brother Seth, before being reassembled and brought back to life by his wife (and sister!) Isis. The work begins with a wholesome totality of sound and traces the story musically through mournful sorrow and then intricately, piece by piece, that original sound is rediscovered, though as a reflection of what has occurred, it doesn't sound quite the same or as wholesome as before. Osiris, both the composition and the concert overall, was a wholesome, if at times somewhat challenging, delight. If you enjoy listening to a live orchestra perform (and who doesn't?) but you'd like to try something a little different, take the opportunity to see the final two concerts in the Metropolis Series 2009. Each performance is something uniquely special.