Prague Offspring: Ensemble Modern II
Can music be corporeal? You’ll find the answer in a world premiere and in an essential work by Enno Poppe, Körper, in which Ensemble Modern is transformed into a big band.
Programme
- Otto Wanke: new work commissioned by the Prague Spring
- Enno Poppe: Körper
Performers
- Ensemble Modern
- Enno Poppe – conductor
The three-year residency of the Frankfurt-based Ensemble Modern at Prague Offspring, a two-day contemporary music format held during the Prague Spring festival, will culminate in 2027 in an exceptional concentration of creative energy. Enno Poppe, one of the most striking and most distinctive figures on the current European music scene, will come to Prague to assume his role as Composer-in-Residence. His fascinating world of sound, in which precise and highly complex structures blend with irony, humour and an almost visceral vulgarity, will form the imaginary axis of the entire programme. In addition to pivotal works by Poppe, the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Holešovice will also come alive with music by five Czech and Slovak composers, who have written brand new works commissioned by the Prague Spring.
Second concert at Prague Offspring
The second evening will showcase two longer compositions. The first will be the world premiere of a thirty-minute piece by Vienna-based Czech composer Otto Wanke (*1989), whose oeuvre combines vocal-instrumental composition with electronics, multimedia and sound art. Wanke’s music has been performed at prestigious festivals such as Ars Electronica, Acht Brücken and Wien Modern. “The composition Plastique sonore develops certain principles of spectral music while building upon the tradition of musique concrète instrumentale”, states the native of Znojmo, who celebrates his 38th birthday in 2027. “The usual hierarchy of tone and noise is reversed: here, noise is not merely an accompanying element of the instrumental sound, but rather the primary material from which a tone emerges and into which it dissolves once again.”
Jazz big band in the hands of Enno Poppe
“A big band is an instrument reminiscent of a golden era and corduroy pants,” says Prague Offspring Composer-in-Residence 2027 Enno Poppe (*1969), displaying his typical humour. “The truth is that its sonic potential is not only immense, but also hardly ever fully taken advantage of, because the idiom of big band music has been construed far too narrowly,” he adds. So imagine on one side of the equation a jazz big band with saxophones, trumpets, trombones and an arsenal of percussion instruments, and on the other an electric keyboard, an electric violin, electric cellos and double bass, with a sound more reminiscent of an electric guitar than classical strings. The result? Körper (Body), a composition lasting nearly fifty minutes, blending surgical precision with uncontrollable kinetic energy, free of traditional clichés and cast into the uncompromising world of the contemporary musical avant-garde. It was written in 2021, tailor-made for Ensemble Modern, with whom Enno Poppe shares a long-standing friendship. There is no room for improvisation in the work of this native of Hemer in North Rhine-Westphalia; everything is written out in the score down to the last detail. Nevertheless, Körper gives the impression that the musicians are playing “whatever they fancy”. The compelling rhythmical pulse clearly points to the inspiration of jazz.
