Composition Commissions issued to Biró, Mahnkopf and Mack

Ensemble SurPlus, Freiburg

Founded in Freiburg in 1992 Ensemble SurPlus has set itself the task of interpreting 
new and unknown compositions, irrespective of style and intellectual or technical demands. This spirit of the ensemble which could simply be described as an "openness to new things" essentially originated with the ensemble’s initiator, conductor, artistic director and pianist James Avery who died in March 2009. Giving expression to this spirit are numerous projects whose realization was/is considered virtually impossible – ahead of all others the performance of works from the complex music school (such as those by Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Frank Cox, Aaron Cassidy and many others). 
As part of Ensemble SurPlus’ "Das instrumentale Wort – Die Sprachmächtigkeit der Musik" project (The Instrumental Word – The Linguistic Mastery of Music) now the complex relationship of music and language of three composers is to be transposed in artistic terms in very different ways. Daniel Biró will set texts from the Old Testament to music at the same time transforming these into musical structures according to cabbalistic rules. Dieter Mack will translate linguistic gestures, sound forms, syntactical relationships and, more importantly, deep communicative dimensions into an instrumental morphology. Klaus-Steffen Mahnkopf will apply himself to philosophical terms to transform their rhetoric power and semantic ambiguity into polyphonic constellations of form. The three composition commissions will be funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

2010/2011 Concert Season

Further Information:
www.ensemble-surplus.de