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.

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?

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".

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 don’t 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 Mendelssohn’s “Fair Melusina” Overture, which summarizes the

opera’s familiar tale of a water sprite. He did the same with two pieces from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to

Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Fauré and Debussy were represented by their unique takes on antique dance forms. Fauré’s Pavane, a French dance

from the Renaissance, sounded ancient and hauntingly modern. In Debussy’s Sarabande from “Pour la Piano,” a stately

reimagining of a Baroque dance, orchestrated by Ravel, the orchestra shimmered.

The “Deux Marches et un intermède” by Poulenc began with the sparkling “Marche 1869,” a nostalgic evocation of the

Belle Époque. 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 Orchester conducted by Matthias Pintscher invites you to dreamland – with

Ravel's ballet musics "Ma mère l'oye" and Daphnis et Chloé (both 1912). This lulls indeed (merely the

hypnotically bewitching solo flute!), the acoustic color, however, becomes rather monochrome. Not

until the bacchanalian finale starts does Pintscher abandon all initial restraint – like at the beginning

in Paul Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice when he knew how to employ the dynamic economically

cleverly.

A sculptural conductor who incessantly conjures up images for one's ears. Especially Alfred

Schnittke's Viola Concert from 1985, the highlight of this evening in the Philharmonie, benefits from

that.

…

Stage and Screen:

Inner Cinema

The Deutsche Symphonie Orchester conducted by Matthias Pintscher plays works of

Dukas, Schnittke and Ravel

This concert of the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester is actually ill-fated: Originally principal director

Tugan Sokhiev was to conduct the concert which was supposed to consist fifty-fifty of works of

Russian and French composers. Then, however, Sokhiev had to cancel because of family reasons.

Matthias Pintscher filled in and replaced a piece by Prokofiev with a piece by another French

composer, Paul Dukas. The intended balance for the evening was destroyed, the signs conceivably

infavorable. But then suddenly something unexpected happens: This somehow improvised concert

shows the orchestra at the highest level of its capability, its dramaturgy is exceedingly compelling

and offers interpretations of partially well-known works which make one listen attentively. Above all,

however, it retains a nearly electrifying suspense – from the first to the last note.

…

Those are narrative, also illustrating works which are to accompany images and in any case to create

suchlikes in the listeners' imagination. Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice is exemplary for this: From the

first to the last second it is profoundly exciting how Pintscher builds up musical suspense, does not

let it fade at any time and how he makes the basic structure of this piece perceptible. The orchestra

plays forceful and articulately and has a transparency which makes every single note,

every single instrument audible. Pintscher has the orchestra make strong accents, he also does not

fear abrupt shifts and sharp edges. He focuses on the contrasts in the score and creates something

close to a soundtrack for silent movie which does not need a screen. The drama about the sorcerer's

apprentice who nearly perishes by his own magic finds clear and haunting images in the listener's

imagination.

Later something similiar happens with Ravel. Shimmering and fairy tale-like Ma mère l'oye comes in,

builds up a tremendous dynamic which here also creates a sort of cinema for one's ears. Again

Pintscher focuses on the contrasts, lets different sentiments collide with each other and exploits the

extremes between loud and quiet masterfully to create an almost seizable suspense. The

transparency he creates is fascinating, the sound that is composed of every single one's crystal clear

playing is sparkling, the soli of the different instruments are highly precise. It is the same thing with

Daphins et Chloé: Scarcely one has heard the famous dawn of the beginning this thrilling: The utterly

self-evident transition from the gentle, fragile, a structure seeking beginning to the radiant triumph,

from the fragmentary impressionism to the iridescent sound palette. Pintscher proofs his sense for a

clever dramaturgy, for the dramatic value of musical contrasts here, too. Fast and precise changes of

sentiments, volume and tempo characterize the playing. The development of force in the third

movement is nearly painful before it ends amidst a moment of highest tension.

Highlight of the concert, however, is the only piece that originated without textual source or an

extra-musical concept, but still benefits the most from Pintscher's inner cinema: Alfred Schnittke's

Viola Concert. The orchestra is most of the time restrained and only comes to the fore when the

score demands it. It proves to be a precise accompanist and commentator of the musical

happeningswith the soloist in the center.

…

In Tamestit's and Pintscher's hands Schnittke's piece becomes a human drama, in which hope and

desperation, love and pain always belong together and even need each other.

…

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 d’orchestra 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 l’Orchestra di Santa Cecilia, di ritorno da una recente tournée europea. L’eleganza

della suite di Ma Mère l’Oye (cinque pezzi infantili) di Ravel apre un programma alquanto eterogeneo: qui Pintscher

illumina con tocco leggero l’Orchestra nella vivacità 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

all’Imperatrice delle Pagode colorata della vivacità pentatonica di un mondo lontano e colorato, alla contrapposizione

sonora giocata nella Bella e la Bestia fino alla gravità 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 s’impone non solo l’integerrima qualità dell’Orchestra, 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 drammaticità, l’ironia 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 crudeltà inusitata della

frammentazione (la presenza dirompente della tromba), per approdare a una ricomposizione attraverso le percussioni

con crescente senso drammatico. E nell’anno 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 montò una nuova

versione del balletto per il New York City Ballet nel 1949) de L’uccello 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

sé e dell’eccellente Orchestra in un tripudio di colori fra spettacolarità, 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

Saturday’s “Sounds of the Times” concert at New World Center presented complex music by three of today’s 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 Rihm’s Will Sound, written for the American ensemble The Alarm Will Sound in 2006. Pintscher’s

strong gestures and concise cuing conveyed a physicality echoed in Rihm’s 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, Henze’s programmatic Symphony No. 8 (1992) takes its inspiration from

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Allegro Moderato captures Puck’s 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 Titania’s 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 Puck’s 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 Pintscher’s 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 Roman’s 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.

Roman’s aggressive launches in the second movement resonated in chain reactions throughout the orchestra, building into a

frenzy. In the more transparent third movement, Roman’s lyrical lines traversed the entire cello range, with a show-stopping

melody in artificial harmonics, answered by wavering winds and pulsing strings.

Roman’s 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 Pintscher’s trademark delicacy in quiet passages that suspended time.

An elegiac character was poetically conveyed as Roman’s 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 world’s top orchestras for both his compositions and his conducting, Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971)

fit the bill for the Phillips Collection’s 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 creator’s star power. The concert presented four of Pintscher’s 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 Pintscher’s 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 don’t pay attention to, but which are always present within an instrument’s sound,

and which combine to make up its distinctive color). After attuning the listener’s 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

You’d 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 “Herodiade-

Fragmente.” And Pintscher himself conducted a concert that included one of his own works at the National Orchestral

Institute in 2011.

But there’s 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 aren’t 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 Thursday’s concert was a welcome (re)introduction to one of Europe’s leading lights. The Phillips Collection’s

concert series focusing on living European composers is a fine complement to the museum’s 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 new-

music 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 Twombley’s 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 Beuys’s 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

Phillips’s 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 modern-

music 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 Arpège 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

orchestra’s 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 night’s performance at Symphony

Hall, Pintscher’s 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

mythology, in this 2010 video. It’s a brilliant

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 composer’s 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 Pintscher’s 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 is hailed as the brightest young talent

on the German composing scene.

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, Gomyo’s 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 Stravinsky’s 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 (“Prélude à 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. It’s the right thing to do because, when it comes down to the essentials, it’s 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.

  1  

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 Mälkki, 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 d’Étoiles - commissioned by the Roche Foundation - at the Lucerne Festival, followed by November premieres in Cleveland and New York City’s Carnegie Hall. He is currently Artist-in-Association at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, a title which was conferred upon him following a single appearance to conduct a studio recording of Mendelssohn’s 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 Eötvös (1979-1991), David Robertson (1992-2000), Jonathan Nott (2000-2003) who became first guest conductor from 2003 till 2005 and most recently Susanna Mälkki (2006-2013).

PRESS RELEASE

Matthias Pintscher appointed Music Director of the Ensemble intercontemporain

  2  

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. I’ve 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 Ensemble’s board, and the team are all very happy to welcome back a composer/conductor as musical director of the Ensemble intercontemporain.”

Hervé Boutry General Director

Ensemble intercontemporain press officer Valérie Weill / IMAGE MUSIQUE

+33685227466 valerie.weill@imagemusique.com  

Matthias Pintscher OPUS 3 ARTISTS

Jonathan Brill +1 (212) 584-7518

jbrill@opus3artists.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 Beethoven’s Symphony Number 5, Stravinsky’s “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 Stravinsky’s 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-Möst 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, Köln 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 d’etoiles, for two trumpets and

orchestra, receives its world premiere performance on August 25, 2012 by The Cleveland Orchestra under the direction

of Franz Welser-Möst during the orchestra's residency at the Lucerne Festival. The US premiere performances of Chute

d’etoiles are scheduled for November 8 and 10, 2012 at Severance Hall in Cleveland, and the Carnegie Hall premiere follows on November 13.

Chute d’Étoiles (“Falling Stars”) takes its title from a work by German artist Anselm Kiefer previously exhibited at the

Monumenta 2007 exhibition in Paris. The work’s depiction of seven houses and three sculptures is a meditation on humanity’s 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 performances 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 Köln 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 Stockhausen’s landmark 20th-century

masterpiece Gruppen at New York City's Park Avenue Armory.

Visit http://www.bärenreiter.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 don’t know — the 21-year-old Romantic — got a rare hearing Friday, at the MSO’s 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.

Webern’s sound world, borne on far-extended but essentially traditional tonality and melody, is a world apart from the

free-floating harmonies and gestures of Pintscher’s 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. He’s 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 orchestra’s 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 MSO’s principal clarinetist, played the feature role in Aaron Copland’s 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 isn’t 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 Pintscher’s list of musical concerns. All of this informed a reading of Stravinsky’s 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 don’t see much

of that these days.

Matthias Pintscher, the Milwaukee Symphony’s guest conductor this weekend, is a throwback. Pintscher, a youthful 41,

will lead the MSO through Webern’s Im Sommerwind; Stravinsky’s Firebird (complete ballet score from 1910);

Copland’s 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.

Pintscher’s 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 Symphony’s “Artist in Association.” (The MSO originally announced Pintscher’s larger Towards Osiris for this program; Ex Nihilo replaces it.)

A number of Pintchser’s works reside on YouTube (including Towards Osiris, but not Ex Nihilo — it’s 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. Pintscher’s 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. “They’re 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 that’s 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 Pintscher’s music, at least that without text, is abstract, not narrative. The “characters” aren’t necessarily themes. They might be a complex of shifting clusters, or a quick gesture. But they are identifiable.

“In Cy Twombly’s paintings,” Pintscher said. “The eye always attaches to something. I do that, too.” (He’s 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 für 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. He’d 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 Hérodiade Fragmente, for soprano and orchestra. In the key detail, just two clarinets play a single note each, a quarter-tone apart.

“That’s 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 can’t force sound out of an orchestra. I’m obsessively precise

about notating the music, but that’s only so the player can transform it through great freedom.

“I’m 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 double-

stops 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 O’CONNELL

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 spine-

tingling 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' well-

judged 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 writ ing

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 Dörner 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.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER

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 Instantanés 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?

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER

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 Instantanés, 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.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER

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.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER

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.

MATTHIAS PINTSCHER

The New York Times October 22, 2010

Molding Sound to Behave Like a Solar Eclipse BY ALLAN KOZINN

Matthias Pintscher’s 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 Theater’s 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 instrument’s full range, from

growling bass notes to more ecstatic high pitches. David Byrd-Marrow’s tour of the line’s 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 twilight’s song” (1997), a fluid E. E. Cummings setting.

Mr. Pintscher’s vocal writing is wedded to the poetry’s spirit, if not its surface. In “a twilight’s song,” that meant plenty

of octave leaping to capture the stark emotionality that underlies Cummings’s 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.

Matthias Pintscher

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

Saturday’s marathon presentation by the Cleveland Orchestra.

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 orchestra’s calendar.

Titled “Composers Connect,” the event consisted of two hour-long concerts featuring four works made for Cleveland by the orchestra’s 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 Pintscher’s “With Lilies White” was particularly elaborate, demanding three sopranos,

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.

Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Photo by Roger Mastroianni

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 Botti’s “Translucence,” from 2005, the night’s 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 Pintscher’s 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,” Dalbavie’s “Concertate” stationed players around the hall for antiphonal effects. His, though, were more

explicitly the point, and the work’s 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 Andriessen’s “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

Matthias Pintscher

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 Varèse and Wolkgang Rihm that completed a superb programme.

When did we last hear Varèse's Intégrales 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

Matthias Pintscher

Herald Scotland 17 May 2010

Conductor is instrumental in concert success BY CATHERINE ROBB

Recently appointed as the BBC SSO’s 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 Varèse. Octandre (1923) and Intégrales (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 Rihm’s Verwandlung 3, which had a Strauss-

esque hint, adding to its already philharmonic intensity.

The concert, recorded for Radio 3’s 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 O’Keeffe 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

Matthias Pintscher 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 orchestra’s first Artist-in-Association and

Andrew Manze takes up post of Associate Guest Conductor • 5 World Premieres from some of Scotland’s leading composers, including James Dillon’s 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 orchestra’s 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 Dillon’s 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 world’s leading soloists including violinists Midori and Janine Jansen and trumpeter Håkan 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

Matthias Pintscher 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 orchestra’s 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 UK’s 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 Sebastian’s 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 O’Keeffe and the orchestra’s 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 SSO’s 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 SSO’s 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 world’s 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 SSO’s 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 Wagner’s Die Walkure. This Sceptred Isle: Four programmes of British music, including both of Walton’s symphonies and Britten’s Piano Concerto, all broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

Matthias Pintscher BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra • April 14, 2010 page 3 of 4 Sacred and Profane: exploring the connection between a composer’s spiritual life and their orchestral works, including Brahms’s 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, Bartók, 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 3’s Discovering Music. Concerts in the Afternoon Performance series will feature exclusive performances from some of BBC Radio 3’s 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 Niño and Mahler’s 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 Wagner’s Die Walkure. The orchestra will also perform in Inverness and Ayr, and again collaborates with Scotland’s other orchestras to present the Scottish Orchestras Series at Perth Concert Hall. Details of the BBC SSO’s 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 world’s leading trumpet soloist Håkan Hardenberger. One of last season’s stars, soprano Heidi Melton returns to sing the role of Sieglinde in Die Walkure, and two of Scotland’s leading musical exports return - pianist Steven Osborne and mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill. Violinist Nicola Benedetti’s 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 orchestra’s staff conducting team is complemented by guest appearances from Vassily Sinaisky, Andrew Litton, John Storgårds, Stephen Bell and the BBC SSO’s former Associate Principal Conductor Martyn Brabbins. New Music Recognised as one of the world’s 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 Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum. In addition to the music of Matthias Pintscher and the new music it will

Matthias Pintscher 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 Dillon’s 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 Glasgow’s 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 Beethoven’s 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 Mozart’s 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 SSO’s 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 The Herald (Scotland) - Apri l 12, 2010 WALL TO WALL BLOCKBUSTERS Blockbusters , two birthdays and a bombshel l B Y M I C H A E L T U M E L T Y 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 Wagner’s 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 wasn’t enough intensity for one evening, Runnicles will preface the Valkyrie with Sibelius’s molten Violin Concerto played by the great Dutch violinist Janine Jansen. Then, in week two, Runnicles keeps the voltage high by powering into Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, while Jansen, staying on for a fortnight, plays Brahms’s Violin Concerto. And believe me, it rolls on like that. Runnicles, on subsequent visits, keeps it big with a momentous programme that includes Brahms’s German Requiem for which he will be joined by the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. The temperature stays high as we hear his Brahms Two and Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder with Karen Cargill. And, for the first time, Runnicles gives us his take on French music with a sweeping programme that includes Dutilleux’s Cello Concerto, Debussy’s Images, Ravel’s 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 Bruckner’s mighty Fifth Symphony, Elgar’s Second and Tchaikovsky’s explosive Fifth. The SSO’s brilliant new associate guest conductor, Andrew Manze, has one evening concert in the new season, though he’ll be doing daytime concerts, too (details to come). Picking up the Brahms thread that runs through the season, he’ll 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 Beethoven’s 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 Walton’s 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 Britten’s 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 Linlithgow’s finest won the Gramophone Award. That concert will be conducted by Vassily Sinaisky, who will also give a Russian’s take on Vaughan Williams’s 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 Sibelius’s First Symphony, as will the superb chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic, John Storgards with Sibelius’s symphonic poem The Wood Nymph and Bartok’s 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 Britten’s Double Concerto for Violin and Viola, violinist Daniel Hope directing and playing Bach’s A minor Concerto, Johannes Moser playing Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Hakan Hardenberger playing Birtwistle’s scorching Endless Parade, cellist Lynn Harrell playing the Dutilleux with Runnicles and the great Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with Volkov. On top of all this there will be five concerts in the SSO’s 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 BBC’s 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 he’s 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 Holst’s Planets. The Berlin Philharmonic commissioned him to write a piece for Claudio Abbado’s 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 Pintscher’s new post will start in the autumn, and he’s straight into the winter season with a programme of Messiaen, Mozart’s Prague Symphony and Stravinsky’s 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. “That’s it,” said Gavin Reid, looking like the Cheshire Cat. “We have our team. I’ll 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 Berg’s Violin Concerto and

Schoenberg’s arrangement of Brahms’s Opus 25 Piano Quartet. Berg, after all, was Schoenberg’s disciple, and his

concerto combines Schoenberg’s 12-tone method with a current of Romanticism that ties it to the Brahms. In the

Brahms itself, the music’s 19th-century harmonies are tempered by Schoenberg’s overtly modernist brass and

percussion touches.

But as it turned out, the program’s 21st-century curtain-raiser, Matthias Pintscher’s “towards Osiris” (2005),

though couched in a harmonic and rhythmic language far denser than Berg’s or Schoenberg’s, had at least

tenuous connections to both works.

Mr. Pintscher’s 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

Set’s anger and violence, and ending with a serene, rising string figure that suggests Osiris’s 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. Pintscher’s score, has a subtext: Berg’s 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

ARTISTST 212.584.7500info@opus3artists.comwww.opus3artists.com

Matthias Pintscher, who has just made a successful conducting debut directing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s 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 first 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 Philharmoniker’s 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 group’s 25th anniversary, It will receive its premiered in 2010 in Witten as part of the complete cycle.

The AusTrAliAn

“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.”

matthias pintscher

melbourne symphony Orchestra’s 2009 metropolis Festival: press

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 O’CONNELL

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 Orchestra’s 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 Sciarrino’s Archeologia del telefono: Concertate for 13

instruments, was a gentle start to the evening’s program presented by a reduced size ensemble. The carefully counterpointed, sparse themes create an almost timeless atmosphere so that the humorous finale’s wonderful irony was

not lost on the audience.

The World premiere of Elias Constantopedos’s Moda offered listeners the chance to follow one of the successful

participants in the MSO’s 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 concert’s 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 Zimmermann’s 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 Pintscher’s 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 I’m 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 O’CONNELL

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 Orchestra’s 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 Sciarrino’s Archeologia del telefono: Concertate for 13

instruments, was a gentle start to the evening’s program presented by a reduced size ensemble. The carefully counterpointed, sparse themes create an almost timeless atmosphere so that the humorous finale’s wonderful irony was

not lost on the audience.

The World premiere of Elias Constantopedos’s Moda offered listeners the chance to follow one of the successful

participants in the MSO’s 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 concert’s 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 Zimmermann’s 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 Pintscher’s 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 I’m 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.