A premiere by Georg Friedrich Haas, one of the most adventurous composers of our time, is always an exciting event. Tonight marks the Dutch debut of Haas’s latest piece, Ausschweifen. He composed it specifically for Ensemble Proton, a Swiss new music group making its debut at the Muziekgebouw. In addition to Haas, Proton will perform a new work by Naomi Pinnock, an award-winning British-Swiss composer who is rapidly making a name for herself.
Haas made a lasting impression during the 2024 Holland Festival with his frenetic 11,000 Saiten for no fewer than 50 pianos and orchestra. Like 11,000 Saiten, Ausschweifen explores microtonality and spectralism – in other words, it is about richness of sound and tonal colour. The word ‘Ausschweifen’ means something like ‘to digress,’ but also ‘to wander’, ‘to run riot.’ According to Haas, the work lives up to its name: it is a monumental piece for eight players that surges wildly and breaks its bounds with turbulent power, like a river bursting its banks.
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With Ausschweifen, a long-cherished dream is coming true for us: “The performance of Georg Friedrich Haas’s Nach-Ruf … ent-gleitend … in 2013 was a revelation for us as an ensemble. Our enthusiasm for the world of microtonality took hold and led us to ever new explorations of the finest nuances of pitch. Since then, we have dreamed of a work written especially for us by the master.”
Ausschweifen is a full-length piece for eight musicians that fully lives up to its title. In it, Georg Friedrich Haas pursues a musical vision that goes beyond the usual dimensions of a concert world premiere, pushes the performers to their limits, and opens up an existential sensory experience for the audience.
The composition will essentially consist of three materials: spectral overtone harmonies, microtonal clusters, and tonal, late-Romantic quarter-tone music. These elements create, in a metaphorical sense, a field of tension between three poles of humanity: while the microtonal clusters feel archaic, driving, and physically ecstatic, the spectral overtone harmonies may be heard as a flash of transcendence, of perfection within imperfection. Between them stands a wondrous tonal music, seemingly fallen out of history. For this, Georg Friedrich Haas draws on a quarter-tone piano piece by Richard Heinrich Stein (1882–1942) from 1918. This becomes the starting point for an exploration of interval relationships, free leading-tone relationships, and the play of timbre and octave placement.
“What is exciting about this tonal quarter-tone music is that a counter-movement between all intervals is possible. I believe that there is still a great deal possible in this style, and that there is an exciting field here in which much remains to be developed. I am tremendously looking forward to this project. It will be a great challenge, and I am looking forward to working with you all and thank you for being willing to engage with my music.”
Georg Friedrich Haas to Ensemble Proton Bern
Commissioned by Ensemble Proton Bern in collaboration with the Festival Klangspuren Schwaz and Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ.
