Composer Reiko Füting releases his fifth portrait album on New Focus, featuring performances by Longleash, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Quartet121, Noise Catalogue, SchallSpektrum, violinists Miranda Cuckson and Doori Na, and pianist Jing Yang. Füting's music engages with temporality, memory, and quotation to explore contemporary moral and spiritual questions.
| # | Audio | Title/Composer(s) | Performer(s) | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Time | 72:51 | |||
| 01 | passage: time (copy) | passage: time (copy) | Miranda Cuckson, violin | 10:46 |
| 02 | mo(ve)ment for 2: Choreophonie – Schatten/Spiegeltanz – | mo(ve)ment for 2: Choreophonie – Schatten/Spiegeltanz – | Doori Na, violin, Jing Yang, piano | 12:44 |
| 03 | free: whereof – wherefore | free: whereof – wherefore | Longleash | 9:02 |
| 04 | Chorale (“those driven out will come”) | Chorale (“those driven out will come”) | Quartet121 | 12:08 |
| 05 | act: ab-stain, from | act: ab-stain, from | Unheard-of/Ensemble | 16:24 |
| 06 | F/fern | F/fern | Noise Catalogue, Alison Norris, conductor | 2:56 |
| 07 | von der Stadt | von der Stadt | SchallSpektrum, Jan Michael Horstmann, conductor | 8:51 |
Reiko Füting’s music often integrates quotes from the repertoire into the fabric of his compositions. The fragments of a shared musical past serve many functions — among them, they connect with a rich compositional lineage and invoke the presence of memory. With a keen insight into the behavior patterns of thoughts and memories, Füting’s embedded quotes assert themselves and recede intermittently, as the past might inhabit our present in momentary flashes. On this collection, all of which include violin, Füting tackles an instrument that has an inescapable literature. Both because of its ubiquity in the classical canon and the inherent limitations of its setup, writing for the violin involves constant awareness of the music written for it before. In his liner notes, Füting references composer Johannes Kreidler, who wrote, “Composing for violin means to copy.” Composing for the violin means to live with all of the towering precedents hovering around you. Füting embraces that paradigm, transforming it from a fraught challenge to a reverent homage.
Commissioned by violinist Miranda Cuckson, Füting’s passage: time (copy) (2019) for solo violin is based on quotations from Heinrich Franz Ignaz Biber, August Kühnel, Johann Paul von Westhoff, Johann Georg Pisendel, and Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as self-quotations. The piece weaves together fragments from the quoted works in a flurry of incandescent gestures, mirroring the ephemeral nature of memory itself. Invoking Biber’s Passacaglia from his Mystery Sonatas, a forerunner of Bach’s Chaconne, Füting’s work inhabits an oblique cyclical structure while accumulating through development of quoted material.
Read Moremo(ve)ment for 2: Choreophonie – Schatten/Spiegeltanz –, was commissioned by the New Chamber Ballet, a New York City dance ensemble led by director Miro Magloire. Scored for violin and piano, the violin plays a two minute solo introduction before the piano enters. When it does, it is initially with shrouded bass notes and inside the keyboard timbres that mask the transition. The baton is passed to the pianist for a discursive solo of its own, staking out the timbral territory that will be the material for the remainder of the score. The work employs quotes in similar fashion to passage: time (copy), here hearkening back to the transitional era of the early 20th century with references to music by Debussy, Wolf, Mahler, and Strauss. When the two instruments play together in ensemble, their sound vocabularies merge into a hybrid, tolling series of figurations that serve as fruitful fodder for choreography. Lithe chromatic ascending and descending scales between the two instruments alternate with glitchy punctuations in an exuberant passage that resonates over a spectral pedal point.
Longleash piano trio is featured in free: whereof – wherefore, a nine minute work that engages with themes from the second movement of Beethoven’s op. 1 no. 3 Piano Trio. Also woven into the fabric of the piece are two text excerpts in German and English, by Beethoven and Czech philosopher Vilém Flusser. The listener hears these texts as vocal fragments in whispers, isolated consonants, and vowels. This deconstructive approach to text, common in Füting’s vocal works, creates an expanded ensemble vocabulary, adding texture and dimension to a familiar instrumentation.
Chorale (“those driven out will come”) for string quartet also references Beethoven, this time the famous “Heiliger Dankgesang” movement from his op. 132 string quartet. A parallel source of inspiration is the phenomenon of migration, manifested throughout literature and thought from the Bible through more recent works including Vilém Flusser’s The Freedom of the Migrant: Objections to Nationalism. Sonorous excerpts from Beethoven’s quasi-modal testimonial movement are dotted by luminous harmonics, tactile tremolos, and energized glissandi. The contrast between unstable and stable elements is an analogy for the poles in the migration experience itself, between statelessness and belonging.
act: ab-stain, from for Unheard-of//Ensemble (clarinet, violin, cello, and piano) is based on a composition by Heinrich Schütz and a hymn setting by Johann Hermann Schein, and inspired by the mid-century German philosopher Hannah Arendt. The piano plays the hymn theme underneath a foreground layer of textural ornamentation. Füting builds multi-dimensional textures from the various strains of activity, deftly orchestrating the material so that the music remains transparent while expressing diverse energies simultaneously. The piece ends with an extended clarinet solo that integrates vocal utterances, fleet passagework, and extended techniques into a tapestry of implied contrapuntal layers.
F/fern is the shortest work on the program by many minutes, and was written for Amalgama and for The Lost Words Project, an environmentally conscious collaboration between composers and poet Robert Macfarlane. Its length does nothing to dilute its evocative expression, a gasp of gently explosive, rising energy from the first downbeat.
The album’s final piece, von der Stadt, was commissioned by the Gesellschaftshaus in Magdeburg, Germany, and memorializes a tragic date in that city’s history during the Thirty Years’ War when it was destroyed and many of its citizens murdered. Using hymn settings by Johann Hermann Schein, the piece is scored for a ten member ensemble, and approaches musical phrases as if they were threads connected across the ensemble. This quasi-klangfarbenmelodie approach is applied to text as well, creating composites across multiple ensemble members who have vocal entrances in their parts.
– Dan Lippel
Tracks 1-6 recorded:
1: December 7, 2019
2: May 23, 2021
3: September 6, 2022
4: November 14, 2021
5: November 28, 2021
6: May 28, 2024
7: June 10, 2024
Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY, USA
Recording Engineer: Ryan Streber
Track 7 recorded June 10, 2024 at Gesellschaftshaus, Magdeburg, DEU
Recording Engineer: Benjamin Dreßler (benjamin-dressler.de)
Editing, mix and mastering: Ryan Streber, Oktaven Audio
Producer/Publisher: Reiko Füting (reikofueting.com)
Cover and Back Image: Sean Curran (swtcurran.blogspot.com)
Design: Marc Wolf (marcjwolf.com)
Reiko Füting Portrait: Hojoon Kim (hojoonkimimages.com)
Text Editor: Bradley Colten (bradleycolten.com)
Post-Production Advisor: Daniel Lippel (danlippel.com)
In his work, Reiko Füting aims to explore the psychological nature of memory through the compositional device of musical quotation. By realizing this device throughout the entire musical spectrum of assimilation, dissimilation, integration, disintegration, and segregation – while moving freely between clear borders and gradual transitions – quotation and memory function as a means to reflect upon contemporary artistic, cultural, social, and political phenomena.
Reiko was born in 1970 in Königs Wusterhausen in the German Democratic Republic. As a composer, he has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, ensembles, and orchestras. With a broad range of compositional interests, Reiko focuses especially on vocal ensembles and ensembles performing on period instruments.
Since 2000, Reiko has taught composition, music theory, and music history at Manhattan School of Music, where he currently serves as Dean of Academic Core and Head of Composition and Contemporary Performance. He has also taught vocal accompaniment at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock and has served as a guest faculty and lecturer at universities and music conservatories throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
Reiko studied composition and piano at the Hochschule für Musik Dresden, Rice University in Houston, Manhattan School of Music in New York City, and Seoul National University in South Korea. Some of his most influential teachers have been composers Jörg Herchet and Nils Vigeland, and pianist Winfried Apel.
Reiko’s compositions are primarily released on the New Focus Recordings label in New York City and are exclusively published by Verlag Neue Musik Berlin.
http://www.reikofueting.deRecently called “a fearless, visionary, and tremendously talented artist” (Sequenza21) and “a poetic soloist with a strong personality, yet unpretentious” (Die Presse, Vienna), Miranda Cuckson delights audiences with her playing of a great range of music and styles, from older eras to the newest creations. An internationally acclaimed soloist and collaborator, violinist and violist, she enjoys performing at venues large and small, from concert halls to casual spaces.
She has been a featured artist at the Berlin Philharmonie, Suntory Hall, Casa da Musica Porto, Teatro Colón, Cleveland Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco’s Herbst Theater, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music, the 92nd St Y, National Sawdust, and the Ojai, Bard, Marlboro, Portland, Music Mountain, West Cork, Grafenegg, Wien Modern, Frequency, and LeGuessWho festivals. Miranda made her Carnegie Hall debut playing Piston’s Concerto No. 1 with the American Symphony Orchestra. She recently premiered Georg Friedrich Haas’ Violin Concerto No. 2 at the Vienna Musikverein and with orchestras in Japan, Portugal and Germany, and the Violin Concerto by Marcela Rodriguez with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México. Miranda is a member of interdisciplinary collective AMOC and director of non-profit Nunc. She has guest curated at National Sawdust and programmed concerts at the Contempo series in Chicago and Miller Theatre in New York, among others. Her numerous lauded albums include Világ, featuring the Bartok Sonata for Solo Violin with contemporary works; the Ligeti, Korngold, Ponce, and Piston concertos; music by 20th century American composers; Bartók/Schnittke/Lutoslawski sonatas; Melting the Darkness, an album of microtonal/electronic music; and Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, named a Recording of the Year by The New York Times. An alumna of The Juilliard School, where she earned her doctorate, she teaches at Mannes College/New School University.
http://www.mirandacuckson.com/Praised for his captivating performances and expressive artistry, Doori Na has appeared on the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, and beyond. Doori is known for his deep commitment to chamber music, his leadership as concertmaster for orchestras, and his innovative work in contemporary music.
As a longtime member of both the Argento New Music Project and New Chamber Ballet, Doori has performed internationally, premiered numerous new works, and showcased his dedication to bringing contemporary music to life. His passion extends to reviving neglected works and composers, particularly those overlooked due to class and race. Beyond classical music, Doori is featured on Chick Corea’s The Continents album and has toured Europe with Brad Mehldau and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Chinese-born pianist Jing Yang has been recognized as a soloist, chamber musician and ensemble player by audiences worldwide. She has given solo recitals in China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Taiwan and the United States. In her native China, her recital tours have brought her to Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Shenyang. She has appeared as a soloist with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Symphony in Japan, and DePaul Symphony Orchestra in Chicago. In 2014, Ms. Yang appeared as the soloist for the Opening Ceremony of Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, representing the Americas.
As a chamber musician she has performed extensively in venues including Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. She is a frequent advocate of new music, working collaboratively with composers and new music ensembles from China, Germany, Israel, Japan, Mexico and the United States. She has recorded the music of Reiko Füting on New Focus (FCR405).
A participant in multiple international piano competitions, Ms. Yang won first prize at the Munz Scholarship Competition in New York, second prize at the Eastman International Piano Competition, and third prize in both the Beijing Piano Competition for Young Artists and the Chopin International Piano Competition in Taipei. She won the special prize in the St. Petersburg International Piano Competition. Ms. Yang holds a bachelor’s degree and a doctoral degree of musical arts from Manhattan School of Music as well as a master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Ms. Yang currently teaches at the Extension Division of Mason Gross School at Rutgers University, and Manhattan School of Music Distance Learning Program. She became staff pianist and chamber coach for the Pinchas Zukerman Performance Program at Manhattan School of Music in 2017 and has served as piano faculty and chamber music faculty for the Young Artist Program at National Arts Center in Ottawa, Canada. She has been a Steinway Artist since 2010.
Longleash (Pala Garcia, violin; John Popham, cello; Renate Rohlfing, piano) is a group with a traditional instrumentation and a progressive identity. Inspired by music with unusual sonic beauty, an inventive streak, and a compelling cultural voice, Longleash extends a love of classical chamber musicianship to the interpretation of contemporary music, crafting performances that are both dynamic and thoughtfully refined. An “expert young trio” praised for its “subtle and meticulous musicianship” (Strad Magazine) and its "technical expertise and expressive innovation" (Feast of Music), Longleash has quickly earned a reputation in the US and abroad for innovative programming, artistic excellence, and new music advocacy. Longleash takes its name from Operation Long Leash, a CIA program designed to covertly support and disseminate the work of American avant-garde artists throughout Europe during the Cold War.
The trio balances a full performing schedule with commissioning and recording projects alongside their proprietary summer concert series and composition workshop, The Loretto Project (KY). Performance highlights include concerts at Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), the Ecstatic Music Festival (NY), the Green Music Center (CA), National Sawdust (NY), Scandinavia House (NY), Trondheim International Chamber Music Festival (Norway), and the University of Louisville. Longleash has conducted lectures and workshops at New York University, Manhattan School of Music, University of Nebraska, Ohio University, and Hunter College. The trio's work on behalf of American composers has been recognized and supported by Chamber Music America, the Alice K. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music.
http://longleashtrio.comQuartet121 is Julia Jung Un Suh (violin), Molly Germer (violin), Lena Vidulich (viola), and Thea Mesirow (cello). Described as “a magnet for world premieres” (New York Music Daily), Quartet121 is passionate about working with emerg- ing composers, promoting equity, and expanding its stylistic range to reach wider audiences. Since 2020, Quartet121 has been selected to participate in the Banff Centre’s Evolution of the String Quartet summer festival and to curate concerts in NYC as part of New Music on the Point’s alumni grant program. Quartet121 has held residencies at University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music, and Hunter College. Many of these projects were made possible by the Alice M. Ditson Fund, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and Chamber Music America.
Unheard-of//Ensemble is a Brooklyn-based clarinet, violin, cello, and piano quartet dedicated to connecting new music to communities in New York and across the United States through the development and performance of adventurous programs using technology and interactive multimedia.
Unheard-of tours regularly, commissions large-scale multimedia projects, and runs its own summer workshop for emerging composers, the Collaborative Composition Initiative. Unheard-of produces their own concert series, the Dialogues Series, inviting audiences into works in progress to engage with composers at the forefront of their craft. As an ensemble, they also produce (in collaboration with the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club) the Cultural Ecologies Series, an immersive set of multimedia concerts utilizing Brooklyn’s own Gowanus Canal as its stage.
Described as “compelling,” “highly energetic,” “fascinating,” and “oppressively loud” by New York Concert Review, Noise Catalogue is a contemporary music collective comprised of Madeline Hocking (violin), Dániel Matei (percussion), and Jonathan Collazo (percussion), in addition to a vast array of musicians and artists with whom they collaborate in their unique concert curations.
Noise Catalogue was founded upon a shared passion for bringing new musical works to life, and a vision for diversifying the artistic voices in the world of contemporary music. The ensemble’s work is centered around intimate collaborations with composers and creators in other mediums and composing genre-fluid original works which explore the members’ rich array of musical influences as performer-composers. The ensemble was the winner of the 2023 Dwight & Ursula Mamlok Junior Prize.
The contemporary music ensemble SchallSpektrum was founded in 2024 in Magdeburg, Germany, with Jan Michael Horstmann serving as principal conductor. The ensemble primarily consists of musicians from the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Central German Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Schönebeck.
New York-based German composer Reiko Füting releases his fifth portrait album, distantViolinSound. Featuring seven instrumental works of gradually increasing size, all feature the violin in some capacity, beginning with Miranda Cuckson on solo violin, performers on the album include violinist Doori Na and pianist Jing Yang, trio Longleash, Quartet121, Unheard-of Ensemble, Noise Catalogue+, and SchallSpektrum conducted by Jan Michael Horstmann. Commissioned by violinist Miranda Cuckson, Füting’s "passage: time (copy)" (2019) for solo violin is based on quotations from Heinrich Franz Ignaz Biber, August Kühnel, Johann Paul von Westhoff, Johann Georg Pisendel, and Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as self-quotations. BELOW: Miranda Cuckson plays Reiko Füting's "passage: time (copy)."
— Laurie Niles, 2.28.2025
Following up his chart-topping (at least to me!) Medieval opera, Mechthild, the German-American composer’s fifth portrait album showcases his spare, powerful chamber music. Featuring such fantastic groups as Longleash and Unheard//Ensemble and opening with Miranda Cuckson playing the passionately barbed passage: time (copy) for solo violin, the mastery throughout, from conception to execution, further establishes Füting as one of the essential composers of our time.
— Jeremy Shatan, 3.01.2025
Né dans le Brandebourg en 1970, le compositeur vit aux Etats‑Unis depuis un quart de siècle. Les plus de 70 minutes de l’album monographique « distantViolinSound » (ou « leises Geigenspiel ») permettent de découvrir sept œuvres où abondent références et citations fantomatiques (y compris de textes chuchotés par les musiciens) : passage: time (copy) (2019) pour violon seul (Miranda Cuckson), mo(ve)ment for 2: Choreophonie – Schatten/Spiegeltanz (2017) pour violon et piano (Doori Na et Jing Yang), free: whereof – wherefore (2020) pour trio avec piano (Longleash), Chorale (“those driven out will come”) (2021) pour quatuor à cordes (Quartet121), act: ab‑stain, from (2021) pour clarinette, violon, violoncelle et piano (ensemble Unheard of), F/fern (2018) pour violon, flute, clarinette, violoncelle, percussion et piano (ensemble Noise Catalogue dirigé par Alison Norris) et von der Stadt (2023) pour dix instruments (ensemble SchallSpektrum de Magdebourg dirigé par Jan Michael Horstmann). L’importance accordée au concept, l’économie de moyens et la répétition sont les pierres angulaires de cette musique conduisant à une improbable intersection entre Feldman, Lachenmann et Hersant (New Focus Recordings FCR432).
Translation:
Born in Brandenburg in 1970, the composer has been living in the United States for a quarter of a century. The more than 70 minutes of the monographic album distantViolinSound (or leises Geigenspiel) offer a glimpse into seven works filled with references and ghostly citations (including whispered texts by the musicians): passage: time (copy) (2019) for solo violin (Miranda Cuckson), mo(ve)ment for 2: Choreophonie – Schatten/Spiegeltanz (2017) for violin and piano (Doori Na and Jing Yang), free: whereof – wherefore (2020) for piano trio (Longleash), Chorale (“those driven out will come”) (2021) for string quartet (Quartet121), act: ab‑stain, from (2021) for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (ensemble Unheard-of), F/fern (2018) for violin, flute, clarinet, cello, percussion, and piano (ensemble Noise Catalogue, conducted by Alison Norris), and von der Stadt (2023) for ten instruments (ensemble SchallSpektrum of Magdeburg, conducted by Jan Michael Horstmann). Emphasizing conceptual depth, economy of means, and repetition, this music leads to an improbable intersection between Feldman, Lachenmann, and Hersant (New Focus Recordings FCR432).
— Simon Corley, 3.01.2025
I didn’t know much of the music of composer Füting before listening to this utterly compelling albumc. His seven compositions on this album were written from 2017 to 2023. Each one features the violin (thus the name, of course.)
The album opens with Miranda Cuckson performing the not quite 11-minute passage: time (copy). With each successive piece, the violinist is joined by more and more musicians, building to ten musicians at the album’s close with von der Stadt.
It would take someone with a much vaster knowledge of music from the last five centuries to spot all of the musical quotations that Füting refers to in his exploration of “the psychological nature of memory,” but I was intrigued as each piece was revealed.
All the musicians on this album are terrific. In addition to Cuckson that includes Longleash, Doori Na, Noise Catalogue+, Quartet121, SchallSpektrum, Unheard-Of Ensemble and Jing Yang.
— Craig Byrd, 2.28.2025
The New York-based German composer Reiko Füting has always been open about drawing inspiration, ideas, and raw material from the past. In fact, the opening piece on this stunning new portrait album, “passage: time (copy)”—masterfully performed by violinist Miranda Cuckson—makes it literal. The word “copy” in its title references a quote by fellow German composer Johannes Kreidler: “Composing for violin means to copy.” Most of the pieces here borrow material from music history, but in Füting’s hands, any quotation or borrowing never sounds glib or bald. Although a class of educated listeners might be able to identify quotes by Heinrich Franz Ignaz Biber, August Kühnel, Johann Paul von Westhoff, Johann Georg Pisendel, and Johann Sebastian Bach in that opening piece—and I’ll be clear, I don’t belong to that audience—the way he transforms and weaves them together with his own ideas is richly satisfying. Modern classical music is frequently a commentary on previous eras of music, but Füting transcends a conceptual practice so that these reconfigured references to the past feel fresh. Across seven knockout pieces the composer makes all sorts of interesting connections, finding threads that still filter through even the most unsentimental forward-looking new music. The entire album is powerful, but I’m particularly fond of Chorale (“those driven out will come”), a magnificent string quartet larded with extended techniques and spiked harmonies that draws upon the third movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132, played by Quartet121.
— Peter Margasak, 3.06.2025
Name: Reiko Füting
Nationality: German
Occupation: Composer
Current release: Reiko Füting's new album distantViolinSound is out via New Focus. It features performances of his pieces by violinists Miranda Cuckson and Doori Na, pianist Jing Yang, trio Longleash, Quartet121, Unheard-of Ensemble, Noise Catalogue+, and SchallSpektrum, conducted by Jan Michael Horstmann.
Topics I rarely get to talk about: Using non-linear forms and quotations in music!
Global Recommendations: I live in Westchester County, just north of New York City. There is a bike trail nearby my home, the North-South County Trailway, which is a discontinued train line that connected Putnam and the Bronx. It now ends in Van Cortland Park, where one can find thirteen marble pillars. The marble came from different quarries, and the pillars were placed there to see how the winter weather would alter the stone. The aim was to pick the best marble to construct the Grand Central train station. I love how one can observe the effect time has on matter and therefore modifies form, in both simultaneous and different ways.
May I share one more? I am originally from Königs Wusterhausen in Germany, which is a suburb of Berlin. The first radio broadcast in Germany was transmitted from there to Berlin in 1920. There is a museum about the history of German radio broadcasting. What is fascinating is that the first broadcast was a live music performance, the instruments were a violin, a cello, and a harmonium. The experience of hearing live music through this medium for the first time must have been existential! And what happened to the harmonium? It used to be such a popular instrument!
Here is one last one, I promise! 370 Riverside Drive in New York City. That was the home of Hannah Arendt, who to me is one of the most inspiring thinkers of the 20th century. She said: “We, though we must die, are not born in order to die, but to begin.”
If you enjoyed this Reiko Füting interview and would like to know more about his music, visit his official homepage.
Many people perceive classical music and contemporary composition as having high barriers of entrance, both for listeners and musicians. What have your own experiences been in this regard?
That is true, but I am also interested to put this phenomenon into context.
Arnold Schoenberg founded his Society for Musical Performances in 1918 for a variety of reasons, one of them being that (a certain kind of) contemporary music did not get a chance to become as familiar as music of the past. With the beginning of the 19th century, there was an increasing interest in programming older music, which did not exist to that extent in earlier times. As a result, living composers increasingly found themselves in the context of composers of the past.
By the beginning of the 20th century, an aesthetic gap existed between (again, a certain kind of) contemporary music and music of the past which became harder to cross, especially once the threshold of tonality was crossed. That gap might be symptomatic of the state of Western culture at large, but that’s a different topic.
Several solutions were realized, such as spaces that exclusively programmed contemporary music (such as Schönberg’s Society for Musical Performances), contemporary music that focused on more familiar soundscapes (Carl Orff comes to mind), etc.
I frequently reference older music in my compositions, and these earlier works are often familiar to general audiences or are even programmed alongside my music. My experience shows that this creates a bridge or a door, allowing audiences less familiar with contemporary music to approach new soundscapes with greater openness and curiosity.
For example, my composition for solo violin, tanz.tanz, incorporates fragments of Bach’s Chaconne, enabling listeners to recognize familiar music to varying degrees. This naturally ties into my general interest in cognition and recognition.
But I feel it is important to cultivate audiences open to being challenged, stepping into the unknown, or “to embrace insecurity,” as Helmut Lachenmann put it. Or, as I learned in the podcast Philosophy Bites, something is challenging so we care about it, and something is challenging so we care about ourselves.
I am sorry that this was a long answer, I promise to be more concise from now on! :-)
As of today, what kind of materials, ideas, and technologies are particularly stimulating for you?
Two ideas that I find continuously stimulating are the concept of nonlinear systems and the concept of digital replication.
The former allows me to realize musical form in many ways, creating conceptual layers and the potential of any idea to dramatically change functionality and hierarchical place. The latter allows me to deal with the phenomenon of repetition musically and to fully explore its ambivalence.
Both are highly complex and therefore full of potential for musical, artistic, and human expression.
Where do most of your inspirations to create come from – rather from internal impulses or external ones? Which current social/political/ecological or other developments make you feel like you need to respond as an artist?
One social, political, and ecological development that compels me to respond (to confront, to encounter, to deal with, to process) as an artist is migration. With increasing political instability, unequal wealth distribution, and environmental catastrophes, people are forced to leave their homes, often having nothing left to lose.
The migration of refugees from Syria to Europe, which began in 2015, profoundly impacted me. It was around that time that I discovered the writings of Vílem Flusser, whose essays on migration are something I find myself returning to repeatedly because of their high relevance and inspiration. To paraphrase one of his ideas: a culture’s identity can be found in its immigrants, as their mere presence influences that culture by creating awareness and prompting an assessment of its conditions.
As a composer, I am interested in dealing with concepts and ideas such as “the other” and its degrees of assimilation and integration. I am interested in creating pluralist soundscapes.
I used quotations from Flusser’s writing in my composition for piano trio, free: whereof – wherefore, written for the longleash piano trio.
Composing has always had an interesting relationship between honouring its roots and exploring the unknown. What does the balance between these two poles look like in your music?
I feel that this relationship between tradition and exploration is essential for each artist to understand in their way. To quote Gustav Mahler, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
I am not quite sure if it is possible to create a balance between these two, or if that is even necessary. I think what is fascinating is to navigate through the space between these two poles. I feel that in that sense I am a highly traditional composer, as I frequently respond to music written in the musical tradition which I was born into.
I also feel that expression needs to go way beyond self-expression. That ties into the concept of necessity, which in the Western Classical music practice was first formulated by Beethoven: “Must it be? It must be!”
How much potential for something “new” is there still in composition? What could this “new” look like?
There will always be potential for something “new”, as I understand “new” as a “new arrangement”.
Every sound is a composition in its true sense, it is “put together”, and there are infinite ways of doing that. It is a bit like chess, there is a practically infinite number of games to be played with a set number of specific pieces and rules. However, we cannot know what this “new” would look like as we don’t know the context in which future artists will work in and respond to.
I know I am quoting a lot in my answers here, but often I feel others have expressed ideas in a much more convincing way than I would ever be able to. Henri Bergson, in his essay "The Possible and the Real," wrote: “If I knew what the great dramatic works of tomorrow will be, I would write them.”
I knew teachers who would lecture on the future of music, which in a way is fascinating but also highly speculative, to an extent that I am not sure of its value. After all, as I learned in the above-mentioned podcast, our imagination is not infinite.
Working with long forms, complex concepts or new vocabulary is potentially more challenging today because they require us to remember things that happened perhaps minutes ago – while most of us are finding it hard to focus even on what's happening right now. Both as a composer and as a listener yourself, how do you deal with this?
Indeed, our current time does not allow us to be patient, or at least it makes it very challenging. However, I also feel that artists have responsibilities. To paraphrase Helmut Lachenmann, artists have the responsibility to break the magic. To paraphrase James Baldwin, artists have the responsibility to disturb the peace.
“Magic” and “peace” are wonderful metaphors. In other words, as much as artists can follow current movements – and I feel they should always be curious about current movements – they also can encounter them, in the true sense of the word: en-counter them, to go against them, and to move in a different (opposite?) direction.
Every current – how wonderful that “current” is both an adjective and a noun! – also creates a countercurrent, and that is a fascinating space to be in.
For many artists, life-changing musical experiences take place live. Few works these days, however, are performed beyond their premiere. What, do you feel, does this mean for composers, and the music they write, and how does this reality influence your own work?
It has always been the case that few compositions were performed beyond their premiere. For one, to compose a piece of music was a kind of service. It was done for a specific occasion, at a specific time and place. In the Western Classical practice, Beethoven was the first composer to reject the service idea. Art started to exist for its own sake. But still, for the music practice to establish a kind of worship, a repeated return to certain pieces of music, was mostly unusual.
Over time, I feel that my focus has shifted away from the work and toward the practice of composing. The best part of being a composer is the act of composing! Everything else is a bonus: a performance, an amazing performance, a second performance, a review, etc.
I also admit that I like writing music for a specific occasion and to respond to it. I would then have to see if and how a composition could exist beyond that specific circumstance and whether that is possible, possible with adjustments, or impossible.
The very nature of music is – because it exists in time – that it is transient. Isn’t it also beautiful that something only existed once? Like the swan song in the Greek myth? There still will be a memory …
My composition, light, asleep, for violin and piano, includes the following quote by Jean Paul at the end of the score: “Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be expelled.”
Also, my composition for chamber ensemble, von der Stadt, was written to be performed in the city of Magdeburg, and it specifically deals with the events in Magdeburg during the 30-year war.
In its original conception, this piece is very local. I feel that – at least a first – all art is local.
How, would you say are live performances of your music and your recording projects connected at the moment? How do they mutually influence and feed off each other?
To me, live performances and recordings are very different experiences. Live performances allow us to socially experience a piece of music, its performance aspect, its temporal aspect, its spatial aspect, etc.
Recordings, on the other hand, allow us to experience every subtle sonic detail in our own time and space. I love both!
Are there approaches, artists, festivals, labels, spaces or anyone/-thing else out there who you feel deserve a shout out for taking composition into the future?
There are a few, but for now I would like to list two: Arts, Letters, and Numbers in Averill Park, NY, realized by David Gersten, and The Loretto Project in Nerinx, KY, realized by the longleash piano trio.
The general artistic, creative, open-minded, and community-oriented space that Arts, Letters, and Numbers creates is beyond special. And so is the direct, personal, and interactive approach created in The Loretto Project.
The Montreux Festival intends to preserve its archive of recordings for future generations. Do you personally feel it's important that everything should remain available forever - or is there something to be said for letting beautiful moments pass and linger in the memories of those that experienced them?
Generally, I passionately support the idea of access.
So yes, I feel that it is important for something to remain available, if it includes the freedom to approach it in as many ways as possible.
— Tobias Fischer, 3.13.2025
New Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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