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 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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