Ensemble Schwerpunkt - Schwerpunkt (2019)

A brass quintet walks into a bar… sounds like the opening to a musician’s joke. And indeed, there’s a Keystone Cops element to the perception of a brass quintet, admits Ensemble Schwerpunkt trumpeter Matthew Sadler: “It’s a jokey kind of thing… not quite serious but associated with wearing white trainers or having to have choreograph performances to make it work. That’s all fine, but it’s not what we’re in it for.” The Ensemble Schwerpunkt, formed in Hannover before transferring to Mike Svoboda’s influential Master’s Degree course for New Music at the Musik Akademie Basel, has different ambitions: One of the reasons for existing as a quintet is that audiences – and composers – will take the brass quintet seriously as a genre. To be for brass quintet what the Arditti Quartet was (and still very much is) for the string quartet: A standard-setting, high-octane ensemble for contemporary music.

Spielwechsler. Versteckt (Game-Changer. Hidden) was commissioned in 2016 by the South West German Broadcast Corporation from Vassos Nicolaou (*1971) for the “ars nova” concert series – and for the Ensemble Schwerpunkt to play. It was written and premiered in Ravensburg in the same year. Nicolaou summarizes his work thus:

“The title is made of the phrase “game changer” (Spielwechsler) and hidden (Versteckt). I wanted to compose a brass quintet that would sound different to a typical piece for this ensemble by using mutes virtually throughout the entire piece. The mutes filter the original instrumental sound and create sounds of metallic quality. Some of the compositional techniques I use include heterophony, hocket, polyphony and granular synthesis. The tuba in the first section is the real Spielwechsler and it is Versteckt since it is not initially perceived to be as important as the other instruments but in fact turns out to be central to the work.”