Thomas Beimel - Thomas Beimel (2021)

Four strings, one unaccompanied voice: that's all it takes to draw a sound portrait of the composer Thomas Beimel. In his music he combines new ways of expressing melody with original sound energy. Can be experienced in his string quartet “mneme” ˆ memory - or in “tu aliento” - your breath - for unaccompanied voice. Sometimes the music increases to a concentrated load of anger: “cólera”.

Thomas Beimel, born in Essen in 1967, is a cross-border commuter. Not only in music as a violist, improvisation musician, composer and scientist but also in his life: Kindergarten and school in the “Pott”, composition lessons in Bucharest with Myriam Marbe, study of traditional Chinese music at the Conservatory of Tianjin in the PR China, work stays in Madrid or San José (Costa Rica) ˆ the individual stations are widely spread.

This made the composition important: as an intimate place for reflection, including on Europe's historical heritage. In one of his most recent works, “veni creator spiritus”, Thomas Beimel entrusts the Gregorian chant to the throat of a countertenor.

Linguistic character is actually evident in the seven works, all of which were written in the year 2000 and after. Even in melos, a duet for timpani, articulation in accordance with the language is noticeable, and sound speeches result in the back and forth of the happening more and more from the percussive into the melodic. Cantus firmus and canonical interweaving appear again and again. They give - with all the tendencies towards dissolution of the tonal contour - something physically bound and tangible. Even the unprepared listener can understand well at any time. All works have a pleading, restrained, contemplative but also disastrous tone. Especially the moments of longing and fragility, an almost romantic moment of formulated memory, of evocation, loss and the search for union are discreetly and intensely present - without any courtesy and without any cliché.