Review of kopfHörer/experimentelle musik elektrovisuell 2002 in Bühl/Baden in the music texts by Berndhard Stirner:

Can new sound possibilities still be discovered in the field of "new music"? Or is it "business as usual" here too, with the "usual suspects" coming together to discuss the questions that have preoccupied the specialist audience of advanced composers for fifty or sixty years now: what is the state of the material, are there new inventions of form and can the boundaries between music and other media be opened up further? These were questions that helped shape a new music forum entitled "kopfHörer/experimentelle musik elektrovisuell", which took place in the small Baden town of Bühl on July 5 and 6. Three partners came together to present new compositions, facilitate a discussion between the audience and composers and incorporate the visual levels of film and video.The artistic concept was developed by the Essen-based work platform Interzone perceptible (Sven Hermann / Matthias Hettmer) in collaboration with Bernd Künzig and his Baden-Baden-based "Agentur für kulturelles Wissen", while the city of Bühl, as the organizer, provided significant financial support and, with the venue of the Bürgerhaus Neuer Markt, a space that made it possible to discover almost ideal sound spaces that extended from the foyer into the large performance hall. One of the highlights of "kopfHörer" was undoubtedly the concert by Interzone perceptible, not only because of the number of three world premieres, but also because of the unusual sonic combination of an electrified accordion and an electric bass, which were able to invent their very own sound world through the inclusion of live electronics. With the first-time presentations of the works "bass affair" by Volker Heyn, "Kollaps/Relaps[wormhole]" by Michael Rook and the baroque meandering piece "kaleidoskopes luftsilber" by Hans-Joachim Hespos, the performers not only demonstrated their virtuosic skill in the tonal exhaustion of the commissioned works, but also illustrated the intensive collaboration between the musicians and their composers, which expanded into enormous towers and cascades of sound in the wide performance space.The already tried and tested composition "Gift.Gelb" by Gerhard Stäbler, which was performed for the first time in Europe, confirmed this overall impression. Interzone perceptible accentuated how far the interpretative approach to a piece can extend with the subsequent presentation of their video "cut up or shut up", which is not wrongly said to be based on a scenic composition by Jeff Kowalkowski. For what takes place here in the difficult relationship between image and sound can justifiably be seen as a new work that moves parallel to Kowalkowski's original script without inflicting superfluous interpretative violence on it.The extent to which moving images and sound moving in the extremes of dynamics can indeed be combined could be experienced on the second day of the event with the concluding concert with silent film. The fact that the German expressionist silent film classic "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" by Interzone perceptible was not chosen without reason, was revealed by a music that can by no means be counted among the usual musical illustrations, but which reads Robert Wiene's cinematic work like a strange, different form of a picture score, in which what the musicians conjure up eighty years later with their highly developed instruments is already laid out: hallucinatory voices, Wagnerian wafting noise and humming, attacks at the limits of rational hearing - altogether a demonically creative event that also made it clear for once that it is not absolutely necessary for a composer to act as his own film director, something that has almost become good form at the major festivals of "new music" in recent years. Finally, on the second day of the event, the "Schlagquartett Köln" created a completely different sound world, transforming further works by the composers of the previous day into a radical sensual and physical experience. With a completely unique installation of an arsenal of percussion instruments, which acoustically measured almost the entire performance space at several positions, a precise rhythmic virtuosity unfolded with Sven Hermann's "verwellenteilt", Volker Heyn's "Break", Gerhard Stäbler's "Kybele" and Michael Rook's "abgestempelt". The four musicians of the "Schlagquartett Köln" unfolded a completely different visual world with their sometimes dance-like, supple movement choreography in Gerhard Stäbler's Cassandra study "Kybele" or the almost comedic water blowing in Sven Hermann's "verwellenteilt", both of which, however, follow the precise translation of the musical text into sound-spatial reality. The concluding first part of Steve Reich's "Drumming" demonstrated one of the basic conceptual considerations of "kopfHörer" on an almost classical scale: the power of an interpretative approach that does not see itself solely as a vicarious agent of a compositional intention. Despite the diversity and differences in the approaches of the works performed, this conviction was also evident in the "cRound" on the second day of the event, which was organized as a discussion performance by Dortmund musicologist Eva-Maria Houben with the composers and the audience. The fact that musicians play for their lives became audible and visible during the concerts by Interzone perceptible and the "Schlagquartett Köln", but Gerhard Stäbler, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Volker Heyn and Michael Rook did not know any conclusive answers to the question of whether composing is a "question of life and death". And that is actually a good thing, as the diverse spectrum ranges from a different form of artistic existence (Michael Rook) to a clearly political awareness (Gerhard Stäbler) to the baroque and pleasurable living out of the musical body (Hans-Joachim Hespos). More important in all of this is the vitality of contemporary composing, which is demonstrated precisely by the fact that a demanding forum with contemporary music is also able to unfold a highly vital intensity beyond the metropolises, for which the interested audience was grateful.
[Bernhard Stirner]
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)