Five pieces by five composers who are all personally associated with each other: Klaus Huber and Younghi Pagh-Paan are a couple, Ernst Helmuth Flammer studied with Klaus Huber and Paul-Heinz Dittrich, Jörg Herchet and he were colleagues for a while at the College of Music in Dresden. The cellist Matthias Lorenz knows Paul-Heinz Dittrich the longest, since 1991, when he was invited to a concert in East Berlin shortly after the German reunification. He met Klaus Huber in 1995, with Younghi Pagh-Paan he was first in contact in 1997 and his friendship with Jörg Herchet – and through him with Ernst Helmuth Flammer – first came about after moving to Dresden. Is the motivation behind the works selected for this program entirely personal? Of course. This (always!) plays a role. It also plays a role that, since he began playing them, he has become attached to the pieces over the course of time. Despite all the personal interconnections, the works are very different. Three of them were practically written at the same time, but they represent three very different approaches to composing. And yet there is one thing in common in all the differences. All five composers do not aspire to a revolution; their pieces are rooted in the European tradition, ranging from Dittrich’s “quasi-Sarabande,” Flammer’s extensive organ points or Huber’s need for sections with a more personal character. On the other hand, none of the five pieces remain stagnant. Instead, the composers expand upon the possibilities made available to them. Herchet‘s piece is based on the traditional “beautiful” cello sound but is increasingly interrupted by deviations until this can be equated with the normal sound. Pagh-Paan combines Korean tradition with European avant-garde, and Flammer embeds a tour de force of cello performance in his clear structure. On this album, Flammer’s piece has its world premiere recording.
