Concert | Ensemble Castor: Austrian paths

Image credits: Reinhard Winkler

October 4 | 7pm

RSVP to: events@acfny.org or +1 (212) 319 5300

Wearing a mask throughout the event is required.

“Past upon past has been planted within you

to rise like a garden from you.”

for violin, viola, violoncello and cembalo (2022)

Having been commissioned by “Ensemble Castor” to create a work for their early-music ensemble, I as a composer on the contemporary scene was inspired to search for a poetic title that would combine the motifs of old and new … and I came upon it in Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The singer performs before a child of princes” from his “Book of Images”. “Past upon past has been planted within you to rise like a garden from you.” poetically portrays the knowledge of understanding musical pasts as a self-evident component of our musical present, as these pasts become visible or audible in one or another particular form in “musical gardens”. As I was composing, the title – like a boulder – disengaged itself from the context of the poem without, however, completely abandoning the “garden” of Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

Each of the four “gardens” is devoted to an individual instrument, and the pasts, so to speak, take on the form of an “accompanied solo sonata”, a genre of “early music”. The remaining instruments stroll through this garden and admire, gaze in wonder, discover, tarry … and thereby stop the march of time as they focus their sonorous eye on select moments …

Boulders

for string trio (2022)

Again and again, when playing through the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, I come upon passages that inspire an entirely different, contemporary style for proceeding with their continuation. Within the context of Bach’s music these moments strike one as boulders from the future. I have woven a selection of these boulders into the beginnings of each of the individual movements of this string trio and then spun them to conclusion in the fantasy of my own language …Inasmuch as such boulders, as witnesses from the past, can also be dropped into gardens, this string trio suits itself to an interwoven performance with my work “Past upon past has been planted within you to rise like a garden from you.” for violin, viola, violoncello and cembalo, inspired by a verse of Rainer Maria Rilke. Both works were composed parallel to and in dialogue with one another, and are intertwined and interlocked in the American premiere, for which reason the individual scores at times offer alternative endings to provide for such contingencies.

Inasmuch as such boulders, as witnesses from the past, can also be dropped into gardens, this string trio suits itself to an interwoven performance with my work “Past upon past has been planted within you to rise like a garden from you.” for violin, viola, violoncello and cembalo, inspired by a verse of Rainer Maria Rilke. Both works were composed parallel to and in dialogue with one another, and are intertwined and interlocked in the American premiere, for which reason the individual scores at times offer alternative endings to provide for such contingencies.

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Artists

Ensemble Castor, which was founded in 2010 by Austrian international successfully working musicians, is devoted to string chamber music of the period between 1600 and 1750. The main focus is on the Itailan Seicento and Settecento as well as on the pre-classical music in Austria and Germany.

Musical director is the Austrian violinist Petra Samhaber-Eckhardt, who studied with Enrico Onofri and Andrew Manze in Italy and London. Ensemble Castor is collaborating with labels as SONY and Note 1 and its recordings got international fantastic reviews. Castor works closely together with Enrico Onofri, Rodolfo Richter, Dorothee Oberlinger, Silvia Frigato, Mireille Lebel , Christina Gansch and  other famous singers and instrumentalists.

Castor performs at many international festivals such as ‘Internationale Barocktage Melk’, ‘Carinthischer Sommer’, ‘Festival St.Gallen’, Internationale Festwochen Innsbruck, ‘Fränkischer Sommer’, ‘Händel Haus Halle’ , Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Frankfurt, Mosel Musikfestival, Brucknerhaus and Konzerthaus Vienna, Vancouver Early Music, Boston Early Music, Ottawa and New York. A great ambition is also the work with fortepiano on classical music.

In 2015 Castor won the culture prize of the city of Linz. Many excellent concert reviews give evidence of the high quality of their work: ‘The young ensemble offered fulminant interpretations’, ‘Castor awakes early music to completely new life’.

`These players never fail to find something to say…lovely , imaginative performances on some sweet sounding instruments.´, Grammophone magazine

The name Castor refers to the twin stars Castor and Pollux in the zodiac of Gemini.

Get a sneak peek of Ensemble Castor here