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Ensemble Textura

@ensembletextura

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From the last concert of our UNKNOWN HEAVENS project:

@knower_music - More than just another try

transcribed and arranged for string quintet by Ascher and Wollheim

performed at @pianosalon_christophori

#jazz #funk #violin #knowerrulez by @ensembletextura

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8 months ago

Thank you so much to everyone who shared the music with us this past week! A couple impressions from our three lovely venues @kultursalonpreussenpark @galerie_kremers @pianosalon_christophori
Clips and Reels from the concerts coming soon! by @ensembletextura

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8 months ago

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8 months ago

ICH WILL MENSCH SEIN: ERWIN SCHULHOFF

Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) was a prolific Czech composer whose life was drastically affected by the two World Wars in the 20th Century. Born in Prague to a family of German Jews, he was admitted to the Prague Conservatory at the recommendation of Antonin Dvorak, and compositional studies with Max Reger and Fritz Steinbach led to a successful career as a composer and performer. His wide range of compositional influences extended from Second Viennese School Expressionism to Neoclassicism to Jazz, while his interest in Dadaism and Socialist political tendencies also weaved their way into his writing (notably his Oratorio setting of the Communist Manifesto).

During the First World War he was drafted by the Austrian Army and served on the Russian Front, wherein he was wounded twice and detained in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp. The years after his military service display some of his most avant-garde inspiration, such as in the 1919 piece “In Futurum” - a silent composition for Piano notated with difficult time signatures and extremely specific groups of rests. The 1920s was most productive decade as a composer, resulting in his first Symphony, 2 String Quartets, 2 Ballets, his opera “Flammen”, the String Sextet and many more works demonstrating real mastery of craft and inspired experimentation of styles. He resided in Germany until 1924, before returning to Prague to take up a faculty position at the Conservatory in 1929.

However during the following decade his Jewish heritage, radical artistic expression and increasing leftism saw him blacklisted by the Nazis, unable to perform or have his works played in Germany and effectively ending his career there. Working as a pianist for Prague radio, he was forced to compose under a pseudonym following the Nazi invasion in Czechoslovakia in 1939. Two years later the Soviet Union approved his citizenship request, but he was arrested before he could leave and deported to the Wülzburg Prison Camp, where he died of tuberculosis in 1942.

We are very excited to perform his absolutely masterful string sextet these coming days! by @ensembletextura

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a year ago

ICH WILL MENSCH SEIN: GIDEON KLEIN

Born in 1919 in Prerov, the Czech composer Gideon Klein was only 20 when the Nazis closed all Czech universities and his studies as a pianist and composer were abruptly terminated. Since compositions and performances by Jewish musicians were banned, Klein tried to continue his musical activities under the pseudonym Karel Vránek, performing concerts in private homes, and continuing to compose. His own apartment became somewhat of a meeting place for musicians and writers.

In 1941 Klein was deported together with his family to Terezín (Theresienstadt) concentration camp, where he continued to compose alongside Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann. He became an avid educator, on musical and other subjects, and devoted himself to the teaching of the camp’s orphans. At first, he gave concerts in secret, but eventually the camp became one of the few to allow artistic activity, partly as propaganda to the outside world.

Neverthless in 1944, Klein was deported to Auschwitz and finally to Fürstengrube, a coal-mining labour camp, where he died in January 1945 during its liquidation. The string trio, which we will perform this week, was his last composition. It is a work, which, like its composer, is bursting with life and spirit, even in the face of the greatest adversity imaginable. In his final letter, Klein asks three times to not be forgotten, and we are thankful his music lives on today.

DATES: 19.06. and 20.06. at 8pm! Reserve a seat now on our website - link in bio. by @ensembletextura

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a year ago

ICH WILL MENSCH SEIN:
HANS HELLER

Born 1898 in Greiz to Jewish parents, the German composer Hans Heller has been an almost-forgotten name in the decades after his passing. Growing up in Thuringia, he showed great talent at the piano from an early age. At age 18, he was drafted into the First World War, after which he was awarded the Iron Cross, but also had to abandon hopes of a career as a pianist due to an arm injury. He started studying composition, first at the Leipzig Conservatory, then as a private student of Franz Schreker. 1933 Heller and his family fled to France, and after World War 2 they emigrated to the USA. In 1955, the composer finally returned to Germany, where he would stay for the rest of his life. While some of his works were performed during this time, Heller went largely unnoticed, and none of his music was ever printed. Only in recent years, his manuscripts were sighted by pianist Jascha Nemtsov and fair copies were made by the EchoScore Project of the Stiftung Lichterfeld.

We are proud to announce that next week, on the 19th and 20th of June, our concert "ICH WILL MENSCH SEIN" will feature Heller's String Quartet op. 6, finished 1928, a relatively early, but strikingly forward-looking work, with clear influences from his teacher Schreker and his idol Mahler, as well as picking up on developments around Schönberg and the "Viennese School" of New Music. As far as we know, this may well be its world premiere! by @ensembletextura

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a year ago

In a new project already well underway, we present three bold works of music from ostracized composers, written between 1924 and 1944. Save the dates and stay tuned for more info! by @ensembletextura

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a year ago

If you want to know how it ends … come to our concerts!

MONDAY 8pm - Piano Salon Christophori @pianosalon_christophori
TUESDAY 7pm - Galerie Kremers
@galerie_kremers

#brahms #clarinet #quintet by @ensembletextura

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2 years ago

Attention all Berlin friends - the concerts with our newest programme are only days away!

We will play at @pianosalon_christophori and @galerie_kremers with our lovely first-time guests Odile Ettelt and Miguel Erlich, performing two big Brahms chamber music works, the second sextet and the clarinet quintet. And in true Textura fashion we also have some homemade vocal arrangements for you ☺️

Can't wait to meet you all for this wonderful music! by @ensembletextura

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2 years ago

Here are some more clips from our last project, Memory Eternal!

1. Prokofiev - this most rustic and fun opening, setting the tone for his Kabardinian quartet
2. Development fun
3. The perhaps even more rustic third movement
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4. Schnittke, Psalm X. Coda, meditation on B-A-C-H.

#textura #prokofiev #schnittke #strings by @ensembletextura

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2 years ago

BULGARIAN FOLK SONGS

1. More Zajeni
2. Polegnala E Todora
3. Pilentze Pee
4. Tche da ti

We absolutely loved working on these and exploring how crunchy we could make those clusters sound on our little wooden boxes. And then there were all those tender harmonies inbetween…

#voixbulgares #circle #strings taken in Galeria Plan B by @ensembletextura

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2 years ago

Our second project, Memory Eternal, took us to Eastern Europe, exploring the works of Arensky and Prokofiev and their roots in folk- and ancient liturgical music. Memory Eternal is the name of a chant from the Orthodox Mass for the Dead which was used by Anton Arensky in his Quartet for Violin, Viola and 2 Cellos, functioning as a motto-like idée fixe throughout the work.

The second Prokofiev String quartet explicitly draws inspiration from the music of the Kabardino-Balkar region and fuses the composer's distinct style with folk themes, rhythms and imitations of folk instruments.

For the vocal element of this programme, we dove into one of our most exciting challenges so far: Adapting the folk song arrangements by the famous Mystère des Voix Bulgares for strings, trying to replicate their searing sounds on our instruments.

We switched off the lights for another vocal work - the last of Schnittke's 15 Psalms of Penitence. A dark, medtitative work, sung without text and "bocca chiusa" (with closed mouth), with a D pedal point sustained almost all the way through, ending, in true Schnittke fashion, on the famous B-A-C-H motif.

These concerts in February took us back to our beloved @galerie_kremers as well as a new venue, the beautiful @galeriaplanb at Strausberger Platz. Clips will follow! by @ensembletextura

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2 years ago