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Katrin Matzke-Baazougkm@karstenwitt.com+49 30 214 594-213
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Pierre-Laurent Aimard will perform Mark Andre's new work ...selig ist... for piano and electronics twice on 19 October in Donaueschingen.
"Few approach the unknown world of the organ with such patience and intensity,” enthused organist Stephan Heuberger about composer Mark Andre and his work iv15 Himmelfahrt.
In conversation with Jeffrey Arlo Brown, Mark Andre discussed teachers and companions, his German-French heritage and the aesthetics of fragility.
Mark Andre, "...selig ist..."
Mark Andre, composition
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
SWR Experimentalstudio, electronics
Mark Andre, Seven pieces for string quartet
Kuss Quartett
Mark Andre reaches with such intensity for a stillness that almost bursts your eardrums. Berliner Zeitung
Mark Andre, born in Paris in 1964, creates musical-existential experiences for the listener characterised by subtle, minutely worked-out processes of transformation. Central to his work is the question of disappearance, which shapes his approach to sound, form, and subject. The practicing Protestant is a sensitive explorer of sound, both in his delicate and concentrated chamber works as well as in his orchestral and music theatre pieces.After his studies in France, including those at the Paris Conservatory with Claude Ballif and Gérard Grisey, Mark Andre found a new musical home in Germany. He describes his encounter with the music of Helmut Lachenmann, whose piano concerto score Ausklang he happened to stumble across, as having been a revelation. He subsequently went through extensive composition studies with Lachenmann in Stuttgart and studied musical electronics with André Richard at the experimental studio of Southwest German Radio, in the meantime shifting the focus of his life from France to Germany. Here, he soon received grants and prizes, such as the Kranichsteiner Music Prize at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music (1996), first prize at the Stuttgart International Composers Competition (1997), and the composition prize from Frankfurt Opera (2001). Since 1998 he has taught regularly at the Darmstadt Summer Courses. In 2002 he received the Advancement Award from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, and in 2005 he travelled to Berlin as a participant of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme, where he has lived ever since.Particular interest was aroused by the 2004 premiere of Mark Andre’s tripartite music theatre work …22, 13… at the Munich Biennale. This work’s title refers to a passage in the Apocalypse of St John. His orchestral triptych …auf…, which he completed in 2007, similarly references religious themes. Here, Mark Andre explored aspects of transition as relates to Christ’s Resurrection. Mark Andre has a soft spot for German prepositions, grammatical elements with the function of transition, as illustrated in numerous other work titles such as those of the chamber music works written between 2001 and 2005: …durch…, …zu…, …in…, and …als…. Mark Andre's first opera, wunderzaichen, under Sylvain Cambreling’s baton, became a highlight of the 2013/14 Stuttgart Opera season and was reprised there in 2018 in a revised version.One of Mark Andre’s most important works of the last decade is the clarinet concerto über written for Jörg Widmann and the SWR Symphony Orchestra, which won the Orchestral Prize at the Donaueschingen Festival. The violin concerto an, last performed in 2023 by Ilya Gringolts and the Vienna RSO as an Austrian premiere, had been premiered by Carolin Widmann in 2016 at the Acht Brücken festival in Cologne, followed by the work …hin…for harp and chamber orchestra in 2018. Another significant work of recent years is the Riss trilogy for ensemble, with individual parts written for the Ensemble Modern, the Ensemble Musikfabrik and the Ensemble intercontemporain. His work for organ iv15 himmelfahrt was performed for the first time in October 2018 in Munich in the version for electronic stop action, before being performed with mechanical stop action in Bad Frankenhausen in 2019. In 2018/19 he was also commissioned by the Berlin Scharoun Ensemble to write Drei Stücke für Ensemble, which were performed at the Berlin Philharmonie and the Elbphilharmonie. Also in 2019, iv 17 for soprano and piano was premiered at the Lucerne Festival. wohin, a work for harp and ensemble, was premiered by the Ensemble intercontemporain at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2021 and performed again at the Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin in 2022. At the Musikfest Berlin in 2021, the 40-minute double bass solo piece iv 18 "Sie fürchteten sich nämlich" was on the programme, which will soon also be released on CD. The world premiere, expertly performed by Frank Reinecke, was part of a two-part concert evening with Pierre-Laurent Aimard featuring five piano works by Mark Andre. In May 2022, the rwh cycle was heard with five Hanoverian choirs and the Ensemble Modern at the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen and subsequently at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, followed by rwh2 with the Gaechinger Cantorey and the ensemble ascolta at the Musikfest Stuttgart. The cycle rwh 1-4 was performed again this season at the Wien Modern Festival in St Stephen's Cathedral with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Wiener Singakademie under Roland Kluttig.Mark Andre started the past season with the premiere of his Sieben Stücke für Streichquartett by the Kuss Quartet at the Elbphilharmonie. At the Rainy Days festival at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, Brad Lubman conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg with the world premiere of Vier Echographien for Orchestra. The German premiere followed in the current season: the SWR Symphony Orchestra under Teodor Currentzis performed the 4th Echographie in Stuttgart, Hamburg, Freiburg and Berlin, and the entire cycle of the Vier Echographien was performed in Cologne with the Gürzenich Orchestra under François-Xavier Roth. The orchestral work Im Entschwinden was launched in 2023 by the Orchestre de Paris under the direction of Klaus Mäkelä at the Musikverein Wien, where Mark Andre was featured as a focus artist in numerous concerts; the German premiere followed at the Elbphilharmonie. The WDR Symphony Orchestra under Peter Rundel has also performed the work in Cologne and Essen, as has the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under André de Ridder as part of the Berlin Ultraschall Festival 2024. Dasein 1 for ensemble and electronics was premiered with the Ensemble intercontemporain at the IRCAM festival ManiFeste at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2023; the piece marks the beginning of a new ensemble triptych. In August 2023, the Four Pieces for piano were premiered in Korea by Jong Hwa Park as part of a series of concerts to mark the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Germany and Korea.Mark Andre is a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, Saxon Academy of the Arts, and the Bavarian Academy of the Arts, and was honoured with the order of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2011. In 2012 he was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. He teaches composition at the Academy of Music in Dresden.2023/24 season This biography is to be reproduced without any changes, omissions, or additions, unless expressly authorised by the artist management.
Eine Liste aller Werke von Mark Andre finden Sie unter www.edition-peters.de
Mark Andre, on the other hand, also seems to have a golden touch for gently penetrating the interior of intensities and (hitherto) hidden spaces of music and actually making it possible for us listeners to learn to listen again, to experience it. (...) Observing, investigating, beholding, unfolding - these are continuous processes and positions in Mark Andre's composing.
neue musikzeitung, Alexander Keuk, 16.03.2023
"Mark Andre cultivates an even closer relationship to the practically inaudible. His composition 'an' for violin and orchestra animates not only the violinist Ilya Gringolts to play in extremes between dainty high-frequency excursions and harshly percussive playing. The RSO, too, is encouraged to match climaxes of refined sound mixtures with very discreet expression."
Der Standard, 19/02/23, Ljubiša Tošic
[Mark Andre's] piece "rwh 1-4" is a 90-minute ode to listening (...) In addition to 18 musicians on stage, other members of Ensemble Modern as well as six choirs and numerous loudspeaker boxes are distributed throughout the mezzanines. (...) Soft tones of more than 200 vocal voices float from the upper tiers, condensing into a cluster mist. A unison of strings and winds gradually swells, begins to fluctuate and glides through the space. (...) We feel the presence of the sound, but cannot grasp it. A spiritual experience.
Hamburger Abendblatt, 30.5.2022
“Among the ensemble pieces of this year's festival, the clear standout was Mark Andre’s string piece 'rwh1' as interpreted by Ensemble Resonanz: masterfully structured, rich in overtones and sounds emerging from the depths of the organ, it unfolded and reared up to a brilliant culminating forte.”
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24/10/2019, Eleonore Büning
“In looking to the past, Andre manages to accomplish something that few can: in a masterly collaboration with the SWR Experimental Studio, he constructs his own personal sound space. Very delicate indeed.”
Stuttgarter Zeitung, 21/10/2019, Mirko Weber
“Andre lets fragile sound particles grow into intense sonic drama, often refracted through noise and microtonality. Andre's premieres counted as some of the persisting highlights [of the festival].”
Neue Züricher Zeitung, 4/5/18, Marco Frei
“The 12 miniatures [...] are audibly influenced by Sciarrino’s evanescence, on to which they graft microtonal tunings and some of Helmut Lachenmann’s extended instrumental techniques; the effect is mysterious and [...] touching.”
The Guardian, 14/3/18, Andrew Clements
“Hope in the midst of this absence of creativity is provided once again by Mark Andre, who proves that music is stronger when a composer creates something with it rather than taking it to pieces.”
FAZ, 24/1/18, Jan Brachmann
“Mark Andre reaches with such intensity for a stillness that almost bursts your eardrums.”
Berliner Zeitung, 23/1/2018, Jonas Reichert
“Andre, for whom „disappearance is the central category“, wrote for Jörg Widmann so that the sound of his clarinet is always disappearing, supplemented by tape recordings of the desert wind in Jerusalem. Widmann handles his instrument phenomenally, especially on the limits of the audible between pp and pppp, creating a spellbound silence in the Philharmonie for the complete 43 minutes of this meditative exercise.”
NMZ, 10/2017, Albrecht Dümling
“[…] cryptic, like much of his music, but highly original and distinct.”
NZZ, 10/7/2017, Marco Frei
“His orchestral work woher […] wohin has already become without question one of Musica Viva’s greatest commissions.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9/7/2017, Michael Stallknecht
“The premiere of Andre’s work '3' for six voices – the title refers to the numerical value of pi and the Trinity – was in ideal hands with the Neue Vocalsolisten. The singers evoked a world of slowness and contemplation, which is typical of Andre’s work. A standing ovation.”
Stuttgarter Zeitung, 8/12/2015
“It [the SWR Symphony Orchestra’s prize] has been awarded to Mark Andre’s composition “über” for solo clarinet (Jörg Widmann), orchestra and live electronics. The jury was touched and deeply moved by the 'delicacy of the sound' in this work.”
Focus online, 18/10/2015
“Is it still earthly music? Or is it the silence turned into sound that is simply too heavy to be born in its relentlessness? Given Widmann’s unique way of playing the piano and his mastery of avant-garde techniques, everything is possible. And above all, given Mark Andre’s music for the end of time, 'über', which traces the sounds so subtly and unsettlingly.”
Badische Zeitung, 20/10/2015, Alexander Dick
“In the world premiere of Mark Andre's 'an', the violinst Carolin Widmann and the WDR Symphony Orchestra, which played sensitively under Tito Ceccherini, conjured a work of fragile softness.”
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 11/5/2015, Rainer Nonnenmann
“Mark Andre created a delicate sound network for violoncello and double bass. Andre’s score is captivating, the reduced sounds, which often only seem like dabs of sound, generate an immense tension.”
Die Welt, 27/8/2013
Mark Andre: Hij 2 - Takt 1 ff. (Marcus Creed,SWR Vokalensemble,SWR Experimentalstudio)
Mark Andre - ...hin... (for harp and chamber orchestra) (2018)
"über" (2015) for clarinet, live-electronics and orchestra
Mark Andre: wunderzaichen, Opera in 4 situations (2008/14)
Asche (2004/2014) for ensemble (ECCE Ensemble, Jean-Philippe Wurtz)