In Helmut Lachenmann’s cello solo “Pression,” the performer is instructed to hit the instrument’s body, pluck the strings from inside the peg box and bow the tailpiece. When the first pitches of the piece appear, about halfway through, they sound jolting and strange.
Lachenmann, a ferociously inventive German composer who turns 90 this fall, is the subject of a portrait concert presented by the Miller Theater at Columbia University on Thursday. At the last concert of his music there, in 2010, the transfigured cello of “Pression” made the audience listen with an unusual intensity, said Melissa Smey, who runs the theater.
You could “feel everybody collectively leaning forward in their seat,” she said, “to sense what is happening.”
At this week’s concert, the JACK Quartet, whose members have a close relationship with Lachenmann and are pre-eminent interpreters of his work, will perform his string quartets — pieces they have been playing, studying and revising with the composer since the group’s founding over two decades ago.
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The post Helmut Lachenmann’s Music Is Like Nothing Else appeared first on New York Times.
