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CalendarSeason 2020—2021June

Eva Reiter & Nico Couck

Nico Couck plays Eva Reiter's 'The Wilderness of Mirrors'

02/06/2021 ( - )

kunstfestspiele herrenhausen

 

THE LICHTENBERG FIGURES [BINAURAL VERSION IN HERRENHAUSEN]  - Ictus 

 

Salvatore Sciarrino: Immagine Fenicia, 2001
Eva Reiter: Tube Music, 2021
Eva Reiter: The Wilderness of Mirrors, 2020 - Nico Couck (ChampdAction)
Eva Reiter: The Lichtenberg Figures [reloaded], 2020, after Ben Lerner

 


  The Wilderness of Mirrors - Eva Reiter

for electric guitar and electronics, 2020

commissioned by ChampdAction and Festival van Vlaanderen Vlaams-Brabant

dedicated to Nico Couck


We increasingly lose ourselves in a world of facades in which we can no longer trust our senses. As if through a murky mirror, Bach's musical vocabulary is thrown into the electric guitar sound world and manifests itself in a sound aesthetic reminiscent of the work of David Lynch. At the same time, this sometimes surreal atmosphere is embedded in complex, diffuse and partially overloaded electronics, consisting exclusively of "guitar monsters". We see contours or shadows of the well-known chaconne whose appearance is becoming increasingly strange. "The Wilderness of Mirrors" pursues the principle of the differentiated variation form. Everything comes back but always appears in a new light and a new context. Motives are examined in detail, rotated, stacked on top of each other, disassembled and fragmented beyond recognition.

Several times the symbol of the mirror plays an elementary role: as if himself sitting in a mirror cabinet, we look at the guitarist from different angles - and ultimately at ourselves. The mirror forms the intersection and projection plane of different soundscapes and their historical relationships: old versus new, analog versus digital, live versus electronic.

The interaction between 'old music' and the new sound language is a kind of transition zone in which we cast our contemporary view on music history. Sonic events are simultaneously projected, scattered, distorted, compressed, multiplied, diminished and magnified, all at the electronic level.

Finally, a window in a train not only reflects proximity and distance, but also our own reflection. ‘The Wilderness of Mirrors’ feels connected to all these possibilities of refraction.

 

 


 

 

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