Recollections- day 6

Tuesday January 22nd: A short while spent exploring the CD shelves at Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus, a massive 3-story bookstore, the owner of which is married to a composer who is responsible for building up Dussmann's new music selection- as if buying CDs from a shop wasn't a bizarre enough phenomena today, stumbling upon James Tenney's recordings of the Cage Sonatas and Interludes was a genuinely surreal experience. Their selection of opera, jazz and early music was equally impressive (although the Stockhausen-Verlag discs were just as prohibitively expensive as they are online).

In the afternoon we had our second presentation/masterclass session, this time with Rebecca Saunders. The discussion focused on form and various notational approaches to duration in Daniel's violin duet, form and perspective in Jessie's voice, clarinet, cello and piano quartet Il ciel..., and form and humour in Sivan's mixed quartet and timpani piece You might remember this music fondly.

Josh Levine, Jessie Downs, Rebecca Saunders

Rebecca also showed us a recent violin concerto, a piece that explored similar material to her string quartet that we had heard the previous weekend on the Arditti's concert, filtered through formal and poetic concerns motivated by Samuel Beckett's short-story Still. A recording of this work is available for download here.

After the masterclasses we all chose a well-paced meal at an excellent Thai restaurant over that evenings concert.