Beissel is the fruit of a remarkable alliance between Austrian composer Klaus Lang and the Australian ensemble Golden Fur - Samuel Dunscombe (clarinet), Judith Hamann (cello), and James Rushford (keyboards). Conceived for the distinctive resonance of a church setting, the music deploys organ, winds, and strings in a patient unfolding where the boundaries between composition and collective improvisation gently blur. Lang, celebrated for his quietly radical music, draws inspiration from eccentric mystic George Rapp and his disciple Johann Conrad Beissel, integrating cryptic historical references as guiding motifs.

The work’s forty-minute structure evolves at a glacial pace. Sustained tones, fragile drones, and subtle harmonic inflections cluster and disperse in a continuous, breathing organism. Each musician listens intently to the whole, attuned to gradual shifts in color, shadow, and volume. A single pitch may hover for minutes, only to slide imperceptibly into a spectrum of overtones, the ensemble’s focus never wavering. Chords bloom and contract, the organ’s glow suffusing the acoustic space. At moments, Golden Fur’s interventions - breathy clarinet multiphonics, spectral cello glissandi, pointillist keyboard overtones - spotlight the ensemble’s devotion to detail and sonic patience.

Crucially, Beissel resists drama and event in favor of texture and presence. Its devotional mood recollects liturgical music, but the atmosphere is one of experiment and openness, not prescription. Lang and Golden Fur offer a music attentive not only to notes but to the spaces between - the resonance of church air, the imperfections of human touch, the ambiguities of historical memory. The slow revelation of structural motifs, including subtle allusions to Beissel’s own hymn tunes, invites the listener into a contemplative state. In this collaboration, time does not pass so much as gather: Beissel holds us gently in suspense, delivering a quietly radical vision of ensemble music’s capacity for shared concentration and transformation.