Isabel Mundry, Caspar Johannes Walter

Fächer (Fan) pairs two large works by Caspar Johannes Walter and Isabel Mundry, two composers of the same generation. The image of the fan, a simple form that unfolds into an intricate structure, links them: both pieces move from clearly defined shapes to figures of great heterogeneity. Both also let consonant harmonies and a marked pulse back into their music, for very different reasons.

The disc belongs to the Edition Musikfabrik and draws on the series Musikfabrik im WDR, in a production of Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Ensemble Musikfabrik plays under Peter Rundel in the Walter and Emilio Pomàrico in the Mundry. The soloist in Metrische Dissonanzen is the ensemble's percussionist Dirk Rothbrust, born in Illingen in the Saarland in 1968 and a long-standing member of the Schlagquartett Köln. The violin solo in Gefächerter Ort is played by Juditha Haeberlin.

Walter's Metrische Dissonanzen (2009) for percussion solo and large ensemble turns harmonic relations into rhythmic processes. Its idea of "rhythm chords" makes an interval of pitch equal to an interval of time, so that dissonance becomes rhythmic: the piece begins with a gradual layering of repeated impacts at different speeds and in different timbres. The microtonal harmony gives it a diffuse light. Mundry's cycle Schwankende Zeit (Swaying Time, 2006-09) has five panels. Two of them, Non mesuré - mit Louis Couperin I and II, rework two unmeasured preludes by Louis Couperin. Between them stand Schwankende Zeit, after three poems by Thomas Kling, and Gefächerter Ort for violin and ensemble, and the cycle closes with Je est un autre, after Rimbaud, where Couperin returns only as fleeting fragments of memory.

Reviewing the disc in Dissonance, Pierre Rigaudière praised the precision of Musikfabrik and its ability to move from dense timbre to diffuse image, from clear pulse to floating time. He described the Walter as an imposing piece and called the record "une belle réussite". Mundry has worked before with older music, from Dufay to Scandello, and here she makes her reaction to the model explicit. The fold-out poster reproduces Gerhard Richter's Abstraktes Bild.

CD in digipak with fold-out poster, Wergo WER 6867 2, released in 2018 in the Edition Musikfabrik (74'29").