Ensemble Musikfabrik

Unerwartet (Unexpected) is the seventh CD of the Edition Musikfabrik on Wergo, and it closes the arc of the first twenty-four concerts of the series Musikfabrik im WDR. Four composers with little in common share the programme: a melodrama about the end of a concert, a piano sextet, a solo for one overloaded performer and a cello concerto with live electronics. Two of the pieces appear here in their first recordings.

The Cologne Ensemble Musikfabrik recorded the works live between December 2003 and May 2008 in the Klaus-von-Bismarck-Saal of the WDR Funkhaus, in productions of Westdeutscher Rundfunk with Michael Peschko as recording producer. Stefan Asbury, Etienne Siebens and Christian Eggen conduct. The soloists are the actor Christian Brückner as narrator, Melvyn Poore on electric tuba, Carl Rosman and the cellist Dirk Wietheger, with Josh Martin of ZKM at the sound desk.

David Lang, the American composer who co-founded Bang on a Can in 1987, wrote Are You Experienced? in 1987-88 for narrator, electric tuba and 13 musicians. Its six sections carry titles such as "On being hit on the head" and "On hearing the sirens song", and the narrator tells the listener what has just happened to him. Philippe Boesmans, the Belgian composer best known for his operas at La Monnaie, contributes the Sextuor à clavier (2006) for piano, two violins, two violas and cello, which the label describes as a "Biedermeier" sextet. In interference (1996-2000) the Welsh composer Richard Barrett turns interference into a structural principle: Rosman plays contrabass clarinet, sings and works a pedal bass drum at the same time. Luca Francesconi's Unexpected End of Formula (2008), for cello, live electronics and ensemble, sets out to drive the formulaic out of music.

Several works were written for this circle of players. The Boesmans sextet was a commission of Musikfabrik, the Kunststiftung NRW and Ars Musica, and the Francesconi of ZKM, Musikfabrik and the Kunststiftung NRW. The Francesconi recording documents the world premiere, given in Cologne on 25 May 2008 with Wietheger and Eggen. Francesconi, born in Milan in 1956, was Luciano Berio's assistant in the early 1980s.

CD, Wergo WER 6857 2, released in 2010, volume seven of the Edition Musikfabrik (total time 62'49").