Matthias Pintscher
Matthias Pintscher is one of the most engaging and stimulating young composer/conductors on the musical scene today. Still only in his early thirties, his music is regularly performed and commissioned by many of the world's top orchestras, opera houses and festivals. In the last eighteen months his conducting has increased considerably and he will soon divide his time equally between the two. 'My thinking as a conductor is informed by what I write, and vice versa of course'.
Matthias Pintscher began his training as a conductor, and for some time he envisaged his future in this discipline. Composition came to the fore in his twenties and he created a considerable body of work, which he often conducted himself. In addition to his own music he is now moving into a new and broadening landscape; music from the late 19th and 20th centuries, alongside a rich variety of contemporary scores. He has a special affinity with the music of Berlioz, Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Berg, Webern and Schönberg.
Matthias Pintscher's music inhabits a sound world of precise, exquisite sounds, ravishing sonorities and unearthly, ethereal textures. He has an extraordinary talent for music-theatre and his tonal vocabulary is immense. 'My music is rooted in the power of poetry. It is made up of musical processes that follow a dramatic principle... an imaginary theatre, full of mystery and intimacy’.
Among his major achievements are his first opera, “Thomas Chatterton”, which won enormous acclaim, and his first CD “Funf Orchesterstucke” (Kairos), conducted by the composer, which received astonishing reviews. His chamber work “Choc” is programmed frequently; his violin concerto for Frank Peter Zimmermann, “en sourdine”, has received more than twenty performances since its premiere in 2003. He also wrote a cello concerto for Truls Mørk, which was premiered in Paris in February 2006.
Matthias Pintscher is devoted to all things French - literature, history, culture and cuisine. He also loves Flemish painting of the 15th and 16th centuries, contemporary photography and architecture - the influence of all this on his work is to create a unique and individual voice.
His works are published exclusively by Bärenreiter-Verlag.
sonic eclipse: occultation
With Sonic Eclipse, Matthias Pintscher has composed a new cycle in three parts for an ensemble. The first two parts, Celestial Object I and II, will be premiered by the Scharoun Ensemble in Berlin and Zermatt at the summer academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; the third, Occultation, by Klangforum Wien on the occasion of it’s 25th birthday in 2010 in Witten.
The phenomenon of an eclipse – that’s to say: the movement of two celestial bodies to the moment of their mutual occlusion, serves as a symbol for the composition’s process of convergence to a final, momentary fusion of completely diverse elements. “The musical idea is for the trumpet to take the soloist’s part in the first piece; the horn in the second. The contours of both pieces are superimposed one on top of the other in the third part – the material of both pieces being completely heterogeneous but merging in this moment of close proximity. I was interested in investigating the repertoire of two very different instruments, which however are both part of the same family, and to make them sound completely different. These very heterogeneous materials of sound and form are slowly brought together, drawn on top of each other and finally joined by the ensemble so that everything merges into one voice, one instrument, one musical gesture which finally falls apart again. Figuratively speaking, this corresponds exactly to an eclipse. (Marie Luise Maintz)