LE NOUVEL AMOUR
by Das Orchester with Alexandra Büchel

The Swedish contemporary trio Das Orchester was founded in 1999. Since then, Das Orchester has collaborated with numerous composers, producing a solid repertoire base. Exploring the heterogeneous mystery of the three instruments as a chamber trio, has proved to be an exciting challenge. So far, the ensemble has performed throughout Scandinavia, Germany, Austria and France. Apart from the purely musical performances, Das Orchester has also produced concerts in collaboration with singers and dancers.

Arne Gieshoff: Verdreht
The German term 'verdreht' translates as contorted, dippy, distorted, misrepresented, perverted, pixilated, preposterous, skew, twisted, wry...
In some ways the music behaves like an unwinding, broken, mechanical toy forming bizarre shapes; - or like a contorted barrel organ (Ver-Dreh-Orgel). The score bears the following quote taken from Kurt Schwitter's text My Art and my Life (1940-46): One needs a medium. The best is, one is his own medium. But don't be serious because seriousness belongs to a passed time. This medium, called you yourself will tell you to take absolutely the wrong material. That is very good, because only the wrong material used in the wrong way, will give the right picture, when you look at it from the right angle. Or the wrong angle.

Ivo Nilsson: Controra
Controra is a south Italian word for the hours in the afternoon when the sun is at zenith, the shadows are getting narrower and the locals close their shutters because of the heat. A time of the day when people take their siesta and silence is ruling. I. Vortice (Swirl), II. Ombra (Shadow), III. Zenit (Zenith), IV. Riflessi (Reflections), V. Miraggio (Mirage).

David Swärd: Brezza.
This piece was inspired by the natural phenomena that occur where the sea meets land. Wind is created over the ocean and moves toward land. It rises and flows over the water, then falls and sweeps back toward land. This cycle gives Brezza its form in which one hears three voices from the circulating air, each with its own velocity. The three voices, represented by the recorder, trombone and cello, appear constantly in new combinations in the cycle.

Chrichan Larson: A une Raison
"A une Raison" realises a formal concept based on an inventory of common parameters in dance, music, song, text and movement. Intensity, density and modus - such as colour, type of reading, patterns for movement - have been subject to a gradual differentiation common to all present modes of expression; dance, music etc.
The different types of ensembles the work deals with make use of combinations whose appearances are made possible through an idea of interference or rather disturbance between the performers respective worlds. The constellations that the ensembles form are distributed over the available duration of the piece, following a logic shared also by the common parameters. The distribution is implemented in accordance with a pattern sufficiently complex to escape overviewing at the moment of its birth. The pattern creates a certain number of scenarios or sections within which the dance, the song, the music, the text and the movements meet each other in given situations. The scenarios can prove to be more or less contradictory, simple, composite, clear, sometimes unfeasible.
The structure of the work can be identified in the above described "construction of a model", which gives the performance its form. The final realisation of the work, following the score, is to be regarded upon as one of several possible interpretations or readings, of the model. Finally, in writing the music I have made use of formal elements in conformity with those used to build the model. But I have also, maybe above all, dealt with free association in my attempts to solve the tasks and to follow the instructions given by the model.
The poem used in the work is "A une Raison" by Arthur Rimbaud.
"A une Raison", as it is presented on this recording, obviously excluding all choreographic and scenic aspects of the work. is a concertante version in five acts or movements, of the complete lyric drama.
- Chrichan Larson

http://amour.bluemusicgroup.com