Nymphéa

»My goal is (…) to create music in which clear, delicate textures and violent, shattering masses of sound come together.« 

This year's portrait composer Kaija Saariaho describes the images that accompanied her while working on her work »Nymphéa« for string quartet and electronics: »a one-dimensional surface with its colors,« »various materials that you can touch,« »a white water lily that feeds on the underwater mud.« This type of sensual approach is best understood when the eye is not too distracted. The final concert of the opening day with the highly acclaimed Cologne Asasello Quartet will therefore take place largely in the dark – only illuminated by the musicians' iPads.

In his »Black Angels« George Crumb describes a journey of the soul in three stages: departure, absence and return. And in Gérard Pesson's idiomatic string quartet version of Alexander Sjrkabin's "»Black Mass«, the musicians wrestle interpretively with their own inner demons.

Funded by the Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes NRW