MEDIA
December 7, 2024
Atelier neuer Musik
et in terra pax - Contemporary Composers in the Echo Chamber of War and Violence
Georg Beck
Excerpt
Escalating violence near and far leaves us speechless. In spirals of retaliation, distinctions dissolve; warfare renders the separation of cause and effect, of perpetrators and victims, ineffective. This is the perception after a year of war in the Middle East, and nearly three years in Ukraine. Speechlessness in response to all of this is also prevalent in the arts, not least in contemporary composition. What was, for example, expressed in some places in the summer of 2022—solidarity—seems almost unimaginable today. Those who engage and take a stance quickly risk being marginalized, insulted, or suspected. So, what remains for today's artists in this seemingly hopeless situation? How do they counteract the loss of voice? Did predecessors like Arnold Schoenberg and Luigi Nono have it easier? Author Georg Beck spoke with Stefan Litwin, born in Mexico; Juan Allende-Blin, a native of Chile; and Eres Holz, an artist of Polish-Israeli origin.
DEATH
Release: November 2024
Label: NEOS Music GmbH
Order number: 12431
Number of discs: 1
Duration: 71 minutes
Cover: Maria Frodl
One sees that Eres Holz is totally confident in his craftsmanship and always knows what he's doing when handling sounds. Nothing is left to chance.
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March 6, 2025
[...] Se trata entonces de una gozosa ceremonia de la confusión interpretada con furia y, a la vez, se ha de insistir en ello, con una extrañísima musicalidad marca de la casa.
[...] Ultimately, it is an ecstatic ceremony of confusion—performed with fury but, it must be emphasized, with an unmistakable and uniquely original musicality that is distinctly Holz’s own.
February 2025
The Berlin composer Eres Holz [...] writes music of deeply moving, existentialist relentlessness.
February 2025
New CDs of new music, presented by Dirk Wieschollek
Hardly any other composer currently reflects the horrors of the present as intensely as the Israeli-born composer Eres Holz. One will search in vain for superficial content or political messages. Everything existential is directly transformed by Holz into the sphere of sound and its articulations.
February 2025
by Valeska Baader and Mathis Ubben
How does war and violence turn into music? How do composers artistically deal with war and violence? What does violence sound like in music? And how should the audience experience this music?
In this episode, Mathis and Valeska trace the footsteps of music in times of war and talk with Eres Holz and Ehsan Khatibi.
February 2025
Composers and Their Audience in the Echo Chamber of War and Violence
„I think every human being must, in some way, bring humanity back into the discussion as a topic. And that, please, also in the contemporary music scene. We cannot continue isolating ourselves with experiments.“
February 2025
New music that leaves no one indifferent [...] His expressive works exhibit a densely structured, highly individual signature.
February 2025