MEDIA
December 2, 2023
Atelier neuer Musik
Christoph Maria Wagner, artistic director
Martin von der Heydt, piano
Delphine Roche, flute
Anja Schmiel, oboe
Yoshiki Matsuura, trombone
Michael Pattman, percussion
Joachim Striepens, clarinet
Kalina Kolarova, violin
Burkart Zeller, cello
Petteri Waris, accordion
Leon Focker, text projection
Robert Schneider, tonmeister
The composition initially exposes psychosis, formulating nightmares in a kind of nocturne. At the acoustic climax, "madness" erupts, followed by a collapse, silence, and the confession of deeds. Everything converges on the quote from Wehrmacht soldier Reinhard G., which bestowed the title upon this opus premiered here. The ensemble music commissioned by Deutschlandfunk, titled „Ein Mensch erkennt, dass er nie Mensch war“ ("A human realizes that he was never human") is inspired by Svenja Goltermann's publication "Die Gesellschaft der Überlebenden" (The Society of Survivors), focusing on German war and camp returnees. The piece was recently premiered by the E-MEX Ensemble at the "In der deutschen Nachkriegszeit" (In the German post-war period) Forum neuer Musik 23. The composer aims to explore traces of war-related traumatic experiences in the human psyche. Eres Holz, born in 1977 near Tel Aviv in Rechovot, is interested in the double perspective on this subject, acknowledging that perpetrators can simultaneously be victims and psychologically damaged.
DEATH
Release: November 2024
Label: NEOS Music GmbH
Order number: 12431
Number of discs: 1
Duration: 71 minutes
Cover: Maria Frodl
[...] Music of overwhelming intensity, emotional impact, and at the same time, deeply sorrowful rage.
May 2025
The music is very powerful [...] I found it (the album) also gripping enough to really stay with it [...] in the end, you come away [...] enriched and deeply impressed.
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March 6, 2025
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