MEDIA
April 7, 2025
Musik-Panorama
Works by Eres Holz from the new album DEATH
Ingo Dorfmüller
Robert F Schneider - Sound engineer
DEATH (2023) for two bass clarinets, live electronics, and light
Laurent Bruttin & Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson
MACH (2020) for trombone and live electronics
Ein Mensch erkennt, dass er nie Mensch war (2023) for ensemble, text projection, and live electronics
Christoph Maria Wagner - Artistic Director
Three new pieces by the Israeli-German composer Eres Holz, born in 1977, revolve around the themes of war, violence, and death. They are seismographically precise responses to the increasingly violent resolution of political and societal conflicts worldwide. The composition “Death”, which deals in a harrowing way with the experience and suffering of violence, was completed shortly before its premiere, coinciding with the October 2023 Hamas attack on an Israeli music festival. “Mach”, for trombone and live electronics, reflects on the "apocalyptic" potential of the brass instrument, symbolically represented in the "last trumpet" of the Final Judgment. The composition “Ein Mensch erkennt, dass er nie Mensch war” focuses on German postwar society, traumatized and burdened by both the violence endured and the violence perpetrated. Eres Holz consciously sought to empathize with people at the end of the Nazi dictatorship, an effort shaped by his identity as the son of a Holocaust survivor.
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.
read more
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
Schuld ohne Sühne (engl.: Guilt Without Atonement)
Sounds of disturbing beauty name the unspeakable, the unimaginable: softly plaintive woodwind lines fill the space, merging with accordion, cello, and violin to create dense soundscapes, subtly solidifying in electronic continuation. Menacing undertones add piano bass, percussion, and muted trombone, harsh accents escalating into fortissimo strikes that startle. Chaos ensues, decay, where only a microtonal whimper remains. Eres Holz composes the psychosis, the paranoia, the disorientation, the loss of meaning. His work, commissioned by Deutschlandfunk, for nine instruments, electronics, and text projection, explores the experiences of violence by Wehrmacht soldiers in World War II.
Forum neuer Musik 2023
NZM - Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
#1_2024
Post-war music at the „Forum for New Music“ of Deutschlandfunk Cologne
Holz does not absolve the German war crimes but imparts an enduring and essential humane message: Rather than succumbing to rigid friend-enemy dichotomies, we must endeavor to comprehend why individuals differ in their thoughts and actions. This comprehension serves as a prerequisite for democracy, freedom, and peace.
December 2023
Das hat mein Heimatgefühl hierzulande tief verletzt
The Israeli-German composer Eres Holz on terrorism, trauma, and apathy
[...] I wish that people, especially those who are not directly involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would truly strive for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In this dreadful time, I hope they come together with them, show compassion, and express solidarity, instead of favoring one side while the other is still burying their dead.
December 2023