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Holz does not want to unfold a deceptive paradise in his music, but to raise questions about fears and existential situations. This means creatively facing the contradictions of life.
Forum neuer Musik 2021
In the piece "hautwärts" – a commissioned work by the Berlin ensemble LUX:NM – composer Eres Holz aims to directly engage the audience. His goal is to reach the emotional core of his listeners. Holz employs non-tonal sounds and microtones, but his music is not abstract; it feels existential and delves deeply into realms of the psyche
Konzertdokument der Woche 2020
28/06/2020
Eres Holz's great string quartet also relies on emotions; it is inspired by thoughts of crossing borders and internal state of extremity.
Frank Kämpfer
Forum neuer Musik 2021
From a standpoint of technical advancement Holz tries in compositions such as Quintett (2009) or in his recent work for ensemble Kataklothes (2015) to gain a tonal gravitation without tonality.
Eres Holz contributed also for Sarah Nemtsov's MEKOMOT-project: new music and liturgical singing in old and new synagogues, in forgotten and present places of Jewish life in Germany and Poland. With Allen Ginsberg's great Kaddish poem, he chose a text that stands in a tensed relationship to religious tradition. The dubious, scrupulous search in the "labyrinth of identity," which Eres Holz refers to the text, may also drives his own work.
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Ingo Dorfmüller
Atelier neuer Musik, Deutschlandfunk (DLF)
Cologne, Germany 2016
The music of Eres Holz, a former student of Hanspeter Kyburz, is one of the most exciting discoveries that could be made in Ultraschall – Festival for Contemporary Music 2016.
Holz is looking for a harmonic binding beyond the major-minor tonality. The ensemble work of Kataklothes by Eres Holz exposes a chain of chords, a progress of which at the same time is peculiarly logical and open: the title of the piece refers to the Moirai in the ancient Greek mythology which spin the thread of life. The result is an immensely colorful and plastic music, which makes harmony experienceable as a constantly changing phenomenon, as something that is not static but mobile in itself.
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Julia Spinola
Ultraschall: Festival for Contemporary Music (DLF)
Berlin, Germany 2016
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
The music of the Berlin-based composer Eres Holz can be heard regularly at new music festivals. A double album has now been released containing works by this composer from the past seven years. [...] for two and a half hours you can get to know the art of an important contemporary composer that is as challenging as it is communicative.
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21. November 2022
How does war and violence turn into music? How do composers artistically deal with war and violence? How does violence sound in music? And how should the audience experience this music?
In this episode, Mathis and Valeska trace the role of music in times of war and talk with Eres Holz and Ehsan Khatibi.
Valeska Baader and Mathis Ubben
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
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
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
The Israeli-German composer Eres Holz on terror, 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.
Eres Holz
12/2023
An extensive insight into the composition of Eres Holz provides his CD with various solo and ensemble pieces. They convey an impressively intense music whose existential impetus is always present, without expressive platitudes [...]
9/2022
One can simply take the title of the portrait CDs «Touching Universes» very seriously. Every piece is a universe in itself, every movement in the works is a universe in itself, as is every vibration. Touching? Touching.
Hörbar, September 2022
Kataklothes for Ensemble of the Israeli composer Eres Holz focussed and captivated the ear through the breathless and density of his language. One understood: If there is something like "new music" of today, then that first and foremost has to be to establish a search as urgency, in order to conquer even a space in which one can speaks and breathes , claim and so on.
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NMZ - Neue Musikzeitung
5/2019
The Forum for Contemporary Music at Deutschlandfunk in Cologne is looking for "post-migrant visions"
“[...] uncomfortable to encounter after this "somersault into the past" (,Ihr sollt die Wahrheit erben' by H. Keller) the ensemble piece Kataklothes by Eres Holz, an Israeli composer who has "returned" to Germany and whose ancestors include Polish Holocaust victims. "Connecting threads" according to the fate goddesses of Greek mythology are for Holz an essential source of inspiration for an overwhelmingly colorful, developing into organic flow introductory and releasing music.“
Isabel Herzfeld
Frankfurter Allgemeine
17.04.19, Nr. 91, S. 13
Das Quintett (2009) von Eres Holz gibt sich als ein fast gediegen elaboriertes Ensemblestück mit komplexen Stimmbewegungen, die farbig zusammenfließen und wieder auseinanderdriften.
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Dirk Wieschollek
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
05/2017
Holz etwa schafft in seinem Quintett für Flöte, Klarinette, Viola, Klavier und Harfe (2009) tonale Gravitationsfelder jenseits der Dur-Moll-Harmonik und untersucht die Möglichkeit der Erzeugung von Spannungen und Tendenzen zur Auflösung – mithin also Kennzeichen, die für die musikalische Rhetorik von großer Bedeutung sind.
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Stefan Drees
06/2017
In „Touching universes and ends“ for ensemble and electronics, the composer Eres Holz processes the death of his mother. Intense, painful increasing waves lead to calming piano chords. The large-scale composition reaches orchestral proportions.
Badische Zeitung
July 2021
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
[...]In the 18-minutes piece „Touching Universes and Ends“ played by Ensemble Aventure, Holz achieves an extraordinary variety of sounds and density. It almost goes without saying that this is also played brilliantly. A double CD that invites you to listen to it again and again.
11/2022
In addition to Sarah Nemtsov, Eres Holz contributed an outstanding work to this rich, thoughtful Forum. His string quartet Dunkle Risse wants to set the negative pole to our society, which focuses only on positiveness. Beauty arises here from pain, from carefully developed, fragile, repeatedly broken up sound spaces in which the transience of the sound leads us straight to the meadow of paradise.
Forum neuer Musik 2021
NZM - Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
1/2022
Significantly more extrovert: Kataklothes (2015), which is characterized by tumultuous chaos with shrill expressiveness and flashy colors. A very intense piece with a lot of percussion, dissonant condensation and folk music valeurs, as if the goddesses of fate in ancient mythology were pulling the strings here directly
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Dirk Wieschollek
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
05/2017
New music that leaves no one indifferent [...] His expressive works exhibit a densely structured, highly individual signature.
February 2025
In the electrifying performance of the Asasello quartet, „Dunkle Risse“ (2018) becomes a string quartet of a very special intensity: a very personal reflection on the inevitability of disappearance (and the death of the mother) - with brittle, muted tones, aimlessly drifting melodic movements, harsh pain chords, enraptured overtone fields and a chaotically agitated final movement.
November 2022
Eres Holz deals with grief and loss in two large compositions for ensemble. In doing so, he allows one to reflect on the experiences and then converts them into emotional sound forms. This is how he creates fundamental and deep arising reactions.
September 2022
[...] Music of overwhelming intensity, emotional impact, and at the same time, deeply sorrowful rage.
May 2025
[...] Its unusual and at the same time multifaceted and interesting sound („die frau“ 2020) goes with the disturbingly bizarre character of the text („die frau“ / Constantin Virgil Banescu) creating a peculiar connection and flows into a final section in which the singer, previously sung as ordinario as possible now sings the lyrics "Ah!" to a squeaky creaking sound. This creates an interesting field of tension in relation to the three other instrumental works, as well as to the solo works of the MACH series – and thus a multi-faceted and worth listening Portrait of the compositional work of Eres Holz.
November 2022
Eres Holz' Madrigal for shwam and accordon, from point of view of singing, dispenses intentionally the use of the human voice. The accordion sounds like fafnir on the church organ and makes the shawm fly higher - later they are clinging with each other, so that the two instruments appear to be ideal partners. Everything looks very sophisticated and still it derives always from a way of thinking of the pure sound.
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HUNDERT11
Ultraschall: Festival for Contemporary Music
Berlin, 2019
Das Quintett des Israeli Eres Holz überzeugt nicht nur durch seinen Verzicht auf einen aufgeblasenen Titel, sondern durch seinen geschmeidigen, sehr homogenen Klang – man meint, den Geist des Madrigalgesangs zu spüren, von dem der erfahrene Chorsänger Holz schwärmt. Holz‘ neues Werk Kataklothes bezieht sich auf eine homerische Bezeichnung für die Moiren und spinnt tatsächlich, als wär’s Gesualdo, einen Klang aus dem anderen; keinen Moment verliert der Konzertgänger das Interesse.
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HUNDERT11
Ultraschall: Festival for Contemporary Music
Berlin, Germany 2016
[...] we discovered that Eres Holz used to sing a lot of Madrigals and that he was so enthusiastic about their expressiveness that he wanted to try to reach this emotional depth with instruments.
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Henry Schmidt
Berlin, 2019
»MACH ist der Imperativ von machen, eine Form der Aufforderung, Befehl oder Einladung«, schreibt Eres Holz
in einer kurzen Einführung zu MACH, und er präzisiert: »MACH ist eine
Art Einladung, das zu machen, was nicht trivial ist«.
Es ist in der Tat keineswegs
trivial, was Eres Holz seinem Soloinstrumentalisten aufgibt. Zum einen handelt es sich
um ein hochvirtuoses Stück. Zum anderen folgt Eres Holz hier auch formal einem komplexen Plan.
MACH, so Holz, »folgt der Idee formaler und lokaler Differenzen. Die Kontraste zwischen den musikalischen
Objekten (lokal) und den Teilen (global) ermöglichen eine hierarchische Organisation erkennbarer musikalischer
Beziehungen. Die hierarchische Organisation war nicht im Interesse einer komplexen oder abstrakten Konstruktion
gedacht, sondern sie verleiht dem Ganzen einen rhetorischen Charakter.«
Im OEuvre von Eres Holz taucht der Titel MACH gleich mehrfach auf. Es gibt (bisher) vier verschiedene Versionen, für Trompete, Klavier, Klarinette und Orgel. Die Fassung für Trompete ist...«
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Rainer Pöllmann
Ultraschall: Festival for Contemporary Music
Berlin, Germany 2018
Die erwähnte „Tonikalität“, den Eindruck eines tonalen Zentrums, versucht er durch bestimmte Techniken jenseits der Prinzipien von Dur-Moll-Kadenzen erfahrbar zu machen. Der Zentralton fis im Quintett wird strukturell mit verschiedenen Mitteln bestätigt, etwa durch regelmäßige Wiederholungen dieses Tons oder satztechnisch durch Verdoppelung des Tons in den Stimmen und durch die Assoziierung dieses Tons mit einer bestimmten Akkordkonfiguration. Steigerungspassagen, Spannungsfelder und Bewegungen in höhere Register werden als Strategien zur Erzielung einer bewusst verfolgten musikalischen Dramatik eingesetzt. Dadurch gelingt...
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Eckhard Weber
Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB)
Germany, 2015
Wechselwirkungen von Harmonik und Melodik untersucht Eres Holz in seinem neuen Ensemblestück Kataklothes. Das altgriechische Wort Kataklothes bedeutet „Zuspinnerinnen“ und bezieht sich auf die Moiren, in der antiken Mythologie die drei Schicksalsgöttinen, die den Lebensfaden für den Menschen knüpfen. Kataklothes als Bezeichnung für die Schicksalsgöttinnen verwendet Homer beispielsweise in der Odyssee. Das Bild des Lebensfadens ist passend für die Komposition von Eres Holz: Er erstellt...
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Eckhard Weber
Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB)
Germany, 2015
[...] the gay Berlin composer Eres Holz presents his new piece "Madrigal" (17.01), which brings together the two instruments shawm and accordion and captures the expressivity of vocal gestures instrumentally.
read more (p. 31)
Eckhard Weber
Berlin, 2019
For Eres Holz, the microtones stand »as a sign of the imperfection of human – human as a biological being, and not a sterile, not a 'well-tempered' machine. Microtones as an expression of pain, but also of passion and eroticism.«
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Ingo Dorfmüller
NEOS
2022
Harmony is essential as a frame of reference for the melodic: “I work harmonically so that the melodies obtain a relevance of meaning, as Bach does. And that is precisely why I allow myself melodic freedom, because it is harmonically well-founded.«
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Ingo Dorfmüller
NEOS
2022
Touching Universes and Ends reaches all imaginable colors and noises that can be executed by the ensemble: music that reaches into symphonic dimensions.
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Ingo Dorfmüller
NEOS
2022
[...] 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
[...]Il nuovo era „Three Minds - Twisted“, qui in prima italiana, del tedesco Eres Holz (presente in sala) in cui, dietro i soliti microtoni che fanno sempre tanto deformazione sonora e agevolano il cangiantismo, s'intravede un ritorno alla scansione psicologica in movimenti, ma funziona meglio di quello che sembra.
[...]The new string quartet „Three Minds - Twisted“, had its Italian premiere, composed by the German composer Eres Holz, who was present in the room. Behind the usual microtones, which often result in significant sound distortion, one can discern a return to psychological exploration within its movements. It is more effective than it may initially appear."
September 2023
Susteck, referencia absoluta en la interpretación del órgano contemporáneo, parece pasárselo en grande con el festín sónico que le propone una partitura que puede llegar a abrumar por la masividad de algunos de sus pasajes, en los que se busca los contrastes más acuciados posibles y, a la vez, una espiritualidad de la que no se nos habla en la carpetilla del disco pero que se traslada a la escucha con facilidad y relativa predisposición a la misma.
May 2023
What Eres Holz wants, how he composes, that can be heard in the string quartet Dunkle Risse (2018). In five sections, the work addresses dark introspections from fascinatingly alien landscapes of the soul. [...] Extroverted expression is avoided: the composer pulls the strings in the background. The Cologne Asasello Quartet pays tribute to this by taking on the exciting work with aplomb and sensitivity.
September 2022
Schakalkopf (2016) for flute, clarinet, violin, viola and cello is divided into three sections. Again it is the Freiburg Ensemble Aventure, which provides an immersive interpretation. The contrast between expression and structure, between the seriousness of the gesture and the immediate beauty that characterizes Jackal's Head, is impressively worked out.
September 2022
Darkness and complexity make here strong impressions. MACH (2020) for cello and live-electronics aims for expression where it seems torn apart by declamation, and is conceived as radically polyphonic: Zoé Cartier's playing is darkly undermined by the electronics. A pizzicato middle section only supposedly brings calm. The ending returns to the expressive rumble of the first part. Fascinating, captivating, intense.
Anton Schlatz
LUX:NM mit Gitbi Kwon, Elnaz Seyedi, Holz, Djordjevic, Carolina Cerezo Dávila, Birgitta Flick
Berlin 03/2022
With Eres Holz MACH (2012) for trumpet I'm fully concentrated again. The gestures are strictly linear. The piece is clear and distinctly audible and yet eludes quick understanding. Delivered razor-sharp by Bacikin, the sparse but surely soulful piece once again proves its viability for me - I'm hearing it for the second time after Ultraschall 2018.
Anton Schlatz
Geniale Bläser im BKA-Theater: Damir Bacikin, Vilhjalmsson Ingólfur, Aylward James
Berlin 01/2022
Eres Holz is a composer whose sound language is often charged in an impressively intense way with the riddles and abysses of existential orientation, without following a striking narrative program.
Industriekultur in Bewegung
June 2021
hautwärts (2018) marks the the novelty of the concert. For saxophone, cello, trombone, accordion and piano by Eres Holz. The 28-minute work is organized in four parts. Four solo passages are each assigned four summit-like tutti passages. Long solos of accordion, piano and cello open upwards, at the end there is a long, unstable sound phase with quiet piano chords. Between the “solo appearances” of the various instruments there are energetic tutti blocks, pulsating areas that, half state, half process, take hold of the imagination with tenacious force. What fascinates by the Israeli composer Eres Holz is the ability to arrange seemingly unlimited flowing, polyphonic organized material so that the music achieves a state of order and control that gives the composition its lucid sovereignty. The Music of Eres Holz has beauty and complexity side by side.
One would like to meet the work again.
Anton Schlatz
LUX:NM at the Villa Elisabeth
Berlin 12/2019
Eres Holz's Quintett (2009) for flute, clarinet, viola, piano and harp (conducted by Titus Engel) starts with an elegant sparsity of texture, a feeling of fragments linking into a whole. Not for the last time on the disc I thought of the influence of Pierre Boulez, with Messiaen perhaps in the background. Whilst there are some interestingly dense moments, a characteristic of the performance is the great clarity which the players bring to the music, clarity and elegance. And the piece finishes as mysteriously as it starts.
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Robert Hugill
Planet Hugill - A world of classical Music
2017
The title of Holz's Kataklothes (2015) is an Ancient Greek word meaning spinner, the three goddesses who spin the thread of life. So in the piece Holz uses a group of harmonic sequences as a thread through the piece. Written for flute, clarinet, saxophone, harp piano, percussion, violin, viola, cello and double bass (conducted by Titus Engel), it opens with a dramatic burst and then quietens though the harmonies are quite dense, and there are eruptions and disturbances. There is very much a sense of lines proceeding independently, each with its own logic, and like Quintett there is a use of sparseness and silence.
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Robert Hugill
Planet Hugill - A world of classical Music
2017
A highlight of the concert was the composition by Eres Holz, who was there that evening and gave an introduction to his work in advance. For the title Vier Schatten („Four Shadows“) for brass quintet the young composer was inspired by the four apocalyptic riders from the Revelation of John. He builds up the piece as a dramatic journey into death. In his music, Eres Holz depends on a harmonic, expressive language. He succeeded, which was confirmed by the enthusiastic applause.
Donata Holz
Worpsweder Musikherbst
Worpswede, Germany 2014
Die Hörwahrnehmung eines Prozesses im Sinne von Abwechslung zwischen Stabilität und Instabilität der Musterverkettung, die oft eine große Rolle in Kyburz’ Musik spielt, würde im Fall eines ähnlichen Charakteristikums der Objekte undeutlich sein. Es könnte irgendein Muster wahrgenommen werden, das aber mit der Musterstruktur des Prozesses nicht zusammenfällt. Um die Überraschungsmomente, die durch Abwechslung zwischen stabiler- und instabiler Musterstruktur verursacht werden, als unchaotisches Organismusverhalten wahrnehmbar machen zu können, binden die Tonbeziehungen des Tonkernes die Gesamtheit der Objekte zusammen (ähnlich wie die Reihe bei Arnold Schönberg).
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Eres Holz
Excerpts from my Master-Thesis (in German)
Berlin, Germany 2012