Ensemble Temporum
Nocturnal microtones
Fiercely original textures in Ensemble Temporum’s adventurous programme
Chaya Czernowin: Ayre: Towed Through Plumes, Thicket, Asphalt, Sawdust and Hazardous Air I Shall Not Forget the Sound Of (2016)
Martin Bauck: tostados en córdoba en medio de la noche (2019)
Paul Clift: On the Celestial Hierarchy (2014)
Chaya Czernowin: Fast Darkness III: moonwords (2022, WP)
Ensemble Temporum performs two pieces, including a world premiere, by the Israeli-American composer Chaya Czernowin. Her international reputation is rapidly rising right now: critic Alex Ross has praised her music as ‘the negative beauty of disaster’.
The word premiere Fast Darkness III is the final part of a trilogy (the other two works were written for Klangforum Wien and Riot Ensemble). It features the piano as a microtonal instrument and has grown out of a close collaboration with the ensemble's pianist Sanae Yoshida.
The ensemble also performs Czernowin’s Ayre: Towed Through Plumes, Thicket, Asphalt, Sawdust and Hazardous Air I Shall Not ´Forget the Sound Of (2016) which involves slow scraping movements, noise and percussive sounds.
The timbre of the piano is also the focus of Martin Bauck's stripped-down, quiet tostados en córdoba en medio de la noche. Flageolets –medieval woodwind instruments – emit microtones that spread out across the ensemble. It was written for Ensemble Temporum in 2019.
On the Celestial Hierarchy (2015) by Australian Paul Clift portrays a dreamlike universe where the ensemble is treated as a unified sound.
Ensemble Temporum is an Oslo based ensemble with a rotating membership. They are named after Gérard Grisey’s Vortex Temporum, which they performed at Ultima in 2016.
Chaya Czernowin. Photo: Astrid Ackerman.
