Erçetin: in-between

Turgut Erçetin's music is characterized by multifaceted timbres, virtuosity, and a dynamic interplay of ruptures and connections. In particular, it illuminates liminal spaces across a wide range of dimensions. As Paul Griffiths explains in the booklet, the composer explores "the space between instruments or groups, between harmony and noise [...], between spectra, between what is played and what echoes back from the performance space." The work cycle "The Phoneme Between Two Words" is at the heart of the album. The largest part of the cycle (b) draws on Erçetin's research into no longer existing architecture, in this case two destroyed Byzantine structures. Here, the SWR Symphony Orchestra meets a Baroque ensemble featuring musicians from the ELISION Ensemble as a modern orchestra. However, the two ensembles do not function as opposites, but as interacting seeds. The smaller parts of the cycle (a) and (c) serve as a fanfare and epilogue: they condense the themes of fusion and separation, ultimately bringing the musicians of the ELISION Ensemble back to modern instruments. The Ensemble Musikfabrik can be heard in two works on this album: "Resonances (b)" and "Thousand Dead Bodies Under My Bed, All Cloaked with the Breath of the Living". The latter serves as a reminder of how the past lives on—in art, in memory, in trauma. An interplay unfolds between three interlocking ensembles, as characteristics migrate from one group to another while the very nature of the entire piece gradually changes.