Poppe: Body / Gold

Enno Poppe has created "tailor-made" concise ensemble works for two of the most important ensembles in contemporary music: "Gold" – a pure vocal work for the SWR Vocal Ensemble – and "Körper" – for Ensemble Modern. In the three-part a cappella work "Gold" (one of his two choral works to date), Poppe gives in for the first time to his fondness for the lustful-excessive texts of Arno Holz (1863–1929), one of the most important representatives of German Naturalism and literary Modernism. The poems stand in a parodic relationship to less humorous high literature. The supple, magical sound of the SWR Vocal Ensemble shows itself confidently in various combinations, sometimes spread out like old vocal polyphony on 24 voices. "Körper" takes us to another end of the scale of possible sounds. Here, the 21 soloists of Ensemble Modern form an impressive big band, complemented by suitable woodwind and brass instruments (and, of course, saxophones). Here, however, Poppe is more interested in exploring and expanding what the big band offers as a "sound body", i.e. the timbres, dynamic and rhythmic possibilities, with the means of New Music, an art form that Ensemble Modern has truly perfected. As so often with Poppe, the piece "Körper" goes through several processes of intensification and collapse. At the climaxes, the physicality of the music is almost overwhelming. However, the core of the piece consists of the intimate, thinly scored moments, in which the electric strings gradually rise with the drums or a saxophone, a keyboard or a trombone emerges from the thicket of sound and allows itself a few moments of self-discovery.