Ludovico Ensemble Brings A Program Of Works By Three Living Composers From Germany To Goethe-Institut Boston, September 20

The Goethe-Institut Boston invites Ludovico Ensemble to perform a program of works for string quartet and duo by three prominent composers from the new music scene in Germany. 

The Ludovico Ensemble will present Younghi Pagh-Paan's Horizont auf hoher see again this season. The group first performed this quartet at Tufts University in 2021 as part of a portrait concert of Pagh-Paan and at that time one could find very few instances of her works programmed in the states. The intervening years have seen an enormous uptic of interest in her music on this side of the Atlantic. Born in South Korea, Pagh-Paan has been a fixture in the European new music scene since coming to Freiburg in the early 1970s for her studies. A winner of countless fellowships and prizes in Germany and beyond, she taught at the Bremen Hochschule für Künste from 1994 until her retirement in 2011. 

More often than not in its 20 plus years, Ludovico Ensemble has stuck to one instrumentation per concert. Tonight it is the string quartet, so the question became which piece from the vast German repertoire to pair with Pagh-Paan. Wolfgang Rihm's music has been formative for Ludovico's Artistic Director Nicholas Tolle, who's performance of Rihm's percussion sextet Tutuguri VI at the Lucerne Festival in 2005 was a life changer (Ludovico Ensemble presented that work in Boston in 2013). Rihm's String Quartet, 9, Quartettsatz I, composed in 1992, is an immediately striking piece and one that presented itself as a perfect match to Pagh-Paan. Rihm paints a mysterious, vocal picture with this quartet while working tirelessly to suspend expectations and keep the performer and audience on their toes.  

While Ludovico Ensemble is busy trying to find the ideal space and time in a future season to present Mathias Spahlinger's In, a 30 minute tour de force for six snare drums, we decided to whet our beaks with his violin/cello duo adieu m'amour, which completes our program. This duo, a homage to Guillaume Dufay, calls for extremely detuned strings on both instruments and myriad unusual playing techniques, and is a study in the foreign-familiar and sense of focus, "just as the true duty of love lies in forgetting one's duty to apprehend generalities," according to Spahlinger. 

This concert features staples of the Boston new music community Gabriela Diaz and Lilit Hartunian on violin, violist Anna Griffis, and cellist David Russell. Ludovico is honored to partner with the Goethe-Institut Boston to present this concert. Their magnificent space is ideal for this kind of intimate and experimental chamber music. 

Ludovico Ensemble: Pagh-Paan, Rihm & Spahlinger @ Goethe-Institut Boston

Wednesday, September 20th at 8pm

Goethe-Institut Boston

170 Beacon Street

Boston, MA 02116

Tickets: $20 general admission / students free