Ensemble Recherche
Biography Ensemble Recherche
ensemble recherche
The members of the ensemble recherche have been dedicated to the new and unknown since 1985. The Freiburg-based ensemble has shaped contemporary music and written musical history during this period of more than three decades – with in excess of 600 premiers and more than 50 CD recordings. The eight musicians, all internationally known soloists in the field of contemporary music, combine immense pleasure in experimentation with enthusiasm for intensive consideration of the present time. The eight soloists place their enormous musicality and their individual personalities at the service of the collective so that they can research the musical present together, as an ensemble . The considerable energy and personal commitment of each and every explains why the independent ensemble has been recognised as one of the most important players of contemporary music for more than three decades.
The ensemble rechercheis regularly invited to the most prestigious festivals in Europe, and has made guest appearances at, among others, the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Elbe Philharmonic Hall, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Venice Biennale, the Donaueschingen Music Festival, the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, and the Vienna Modern. International concert tours have taken the ensemble to, among other places, Israel, Japan, China, Russia, Mexico, the USA and South America. In Freiburg the ensemble introduces the public to new developments in contemporary music and exciting composer personalities during its own series of subscription concerts. In collaboration with both young and established composers, the ensemble recherche generates new impetus and greatly influences the development of contemporary music. Students of composition at the music academies in, among other places, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Linz, Freiburg, Antwerp, Reykjavik and Cambridge profit from the ensemble musicians’ many years of experience within the framework of the ensemble’s long-standing ‘Class Work’ project, in particular. The ensemble’s personal links to important composers of the 20 th century (particularly with Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Salvatore Sciarrino, Gérard Grisey, Hans Abrahamsen and Hans Werner Henze) make its musicians experts in ‘historical performance practice’ in the contemporary music of the last century. The ensemble invests in the future and wants to pass on its spirit of research to the next generation in numerous teaching activities, such as school workshops, children’s concerts, participative youth projects, and master classes. The ensemble recherchethus advocates a culture of sensitive listening, a productive handling of difference, and a joyful and relaxed approach to complexity. The ensemble recherche, together with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, has been headquartered in the Ensemble House Freiburg since 2012. During recent years, the ensemble has gradually rejuvenated itself with younger musicians and new management – ideal prerequisites for continuing to write musical history in future… The ensemble recherche won the City of Freiburg Reinhold Schneider Prize in 2018.
Christian Mason
A 2015 winner of an Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Composer Prize, Christian Mason is enjoying a prolific career with an array of prestigious commissions. Recent premieres include Zwischen den Sternen for Ensemble Recherche, which was described by the journal MusikTexte as a “highlight of the festival [Ultraschall Berlin]”, and Eternal Return written for hr-sinfonieorchester, celebrating Breitkopf & Härtel’s 300th anniversary in January 2019. This was the first part of an orchestral cycle Time and Eternity which will be completed by Christian’s recent work for Vienna Philharmonic (conducted by Christian Thielemann in April/May 2019) and a forthcoming commission for Konzerthausorchester Berlin (conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, touring Germany in June 2020). Other current projects include Inner Landscapes for solo piano, written as test pieces for the Concours International de Piano d’Orléans ‘Brin d’Herbe’ (April 2019), and new works for the Arditti String Quartet (to premiere at the Paris Philharmonie in January 2020), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group with Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart (setting a new text by Paul Griffiths), and Ligeti String Quartet (Books III and IV of the Songbooks cycle). In addition, Christian is developing a music-theatre project called (Dis)embodiment on the subject of Near Death Experiences, initiated by the Royal Opera House, London.
Recent years have seen the premieres of: Man Made with soprano Anu Komsi and the Philharmonia for the ‘Music of Today’ series in May 2018; Aimless Wonder by the Münchener Kammerorchester and Remnants for Opera Erratica, both in June 2017; and In the Midst of the Sonorous Islands composed for the participative CONNECT project, which was performed around Europe by the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Remix and Ensemble Asko-Schönberg during Autumn 2016.
Christian is a visiting teacher of composition at the University of Cambridge and is Composition Support Tutor for the LSO Panufnik Young Composers Project. He is currently in residence at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, and in the past has been invited as a resident artist at Civitella Ranieri (Italy) and SWR Experimental Studio in Freiburg. He was ‘Composer in Residence’ at Eton College (2014-15) and has worked as Composition Assistant to Sir Harrison Birtwistle. He completed a Ph.D at King’s College London with George Benjamin in 2012, following which he was awarded the 2012 Mendelssohn Scholarship to study privately with Frank Denyer. He previously read music at the University of York and has studied composition with Sinan Savaskan, Nicola LeFanu, Thomas Simaku and Julian Anderson.
