PHACE

Shrouded in absolute darkness, the sounds in »Solstices« by Georg Friedrich Haas come to light with unimagined intensity and brilliance. The musical events unfold as if in slow motion, drawing the listener into a meditative maelstrom of long-term undulations and developmental processes. The waywardness in the interplay of the instruments, the tuning, the microtonal shifts – that often seem so unclean in the usual, tempered context – come to light here in all clarity as tonal entities with a completely independent character and reveal rarely heard harmonies. The complete darkness is not only a challenge for the musicians, who have to memorise the entire piece. Listeners should also prepare themselves for an intense, demanding listening experience in which their attention wanders and their thoughts perhaps travel to surprising places, only to return with the dawn. The solstice in the title probably only refers to a limited extent to the darkness in the concert hall, which Haas has been using in his works for some time. The composer described the work as a love song, dedicated to his wife Mollena, whom he met on the winter solstice and married on the summer solstice.