Geworf’ne Akrobaten
Quartett für Flöte, Klarinette, Violine und Violoncello Nr. 1
Im lauteren Sein
Trio für Flöte, Klarinette und Violoncello Nr. 2
Cellissimo graduale
Mikosch … lost in the Ultra Deep Field
Klumpengesang
Works for various ensemble combinations by René Wohlhauser
Geworf’ne Akrobaten [Thrown Acrobats]
The rough, the gruff and the black humour of gallows songs is inherent in this piece, which was written based on a poem by the composer.
Quartet for Flute, Clarinet, Violin and Cello No. 1
This is an aggressive, gripping music that doesn’t accept the world’s precarious conditions but opposes them with rage. Hard, rugged blocks of sound are contrasted with intimate passages. Anger against injustice, love as a perspective. Block-like abruptness becomes more and more fragmented, rhythmically diversified and potentiated, and ultimately falls into noisiness.
Im lauteren Sein [In the Pure Being]
The work shows an almost classical structure with introduction, verses and interludes that follow the formal orientation of the composer’s poem. At first, only the vocal part was composed in a version for soprano and baritone, as an exploration of the tradition of classical counterpoint, reflected in the musical experience of the 21st century, in the classical dramaturgy of the moulding line with tension building, culmination and descent into the delirious circling of changing tone-centres. Even the melodic development itself could be described as “classical” in its urgent, leading-note-laden manner.
Trio for Flute, Clarinet and Cello No. 2
The three instruments are treated in this work as one, so to speak “multi-timbral and poly-structural super-instrument”. It begins with a single-voice melody that wanders through the different instruments; or like a single instrument, that sends a melodic sequence through different timbres, or is able to express itself in different-sounding colours because it can change its timbre, like a chameleon changes its skin colour depending on the situation (bars 1–4).
Cellissimo graduale for cello solo
On the one hand, this piece is a virtuoso concert piece. From the sheer joy of playing and driven by rhythmic impulsiveness, it scales the highest technical demands and, at the end of the piece, literally the highest heights as well.
Mikosch … lost in the Ultra Deep Field
The music tries to trace the relationship of human consciousness to the universe. It tries to take a particularly in-depth look into the universe, with its matter and energy organized according to physical laws. Are we in the eye of the universe? Are we lost in space? And what is beyond the universe? This question has preoccupied mankind for quite some time, as the well-known wood engraving L’atmosphere by Camille Flammarion from 1888 shows.
Klumpengesang [Clumps Song]
The suspension, the omission, so that what lies beneath emerges, the suspenseful pause, different degrees of density and tension, the testing of new constellations, the contextualization of what is out of context: these are some of the techniques and procedures used in this piece to create a peculiar sound universe. However, all these processes are held together and superimposed by a physicality that can be directly experienced and that speaks directly to and touches the listeners.