erhard grosskopf: klangwerk 11

Erhard Grosskopf (b. 1934) is a Berlin-based composer of contemporary music who has been active since 1963. His works include chamber and orchestral as well as electronic music, and have been performed in the West German pavilion at Expo '70, by various radio orchestras, renowned string quartets, and avant-garde groups such as Gentle Fire or Agitation Free. A thread that runs through all of Grosskopf's works is the idea of composing not on a timescale but in a space. Grosskopf views himself as an architect who places sounds at various positions in a room, such that the resulting music is not perceived as moving past the listener's ears in time, but rather the listener moves within it as if within a space. To achieve this, he utilizes sound processes that are looped and layered according to specific temporal structures, resulting in what he calls process music, an approach that he originally developed at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht for his electronic music and later expanded to instrumental works. However, Grosskopf doesn't just call his music abstract, he nevertheless strives for its spirit. In his own words: "As a composer I am like an architect who builds a house for music, hoping that music will move into it -- not like substance into form but like the spirit into the soul." Many recordings of his works originally remained unreleased and only recently, several CDs have appeared. This is his first LP, containing KlangWerk 11 for orchestra (2011), a work that epitomizes his method of building a sonic space, a sonic sculpture through sound processes. A different recording of the piece was published by Neos on a CD in 2018 (NEOS 11801CD). This is the first release of the world premiere of KlangWerk 11, played by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in 2013. Full-color sleeve with artwork by Julia Antonia and liner notes by Stefan Fricke.