Mark Andre's cylce ›riss‹

in Cologne, Frankfurt, Innsbruck and Shanghai

Born in Paris in 1964, the composer Mark Andre is considered a sensitive sound researcher. His music often touches the inaudible, breathing the spirit of utopia. This utopian spirit is also apparent in the group of works ›riss‹, in which the composer sets out three times in search of compositional inbetween spaces. »Riss«, meaning tear or rift, is an intermediate place, a space that separates but also conjoins what belongs together. The rift represents a moment of emptiness, but is also filled with events and experiences. In 2011 Mark Andre encountered the theologian Margareta Gruber while on a research trip to Jerusalem. Her essay ›Der Vorhang zerreißt‹ (The Curtain Tears), in which she points out the double figure of the rift in the Gospel according to Mark, delivered the decisive impulse for composing the group of works ›riss‹, which Mark Andre is writing in a non-numerical manner. In 2014, ›riss 2‹ was premiered by Ensemble Modern; it was followed in 2016 by the premiere of ›riss 3‹ by Ensemble Musikfabrik and in 2017 by that of ›riss 1‹ by Ensemble intercontemporain. Now Ensemble Modern first performs all three works on one evening, led by Ingo Metzmacher: on January 25, 2019 at Cologne’s Philharmonie, on May 2, 2019 at the Alte Oper Frankfurt, on September 7, 2019 at the Klangspuren Schwaz and on September 14, 2019 in Shanghai. ›riss‹ poses the question of the cohesion between individual elements, of unity within plurality – enabling the audience to observe the process of corresponding parallels in content and sound which arise between the works as the triptych takes on shape.