HDM in Concert: Ensemble konsTELLATION

When people spoke of Bach in Mozart's time, they were not referring to Johann Sebastian, but to his sons Johann Christian in London and, above all, Carl Philipp Emanuel, who first worked in Berlin and then in Hamburg as Telemann's successor. "CPE" was a man of the "Sturm und Drang" and the Enlightenment, a daring avant-gardist of his time, revered by Klopstock and Lessing, by Haydn and Mozart - "he is the master, we are the boys", said the latter. His symphonies, as short as they were exciting, explored "strange worlds" of new tonal possibilities, just as the great Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas does today, for example in his piano concerto with 20 strings. "CPE" ventured into dissonant chromaticism, Haas into the world of overtones and the magic of microtonality. In between stands Alfred Schnittke, the German-Russian master of polystylistics, whose witty and witty hommage to the Viennese classics is a declaration of love to the timelessness of great music.