Ah, Kuerten...

The first day of the 2008 Stockhausen Course went brilliantly, so I heard. I wouldn't know. I was stuck in traffic driving from Berlin, after seeing the Maulwerker show.

(For which, I was also late. It turns out, there is a lot of experimental music in Berlin, and it's quite easy to walk into the wrong concert, sit down, think you are at a Maulwerker event, and that your fellow blogger is just in the loo, only to find that you are still two blocks away and frightfully late.)

I did manage to catch the 2nd half of the opening concert, which ran:

Studie I
Studie II
Gesang der Jünlinge
-Intermission-
Kontakte

Hearing these pieces in full multi-channel glory is always a revelation. The amount of detail in Kontakte is astonishing, and even this dopey little live recording of the performance picks up things that one never hears on the record, even on the closest listen.

Tonight is the great sound epic Hymnen.

More later.