Masteclass Keller

Hungary’s prize-winning Keller Quartet, whose account of mentor György Kurtág’s Musik für Streichinstrumente received the highest praise internationally, now focuses upon baroque music with a revelatory performance of Bach’s The Art of Fugue "The Keller Quartet take an experimental approach to Bach", writes Hans Klaus Jungheinrich, "inclining less to long lines than to ‘respiratory’ phrasing." The music breathes, yes, and the Keller Quartet’s interpretation of Die Kunst der Fuge will be one of the most talked-about Bach performances of the year.

Broekhuis-Keller-Schönwälder, for years a solid base in the Electronic and "Berlin School" style of music. Inspired by Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and Vangelis they have managed to develop their own style of Electronic Music, with Trance and Ambient influences and their way to perform that on stage. Beautiful sequences and driving drums with a wide variety of pads and astonishing sound effects on top, which can best be described as "the -BK&S-way of Electronic Music".

It's been what, a good 3 years since Broekhuis, Keller & Schönwälder invited us to a musical feast! Purple was this last sound rendezvous. A nice and quiet album with atmospheres and twirling elements which are at the heart of The Vlagtwedde Tapes, a studio album composed and recorded in the town of Vlagtwedde located in the province of Groningen in Holland. BKS goes back to his more Berlin School style by offering 5 beautiful structures with evolving rhythms not too accentuated. Well, just enough to keep our neurons awake.

One thing that must be said right from the beginning is that, for most of the tracks, it's very different to their previous collaboration 'Loops & Beats'. It is a live album, except the last piece, the tracks being taken from two performances and sound rather improvised. One of these performances was in a church and great use was made of the organ! The first track opens with chord after chord layered on top of one another but before long a sequence can be heard low in the mix. This gradually forces its way to the surface and mutates slowly throughout the piece, reminiscent of Klaus Schulze at times…

Berlin School retro style electronic music with long tracks with carefully composed sequences and ambient landscapes that is perfect for dreaming and reflection.
Bas Broekhuis, Detlef Keller, Mario Schönwälder, Wolfram Spyra & Bill Fox get together as the Space Cowboys in Jelenia Gora Poland in September 2004 for the Ricochet Gathering Electronic Music Festival. All musicians are from Germany except Bill Fox who traveled from USA. Spyra and Bill Fox are featured on the last two tracks. This is the first time all musicians played together without rehearsal so the music is live and improvised. The music is definitely like 1970's Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze and this release is limited to only 300 digipaks.

One can occasionally puzzle over why some music of high quality is hardly noticed in musical life, only finding its way into the repertoire with difficulty, if at all, and this is case of the works of Roberto Gerhard. The works recorded here were all composed during the 1960s. In them, one recognises a musical handwriting with roots in the classics of modernism; it succeeds in forming the kind of synthesis, so pronouncedly realised by Stravinsky, of methods schooled by Schönberg with concertante elements and a rhythmical and sonorous sententiousness. “Dodecaphonic, but human and even a bit divine” – as Frank Harders-Wuthenow entitled an essay dedicated to Gerhard.