Music of the Times - Partly Cloudy | NOW! Festival

Philharmonic Essen

The biblical Book of Genesis provided the inspiration for commissioning seven concise works from seven different composers: Lisa Streich (Sweden), Francesco Filidei (Italy), Chen Yi (China/USA), Hannah Kendall (England), Mikel Urquiza (Spain), Saad Haddad (USA), and Mark Andre (Germany). These new Genesis compositions will be performed after the overture from Darius Milhaud’s ballet La création du monde has already set the musical theme. They will be followed by Kaija Saariaho’s last completed work, the trumpet concerto Hush, written for the jazz trumpeter Verneri Pohjola. Finally, we will turn our attention to the soaring geyser fountains of Iceland, which Jón Leifs, a native of the world’s largest volcanic island and a composer of extraordinary sonic power, translated into musical form and energy.

EPSG:4326

Matthias Pintscher

Munich Residence

The piercing call of the carnyx likely sounded across Lake Lucerne more than 2,000 years ago, when Celtic tribes settled in Central Switzerland. Liza Lim has composed a concerto for this ancient bronze trumpet, nearly two meters long, asking herself “how ancient lineages of human and more-than-human creativity reside in bodies, cultural artefacts and the Deep Time histories of place, carrying seeds of resilience and also potential danger that may yet bloom again.” Far less exotic is the second solo instrument of the evening, the clarinet. Yet composer-in-residence Mark Andre — inspired by extensive sound experiments with Jörg Widmann — coaxes from it a wealth of entirely new timbres. 

Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Elim Chan

KKL Luzern Concert Hall

Composer-in-residence Mark Andre has created an entire cycle of iv pieces. The title’s abbreviation stands for “introverted,” pointing to a journey into the interior of sound: fragile, pared-down music that operates at the edge of perception yet unfolds enormous intensity and opens a door to spiritual realms. His organ piece iv 15. Himmelfahrt deals with “processes of disappearance,” which Andre associates “with the situation of the Ascension, the dissolution of the body — or, in music, of the sonic body.” At one point, he even has the blower motor switched off during performance, reducing the wind pressure, and he further colors the sound through unusual registrations. “This creates a different kind of virtuosity — one where you’re not necessarily working with pitches, but with registrations,” explains the organist Stephan Heuberger. In the most recent work of the series, the duo iv 19. Pfingsten — Echos, premiered in 2025, Mark Andre calls for the unusual pairing of organ and double bass: two instruments with enormous ranges, yet utterly distinct in their sound worlds.

Stephan Heuberger | Frank Reinecke

Lukaskirche Lucerne

Like a researcher, composer-in-residence Mark Andre explores the possibilities of an instrument. Over several years he worked closely with the bassist Frank Reinecke. The result is a nearly three-quarter-hour solo piece that coaxes from the double bass an entire world of new and unusual sounds, directing our attention to the ephemeral, the unstable, the fragile. It pushes right up to the edge of the audible — for instance when the lowest string of the double bass is tuned even lower, down to an ultra-low E — and seeks, precisely through this, to let something transcendent, something metaphysical, shimmer through. 

Jörg Widmann | Frank Reinecke | SWR Experimentalstudio

Lucerne School of Music

Mark Andre admits that his “obsession” lies in “compositional in-between spaces” — those moments that vanish almost instantly yet may carry the greatest intensity. In his orchestral work Im Entschwinden (“In Vanishing”), composed in 2021-22, this year’s composer-in-residence focuses on the fleeting instant when sound dissolves into silence. His exquisitely delicate music — splintered into noise-like textures — observes “the very last, most fragile, tender, and unstable signatures of sound,” he notes. For the devout Andre, the title also has a theological dimension, alluding to the risen Christ who slips away from the earthly realm. 

Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Baldur Brönnimann | Miah Persson

Whitsun Festival: François-Xavier Roth conducts Boulez, Andre, Poppe and Ravel

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

A radical listening experience that emerges from the void. Starting with a double or triple piano, the three composers sharpen and challenge the sense of hearing from the very first moment of evolving sound. Between echo and silence, Nono suspends a primordial rhythmic cell of music by the indigenous peoples of Brazil. On the threshold of the inaudible, Andre moves in search of the most intense presence of mystical experience. Haas, in turn, follows a never-ending melody into the depths of a vastly unfolding space.

Mark Andre

Events

Past events

Nov 6, 2026

Music of the Times - Partly Cloudy | NOW! Festival · WDR Sinfonieorchester

Oct 9, 2026

Matthias Pintscher · Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

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