Kairos Quartett in BKA 2025

Carola Bauckholt [1959] • Lichtung [2011]
Makiko Nishikaze [1968] • mo-ve for string quartet with video [2024]
Yves Chauris [1980] • Shakkei. String Quartet No. 2 [2012]
Younghi Pagh-Paan [1945] • Horizont auf hoher See [2016]

“nature mo-ves” artistically reflects natural phenomena in motion without entering the aesthetic realm of sound installations. What interests us here is the natural or scientific logic in encountering the idiosyncratic worlds of the composers.

Carola Bauckholt goes furthest on the material level by deceptively realistic instrumental imitation of bird and insect calls or sounds. Makiko Nishikaze’s new string quartet with video, like Younghi Pagh-Paan’s Horizont auf hoher See, deals with the sea — in the former case, with its colors and structure; in Younghi’s, with its dimension and boundlessness. Chauris’s Shakkei sounds like amplified and sampled noises of termites or other wingless insects; in contrast to Bauckholt’s Lichtung, here the compositional intervention is clearly perceptible — nature appears as a reconstruction or parallel world.

We dedicate this concert to Younghi Pagh-Paan on the occasion of her 80th birthday!