Music out of music. Philipp Maintz’s new ensemble work and chorale preludes

Philipp Maintz places an instrumental protagonist from his chamber opera “Thérèse” after Émile Zola at the centre of his new ensemble work “c’est une volupté de plus”: the accordion, as the secret protagonist in the septet, forms a kind of musical continuation and a portrait of the main character Thérèse Raquin, whose affair ends in the murder of her husband and suicide: “her search, her hope for an escape and the associated futility which becomes despair – this all becomes ‘music out of music’”, says Philipp Maintz. The ensemble LUX:NM gave the first performance on 22 January 2022 at the “Ultraschall” Festival in Berlin. Philipp Maintz’s ever-growing cycle of chorale preludes now encompasses the organ world like a web. The next premieres take place in Berlin and Dortmund: Konstantin Reymaier gives the first performance of the chorale prelude XLVIII (“der tag, mein gott, ist nun vergangen”) on 20 February 2022 in the Church “Zur frohen Botschaft” in Berlin-Karlshorst. And Hansjörg Albrecht gives the first performance of the chorale prelude XLVI (“morgenglanz der ewigkeit”) on the organ of the Konzerthaus Dortmund on 9 March 2022. Further first performances will follow over the coming months.