iris ter schiphorst

Review of the premiere: by Martin Nygaard Hansen - Chernetzkiy in SEISMOGRAF from 15.9.2011...

If Helmut Lachenmann's Toccatina is a miniature that is able to touch and move from the outside in, Iris ter Schiphorst's "Miniatures" for clarinet and string quartet (2011) come across as a tour de force from the inside back to the outside.ckwards with highly dissonant passages, motoric, punctual sections, over-radiation, abrupt interruptions, with powerful percussive strokes with the bow on the strings. But there are also lyrical moments in which the clarinet sound merges with crystalline overtones, then again brutal sections in which irregular rhythmic sequences alongside ostinati create a lively dynamic. In a slow ethereal state, a new dynamic function enters to lead to the climax, which is abruptly interrupted. A slow epilogue. Silence.
For Schiphorst, music is identical to language, in which "something" in her body generates impulses and triggers movements. "My compositions are an attempt to follow these impulses, which are triggered by external causes, and to find a form, an expression for them."