Sei gutes Muts (Be of good cheer) (2021)
for recorder and string quartet (all amplified)
Duration: 12 min.
Maurice Steger, recorder / Kuss Quartet
Performance material available from Boosey & Hawkes
Sei gutes Muts! (2022), Kuss Quartett & Maurice Steger-recorder, produced by finchfilm.net
CD KUSS QUARTETT
darauf ‚Sei guten Muts’
Maurice Steger, recorder / Kuss Quartett
Rubicon classics RCD1104
Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik 01.2025
„Selten erlebt man eine Kammermusikaufnahme, die so konsequent auf eine erzählerische Gesamtwirkung setzt, anstatt auf einzelne Repertoire-Highlights. So programmiert man Schubert – und es ist schlicht überwältigend.“
Gramophone — Editor’s Choice Januar 2025
„Was eine aufregende Kammermusikaufnahme!“
Rondo Magazin
Reviews
Night review, Klaus Kalchschmid, 26.01.2023
https://bosco-gauting.de/nachtkritik/streicher-plus
What a beautiful, wide musical arc from music on the threshold of the 16th and 17th centuries to Vivaldi and Beethoven to Iris ter Schiphorst's "Sei gutes Muts", composed in 2021 for the Kuss Quartet and Maurice Steger!
Steger, Jana Kuss, Oliver Wille, William Coleman and Mikayel Hakhnazaryan performed Iris ter Schiphorst's "Sei gutes Muts für Blockflöte und Streichquartett" for the first time at the "Sommerliche Tage Hitzacker" in 2021. A year later, they produced a great music video with this 11-minute piece, which is freely available on YouTube and the flutist's website(https://maurice-steger.com/seit-gutes-muts/).
In the film, Magdalena Zieba-Schwind visually separates and merges the layers, lets us see through drops of water or "dilutes" the image: here the string quartet, sometimes chanting text, sometimes contributing more or less scattered or intensely interlocking sounds; there the often noisy, pointed sounds of the recorder, which is hardly ever allowed to play a real note. Through headphones, the music penetrates very spatially and directly into the ears, heart and soul. Sometimes you hear snippets of words from "Death and the Maiden" by Matthias Claudius ("I am a friend, and do not come to punish. Be of good courage, I am not wild, shall sleep gently in my arms!"), then very specific sentences that hint at rape, culminating in the repeatedly chanted, richly absurd "Und der liebe Gott hängt fest im Dominantseptakkord" and at the very end the lonely, final "Sey gutes Muths", which is now spoken by the flautist.