MYLES OAKEY, EUROPE CORRESPONDENT
Antique brass chandeliers and plastic fans are suspended from a corrugated iron ceiling. A cathedral-like steel arch braces the roof. To either side, the remains of dissembled pianos dress the walls with orderly fashion and, where negative space appears, it is filled by eclectic artwork of differing frame and size.
Finding space for vintage sofas, armchairs, and an assortment of vibrant collapsible chairs, the wings and soundboards of historic European pianos as pushed aside, awaiting restoration. The cluttered industrial hanger glows with the warmth of a museum of standing lampshades. On the timber stage, at the rear of the hanger, an Austrian Bösendorfer piano is brought forward from the heap jigsawed at the rear, and next to it, two double basses and a cello rest on their sides. As the audience grows, enjoying complimentary beer and wine, a technician is buried from the waist up, tuning key by key.
Moments before the concert, in a secluded area above the crowd, German composer-pianist Clemens Christian Poetzsch creates a space of his own, isolated by headphones, and prepares for the launch of his new album Remember Tomorrow. The Piano Salon Christophori – the former industrial tram-repair hanger turned pianoforte restoration workshop, turned classical music venue – hosts some of the best soloists and ensembles passing through Berlin. This week’s program is pinned to the wall. On a Tuesday night in the district of Gesundbrunnen, north of central Mitte, Clemens presents a night of entirely new music. He follows a night of Bach and Handel, and precedes one of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Korngold. In such a venue, preconceptions are left at the graffitied door.
It is a musical voice in search of atmosphere; a music of immediacy in feeling and mood.
Clemens approaches the stage to an eager and welcoming cheer that fades as his hands rise gently to rest on the keys. Flooding the resonant hanger, his music creates its characteristic sense of space, in depth and time; textures of swelling and dissipating arpeggios; lingering chords; and emerging melodic notes that develop into lines. It is a musical voice in search of atmosphere; a music of immediacy in feeling and mood. Clemens explores the emotional effect of shifting harmonies, odd time signatures, fluctuating tempos, and select combinations of instrumentation to realise an imagined sound.
Talking music can be difficult. Over coffee, Clemens generously does so in his second language: “I have a very clear idea of the sound in my head. When it needs two double basses, I have to use them. When it needs a big room, with Omnisphere sythnesiser, and transforming soundscapes, I have to use them.”
In performance, Clemens is joined by his guest musicians – bassist and cellist Robert Lucaciu, and bassist Jakob Petzl – who extend Clemens’ voice, offering singing sustain and complementary textures through extended techniques, using bow and body, that create a structured soundscape. At moments throughout the concert, a cello stab or a low double bass drone grabs the attention of a mind shifting with the harmony, arising its own imagery and narrative. An ensemble locked in musical conversation laughs together, building into something akin to free jazz in texture and timbre, but still within composed form. A following piece returns us to a meditative contemplation, and we, again, drift away as subjects to atmosphere.
Clemens’ Remember Tomorrow, released under label Neue Meister, is a concept album, of sorts, exploring the felt experience of memory and the artist’s personal sensibility towards déjà vu. In Clemens’ process of composition, these intellectual and emotional states become the basis for an imagined and illusive musical atmosphere that is only realised once it is found.
For Clemens, composition is process of being in dialogue with one’s self. It is a process of searching, exploring, and experimenting through improvisation towards a particular feeling in the music.
“When I meet it, for me, it is it,” Clemens says. “Sometimes it’s a very long search, sometimes very short; sometimes there are a lot of detours you have to take, and go back, and then you know what you don’t want to do.”
In a process of composition by mood, musical fragments can emerge from anywhere: sketching chord progressions with pen and paper, sitting alone at the piano, collaborating with other instruments in free improvisation, or experimenting with the sounds of analogue and digital synthesisers. This musical language has no intention of genre, only perhaps that of non-genre or post-genre. “I find this very inspiring, to have a definition that says there are not really any borders; you can take everything together, and that’s it.”
I hear a sense of honesty in Clemens’ music. It reflects his character and his music history. Upon meeting Clemens, his genuine nature is immediate: free of pretension; open-minded; welcoming. This a musician who wants nothing more than to share his music with others. He’s humbled by the diverse turn-out, and the reception of his music. “They all heard new music. It was kind of crazy for me,” Clemens says. After the concert, he celebrates his release at the neighbouring restaurant – a stationary bus attached to a kitchen. “This is so Berlin,” a guest laughs. More than cheeseboards on buses, Berlin is a city with its owns attitude or set of ideas of creative freedom and open-mindedness. “There is a lot of fluidity, which I really, really like,” Clemens says. “Collaboration with electronic music is just one example. It’s exciting to see very vibrant spots in Berlin, in the modern classical scene.”
Clemens cut his teeth in both classical solo piano tradition and the pages of the Real Book: he’s spent his due time with Bach, Clementi, and Schubert; as well as followed his creative interests in songwriting, jazz standards, and moving towards improvisatory jazz ensembles, with detours into electronic projects.
“I come from a context of playing in ensembles drawing from free jazz and experimental techniques: creating new sounds, or make the piano sound unrecognisable, dampening strings, or preparing it. I’m very rooted in this improvisational approach.”
Having studied composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Dresden, Clemens now lives in Leipzig, a small but vibrant hub for musicians, within reach of the Berlin scene.
After having just released and performed his new album to an embracing audience at Piano Salon Christophori, Clemens is humming with positivity. Perhaps not an opportune moment to get a raw answer about the personal challenges of creative life, but Clemens still offers me a reflection: “Creating your own voice is very linked to who you are as a person.”
“Sometimes I’m unsure about things, in life and in my music. I made the decision to go the long road. Working one year for an album tells you so much about yourself. There is great personal fulfilment from staying strong towards an idea. There are great moments of anxiety. You may be deep in a composition, take detours, and going back again. But it is totally worth it to find your voice, and your language that you can speak for your musical life. It’s a very long process.
“I think I’ve found my language; my way of speaking. But I also know there are so many things to discover and include in this language. I’m optimistic looking into the future, but there are also moments for anxiety.
“Every composer, every artist, every human being has this feeling when you go into dialogue with yourself – it is a very personal thing to make art.”
When Clemens’ musical voice speaks, he allows it to come from anywhere. Harmonic devices, form, instrumentation, orchestration, articulation, and tone emerge as they do, without intention. “When I sit at home at the piano, it becomes a dialogue with myself, in a way,” Clemens says.
The true intention is that, in time, Clemens will have a characteristic and distinctive musical language of his own. It’s the instantaneous identifiability and overwhelming beauty that Clemens admires in artists such as, North American jazz pianist Chick Corea, Japanese composer and sound artist Ryuichi Sakamoto, Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, and Australian pianist-composer Luke Howard whose collaborative album Ten Sails Clemens describes as “beautiful and unique”.
“I think I’ve found my language; my way of speaking. But I also know there are so many things to discover and include in this language.”
– Clemens
Remember Tomorrow allows its listener to sit with 13 evocations of consciousness, disconnected, but of the same mind. Spheres opens with a texture reminiscent of Schumann – a rapid arpeggiated piano texture, answered by an eerie two-note descending figure, before a dark melodic voice emerging in the bass. 11 Step establishes a whole new world with a simple syncopated repeated choral pattern on piano, while the right hand takes off with an improvisatory feel. The piece is grounded by double bass, and surrounded by the texture of swirling electronic noise and bowed strings that, at moments, break the harmony of fluid memory. The piano is absent altogether on Rufe: a manipulated bowed double bass and synthesiser pulsate in horn-like blasts that dissipate out into an icy expanse. And, in Zur Nacht, Clemens, with a likeness to Arvo Pärt, uses the violin’s voice in sorrowful sustain that hovers above a walking ground bass figure.
Ending the evening concert, Clemens picks one last evocation: a reverse déjà vu in Japan, Tokio Nights, the conflict of a projected childhood idea of Japan reconciling itself with lived reality. Out of dead space, an ascending dream-like arpeggio repeats while melody notes linger, connecting a long phrase, and white noise manipulates the texture reminiscent of an ominous cityscape. And we drift away, again.
We protect your personal information.
Images supplied.
