Ex Nihilo [Out of Nothing] (for chamber orchestra) composed 2011
At a Glance Pintscher wrote his Ex Nihilo [“Out of Nothing”] in 2011. It was first performed on January 22, 2012, by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer in Glasgow. This work runs just over 10 minutes in performance. Pintscher scored it for a large chamber orchestra of flute
by
Matthias
PINTSCHER born January 29, 1971 Marl, Germany living in New York City and Paris
Severance Hall 2016-17
(doubling piccolo), alto flute (doubling flute), clarinet, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, harp, piano, percussion, and strings. The Cleveland Orchestra is performing Ex Nihilo for the first time with this weekend’s performances.
About the Music M A T T H I A S P I N T S C H E R is now well established as a leading
composer of his generation, with a parallel career as a conductor. He has earned broad recognition in classical music circles, especially in England, France, and across the United States. He has been a regular visitor to Cleveland since his Daniel R. Lewis Young Composer fellowship as composer-in-residence (200002), and has returned here regularly to lead performances by The Cleveland Orchestra or for the premiere of new works. He first came to worldwide notice with his opera Thomas Chatterton, staged in Dresden in 1998, which was followed by prestigious performances in Berlin under Claudio Abbado’s baton and at the Salzburg Festival. In addition to the opera, he has composed a good quantity of chamber music for different instruments, a steady output of orchestral music, and a series of concertos (none of which is actually named “concerto”) that can be seen as a linked sequence or series. His Reflections on Narcissus for cello and orchestra, from that group, was heard in Severance Hall in 2010, while the Orchestra gave the world premiere of his Chute d’Étoiles (for two trumpets and orchestra) in 2012. His idyll for orchestra was commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra and premiered in 2014. His output for orchestra also includes Five Pieces for Orchestra (1997) and the paired works Towards Osiris (2006) and Osiris (2008). While some of Pintscher’s orchestral works refer to Egyptian or Greek mythology, he traces the origins of his ideas as a composer to his experience as a boy playing in an orchestra for the first time and being absorbed by the intricacy of sound all About the Music
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