Ensemble Musikfabrik & Enno Poppe: Prozession

Event Introduction

The Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik founded in 1990 is a leading name in contemporary music. Its projects are particularly concerned with the commissioning and producing of new music and theatre, often in close partnership with contemporary composers. It visited Finland for the 2011 Musica nova and for the Time of Music festival in 2016.

Prozession (2015/2020) was a Musikfabrik commission from Berlin composer Enno Poppe, the vivacious conductor of the Ensemble InterContemporain at Musica nova 2019. The titles of Poppe’s works are often ambiguous, and the listener’s imagination is a vital element of the work’s interpretation. Prozession plays with literal meanings and philosophical deliberations: it is both a goal-oriented, abstract procession and a work of art addressing inner development or process. It proceeds through nine instrumental duets with comments from the ensemble propelled by four percussionists, drawing on the fantastic skills of the Musikfabrik soloists and ultimately exceeding the sum of its individual parts as a seething, virtuoso organism. Prozession is Poppe’s essayistic vision of the vast potential of a sizeable contemporary instrumental ensemble.

The structure binding the solo sections and orchestral texture of Prozession together in the festival’s closing concert sums up the whole theme of Musica nova 2025. It is a musical cross-section or summary of all that can be generated between individuals: dialogues, interaction, hierarchy, communities, dissonances and harmony – all things we can achieve Together.

Performers:

Ensemble Musikfabrik
Enno Poppe, conductor

Programme:

Enno Poppe (*1969): Prozession

Supported by:

Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation

 

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