Klaus Huber's flute works

Klaus Huber, who was honored by the Gema for his life's work in 2013 with the German Music Authors' Prize, influenced important contemporary composers such as Younghi Pagh-Paan, Brian Ferneyhough and Wolfgang Rihm, who were among his students. There were also some outstanding flutists in his circle who strengthened his relationship with the flute and expanded his knowledge of the instrument's experimental possibilities and tonal refinements, such as Aurèle Nicolet, Pierre-Yves Artaud and Suzanne Huber.

The double CD that has now been released contains recordings of flute compositions that were recorded within a large period of almost forty years, between 1961 and 1999, and therefore also have historical value.

As early as the sixties, Huber embarked on his solo piece To ask the flutist, which is interpreted by Suzanne Huber in an imaginative, lively and lyrical manner, explores new instrumental territory with multiphonics. The trio composed for Heinz and Ursula Holliger Sabeth for alto flute, cor anglais and harp uses aleatoric sections to remove the tangibility from the listener and leads, as Heinz Holliger puts it, to the "weightless sound world of Sabeth, leading into the mysterious open". The CD also includes a live recording of what is probably Klaus Huber's most famous flute piece: A touch of untimeliness. This begins poetically with the passacaglia motif in the flute, which wanders from time into untimeliness, into which soft multiphonics and fragile thirds soon flow. The multiple version A touch of untimeliness III realizes, as Huber describes it, "a state of suspension between sound and aleatoric", whereby the flute sound in "fluctuating simultaneity" with oboe, accordion, soprano and strings ignites a more pulsating effect. The live recordings with Aurèle Nicolet are also charming rarities, such as the strictly canonically composed Duo Il pleut des fleurs for two flutes and the colorfully played trio Oiseaux d`argentin which the three flutes chirp and imitate each other. The CD also includes the socio-critical piece composed on the occasion of the moon landing in 1967. Ascensus for flute, violoncello and piano as well as other chamber music works.

The careful selection of musical pieces gives an insight into the stylistically rich flute compositions of a composer in search of new sounds, which were interpreted by Suzanne Huber and her chamber music partners in a richly colorful way.

As a continuation of the series, the two string quartets by Klaus Huber, played by the Q3G Drei-Generationen-Quartett with Egidius Streiff, Daphné Schneider, Mariana Doughty and Walter Grimmer, will be released on CD for the first time in 2015 (SC 1501).