Reverberations and futures

They came together through their shared soft spot for k-punk aka Mark Fisher, an English music critic and cultural theorist who died in 2017. And what did pianist Stefan Kägi and composer Michael Emanuel Bauer make of it? They took Othmar Schoeck's late song cycle Reverberation, Kägi and Bauer looked at it «from the spirit of Derrida's hauntology» and reworked it. The starting point is as unusual as the resulting mix: Kägi interprets the cycle together with bass-baritone Robert Koller; alongside the original is a textual and musical update, Bauer's «Afterimages». Finally, the German experimental musician Gunnar Geisse remixes some of it. The whole thing is given an English title: Schoeck vs. Bauer Or What Futures are you Longing For? Where are we?

The emotional state is sentimental: a return, a reflection is central, as the title Reverberation clarified. Schoeck was aware of his position as a late-born, post-romanticist, even to a certain extent as an epigone. And he rediscovered it in the poems of Nikolaus Lenau and Matthias Claudius. Resignation resonates - and then spills over to Bauer, who breaks it in many different ways. Stylistically surprising, there are echoes from the history of music. There are always echoes. This refraction is absolutely necessary, as Koller's tone, who can be such a shrewd mediator, occasionally slips into the sentimental and maudlin in Schoeck. But perhaps this is precisely what belongs in such an assemblage. Afterwards, however, Geisse's remixes seem contrived and not integrated, which are probably intended to represent an echo of the longed-for future.

Schoeck vs. Bauer Or What Futures are you Longing For? Othmar Schoeck: Nachhall; Michael Emanuel Bauer: Afterimages; remixes by Gunnar Geisse. Robert Koller, bass-baritone; Stefan Kägi, piano. aDevantgarde records, online only