Johannes Fritsch, born in Bensheim-Auerbach in 1941, was a member of the Stockhausen Ensemble from 1964 to 1970, directed the Seminar for New Music at the Akademie für Tonkunst in Darmstadt from 1971 to 1984 and taught composition at the Cologne Musikhochschule from 1984. He founded the Feedback Studio and the publishing house of the same name, organised the Hinterhausmusiken concerts and edited the Feedback Papers. The four flute pieces on this CD are published by the Feedback Studio Verlag; they were recorded in 1997/98 at the Feedback Studio with the sound engineer Wolfgang Ellers.
“Flute Klang” (1981) for alto flute with delay system was premiered in Darmstadt by Robert Dick. Fritsch originally called for a four-track tape recorder that delays the sound of the alto flute threefold during the performance; today a programmable digital delay system takes over this task. “Kyo-Mu” (1982) for shakuhachi and tape was played by Hitomi Endo at its premiere at the second Weltmusik-Kongress in Vlotho; the tape is a production of the Feedback Studio. Besides the Japanese bamboo flute, with which the piece has been heard in Europe and several times in Japan, it can also be performed on tenor recorder or alto flute. The score is accompanied by a text by Hisamatsu Fuyo from 1823, which ends with the words “no piece becomes breath, breath becomes empty nothingness”.
“Noël for three flutes” (1990), for concert flute, alto flute in G and bass flute, was written at Christmas time in 1990 and premiered in Cologne in 1991 with Camilla Hoitenga; the CD presents the playback version. Fritsch composed the piece for alto flute and temple bell in August 1994 at the Villa Massimo in Rome for Natalja Psenitsnikova, who premiered it in Berlin the same year. The flautist graduated from the Central Music School and the Tschaikowskij Conservatory in Moscow, devoted herself to Baroque music on historical instruments as well as to contemporary music and improvisation, and also made a name for herself as a vocalist in the experimental field. Works have been written for her by Gia Kancheli, Bernhard Lang, Peter Ablinger, Klaus Lang and Sergej Nevskij, among others.
The CD opens the series in which the Feedback Studio in Cologne documents its own history: the independent, private electronic studio that Johannes Fritsch founded in 1970 with Rolf Gehlhaar and David Johnson and that understood itself as an artists’ cooperative and an alternative centre for music. The recordings were made in 1997/98 in the studio itself; the CD runs to 44:33 and the booklet has four pages.