NEWS

New Project OV-BOX

Almost all aspects of life as it has been have been affected by the Corona Pandemic. We have learned that nothing, really is reliable, everything is fragile and we all had to make decisions about what is really important to us. An amazing and unforeseen factor has been, that we all of a sudden had time to think - time to think clearly and in peace, since it was not possible to rush off and go anywhere, to do all the things we always have done to reassure us of our own importance.

The experience I have made: that it is totally ok to sit still and listen: is the one thing that has enriched my life: But also the experience, how desperately I miss playing music with other people. And how much, really I love my friends and colleagues who share this experience with me.

One invention that has helped me through the most difficult times: is the remote rehearsal and music making tool, that Giso Grimm has developed and that we tested in all this time, the OV-Box. Everyone who is interested is welcome to check it out and try it. We have spent many hours online together playing
Consorts and talking, and improving the system by doing so. It is a fabulous machine and so much better than all the conference-tools we are using nowadays to communicate: because, despite the fact that we don’t see each other, we hear each other clearly and can play together in an acoustic space that sounds good. You can find all the information about it on www.orlandoviols.de

There you can also listen (and watch) the three concerts we have played so far for our audience around the world : from five or six different locations——-amazingly enough the sound can travel with speed of light- and thus we can unite, even when we are far apart from each other.

HERE AND NOW

One of the Projects that had started before the Corona times and continued all the while was the Duo with Murat Çoskun —- a happy dialogue between my viol and Murat’s many percussive and singing talents: improvisation and overtone-singing included. A fun project— always here and now and unique.

Hille performs In "HAPPY END"

Hille has a small role in "Happy End", a film by acclaimed director Michael Haneke. Watch an excpert and the official trailers here!

The Four Seasons

The Four Seasons

Simpson's Cycle

A fact of life we all have to face is the truth, that everything in life is in continual change. Everything is in constant growth or demise, on all levels and incessantly new ideas come up, new plants grow from the fertile soil of old thoughts and withered plant matter, only to be subjected to further change, development or demise.

We can most easily observe this grand spectacle of transition in the natural cycle of the seasons: they come and go, they have been our guidance for thousands of years. In accordance with the seasons we found our rhythm and subjected by them our suffering.

The 'Seasons' by Christopher Simpson are - if we consider the time of their creation - a pretty unusual formal realization of Fantasies for three viols: for one treble and two bass-viols with a basso continuo. Most of Simpson's compositions have come down to this century only as autographs, and of his instrumental works the 'Months' and the 'Seasons' are the most extraordinary cycles.  We suppose that the master himself may have performed them with his disciples, for his own pleasure and the edification of his environment. The compositions are a genuine mixture of fantasia thrown in with a greta portion of division-style, a technique Simpson had a crucial part in researching and developing, especially on the viol. 

The formal frame for each of the Seasons are three movements: each of them has a introductory Fantasia, followed by elaborated and embellished dance-movements, namely an Almain and a Galliard.

The joy of virtuosic and highly advanced ensemble-communication, a rich warm sound in combination with wild diminutions and experimental harmonic adventure are the distinctive disposition of these pieces. 

We have taken the liberty to associate the characters of the seasons in free affiliation: the treble part travels among us like the point of the sunset travels through the year: Marthe is our spring-treble, while Frauke plays the summer and Hille represents the autumn and also winter.

Like our year begins with winter, this is the first piece on the CD, with the bleakness of the bare plain, that Simpson maybe envisioned with the sound of one single long note at the beginning of the Fantasia.

We have instrumented the continuo as colourful as we could with the lute-type instruments that were available in 17th-century England and even more: the metal-strung cittern and bandora plink like bitter frost in winter, spring is warming up to the sound of the English theorboe, growing fuller with time as the guitar joins in; In summer slowly warm winds of organ-sounds come up, then the leaves fall as the wind blows heavier and the theorboe fights with the bandora, giving in to the first audible frosty nights...

Simpson's 'Seasons' are capricious and vagarious, never constant, just as life, and just as the weather, that erratically subjects and surrounds us every day in continual inconstancy. 

Every weather brings different atmospheres and moods that change and are interwoven with light and shade.

We can only take it as it comes. Life, the weather, the change.

We can philosophize over it, write songs, be happy, melancholly or sad. 

We deem it wise to follow Karl Valentin's motto who said: 'I am happy when it rains, because, if I am not happy it will rain anyway!'

Hille, Frauke and Marthe, Summer 2016