»The orchestra is the finest anachronism of our time,« says Dieter Ammann, the Swiss composer whose triptych »Core / Turn / Boost« for large orchestra is being premiered at the »Elbphilharmonie Visons« festival in February 2023. What kind of man writes such densely-woven, massive music, praised by Pierre Boulez and Wolfgang Rihm alike, and above all: what about the audience?
In his interview for the »Elbphilharmonie Talk«, recorded in his living room in Zofingen in the canton of Aargau, Dieter Ammann speaks about the fairly free music-making he practised as a child and about active, creative listening, which he is much better at than reading music; this skill influenced his development as a composer, and determines the way he sees music to this day. Ammann talks about the travails of composing, his leaning towards kinetic energy and drive, but also about the precision without which art is not possible.
In the interview we learn a lot about the artistic process, about friendship and the nature of music. Incidentally, his wife Jolanda has prophetic powers: she knew much sooner than he did that Dieter Ammann's music would be performed in the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall one day in the not too distant future.
Ammann (born 1962) has lived his life as a musician to the full, working among other things as bass player, trumpeter and keyboarder of the Swiss free-funk ensembles Donky Kong’s Multi Scream. He has been teaching composition in Lucerne for many years, something he still enjoys that makes him independent from commissions: as he says himself, he is an extremely slow writer. But it is his ambition that the few pieces he writes should remain relevant in the future, as well.
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