Volte-faces
Dieter Ammann’s orchestral triptych «Boost – Turn – Core»
Stefan Drees
The new orchestral piece Turn (2009/10) by Dieter Ammann, the «composer in residence» of the Lucerne Festival 2010, will be created on August 25th of 2010 at the Lucerne KKL. It stands as the «missing link» between the already present Boost (2000/01) and Core (2002), for orchestra, which will be performed in the same concert. The work Turn, constituting the middle term of the complete performance of Ammann’s orchestral triptych, is conceived as a movement which «organises, in a quiescent tempo, a dense passing, tonally fixed on central tones which often also ground, as bass tones, the musical phrase» (Marie Luise Maintz). In his analysis Stefan Drees concludes that contrary to Boost and Core its peaceful character is the consequence mainly of these aforementioned harmonic changes, which occur far more fluently as in the other two movements. The object of this study, which also deepens our general understanding of Ammann’s working techniques, is the manipulation of diverging musical situations and processes.
