Confidence in the Power of the Poetic: The Composer Matthias Pintscher

Extract

An enormous architect-style desk with a heavylooking cherrywood top stands on slender curved metal legs, which give it a light-weight appearance. This is the centre of the composer's work room, just outside the city of Kassel in the middleot Germany. Here are created edifices of sound, pencilled in tiny calligraphy on gigantic manuscript pages. These are the compositions which are being accepted and performed in numerous music capitals of the world. The writer is Matthias Pintscher, who must be counted as one of the most outstanding personalities among the new generation of composers. His phenomenal talent has been compared to that of Wolfgang Rihm, who is 20 years older.