Genesis (2021)
(Concerto for piano and orchestra)

What is beauty in music? For me it always has to sound good, there are a lot of clusters and noises in Genesis, the question is simply in what context you place them. I don't compose for the quiet room, I'm happy for people to listen to my music. I also think that someone will find it fun and enjoyable to play and listen to the work. In Michael Wollny I meet someone for whom music is also an expression of an immediate attitude to life.

The entire work Genesis is divided into two large parts, beginning with a prologue and ending with an epilogue. The development of form as a process plays an important role, as does the idea of transitions between different aggregate states, for example from stone to water. There are no long pauses between the sentences; they are often linked by transitions.

The unusual form of the work, with its free spaces for the improvising pianist, was created in a joint dialog with the soloist at the premiere. Michael Wollny wanted musical offerings for this project, something to listen to and something to react to, coupled with the possibility of improvisational freedom. In this sense, two offerings were created: two landscapes that the soloist mirrors several times.

On the one hand, a mirror in connection and in communication with the orchestra, and the subsequent formal sections, mirrors within mirrors, which tend more in the direction of chamber music.

In addition to fully composed passages, the orchestral writing also features flexible, aleatoric situations with possibilities for freer playing, particularly in Landschaft I and II, in which the score corresponds 1:1 to the sound result. In this way, Franke creates dense soundscapes that sound very complex but are simply notated and in which the musicians act almost independently of each other.