Saw two concerts of our home team Asko Schoenberg in the Kolner Philarmonie. Very well done and the audiences were enthusiastic. Particular favourites of mine were Vladimir Tarnopolski’s ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’ and several arrangements of Nancarrow’s player piano Studies. Again two more concerts in the evening. First spectacular versions of Ligeti’s ‘Aventures’ and ‘Nouvelles Aventures’ for three singers and small ensemble. From the early 60’s these pieces are masterworks of timing, wild theatricality and suspenseful textures that Ligeti’s music is full of. From SN I heard that Ligeti presented the emotional characters in a serialised manner, which makes sense in the way the singers changing characters all over the place. This is one of the things so strong in Liget’s music – the combination of serious composed music with a strong sense of humor.Then the evening concert presented the musikFabrik like I’ve never seen them before. The first thing to see was just the stage setup – a fantasy world of oversized Greek inspired instruments.For the first part of their concert they played through all the musical bits from Harry Parch’s play ‘the Delusion of the Fury’ on this newly built Partch instrumentarium (by Thomas Meixner). It was great to see them playing unconducted, from memory and with great energy. There was a lot of joy in the music and performance, but indeed the music did get a bit tiring after a while: constant fast notes in constant variation, similar in style to Cage’s Third Construction. I look forward to hearing some new works written on these instruments, perhaps even writing one myself one day.The second part of their program was all Zappa, starting with several versions of the Black Page. My hope that they would play it on the Partch instruments was dashed, but still, with their incredible technical prowess they rendered a flawless and energetic version of this classic.The Zappa set continued as his sets did, with jams, lots of notes, some solos and a percussion battle ending in sticks being hurled all over the place (except at the winds or strings, wisely). I was also hoping that for the solos that they’d whip out some Stockhausen or Berio on top of the Zappa groove, but they kept them mostly melodic and pentatonic. Works every time of course, particularly last night for the 1500 or so in the audience at the grand Philharmonie.