LP – Denovali

Light and shadow, a piano, attenuated percussion and a bass-viola. “There is a topos at the core of my works,” Thomas Köner says: “I travel around the world and record sounds and images, they are unique voices of these locations, but I am aware that these expressions are just surface effects, the creative process, my work, evolves from my understanding of that sense of place and its radiance”. It’s a mental landscape, then, that springs from the six compositions inspired by tiento, a form of keyboard music that originated in Spain in the mid-15th century and that the German media artist has already experimented with in Tiento De Las Nieves, a work published in 2014, also on Denovali. “Listening is internal, psychological”, Köner emphasizes, “it’s a very personal and active process that filters and mixes in a creative way within every listener. And is not [only] mined by the physiology of the ear and its frequency range, but also by the knowledge, education, and personal preferences of the individual.” Electronic envelopes that accompany the classic harmonies are dreamlike In Tiento de la Luz, while the percussion is truly kept in the background. The compositions resonate with an elegiac charm, creating a meditative continuum, a “soundless sound” which is a kind of auto-suggestion, a confidential and quietist expression. When – as in this case – some extreme traditions in music production are reconciled, we speak of ‘contemporary classical music’ and we don’t often ask if such a definition is or is not acceptable to the author, an unconventional artist whose main purpose seems to be to liberate sound into the radiance of clear space.

 

Thomas Köner – Tiento de la Luz (Full Album, 2016)

 

Denovali | Thomas Köner – Tiento De La Luz 5