WOLFRAM SCHURIG: Ultima Thule

Breaking through the boundaries of the familiar, questioning conventional patterns of perception and moving ahead to the openness and uncertainty of uncharted creative territory – from the very start, this impulse has been an ever-present characteristic, albeit in many different guises, of the compositions of Wolfram Schurig. One could see an external sign of this act of imaginative self-transgression in the paradoxical thought-figures captured succinctly by many of his titles: per due – inferno is the name of a piece for solo (!) guitar that marks the official beginning of his Euvre in 1986, while hot powdery snow circumscribes the conflicting creative energies that flowed into a work for string quartet written in 1994/95. (Daniel Ender)