Three works by Detlef Heusinger come together in this album, with the electric guitar playing a central role in each. To suspect biographical grounds for this choice of instrument wouldn’t be wrong, but doesn’t in itself say so much: what young person growing up in the 1970s wasn’t fascinated by Jimi Hendrix? The psychedelic sounds of the Stratocaster, the distortions of effect boxes and overdriven amps, the many new playing techniques, the thrilling, overflowing improvisations? Heusinger had learned classical guitar before he changed to electric guitar at age 14, and, inspired by bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, he began to appear in various musical formations onstage with this instrument. But his studies with Henze or Nono as well as the avant-gardist Canon of the Forbidden would leave little room for playing the electric guitar. His duties as composer, conductor and later leader of the SWR Experimentalstudio wouldn’t permit further obsessions.
With the guitar concerto 2nd Anniversary of Zabriskie Point (2005), however, Heusinger returned to his old love of the instrument. Admittedly, he came back to it with a totally changed perspective: he put the electric guitar in the historical context of electronic music and thus, in a manner of speaking, re-invented it as an instrument. As a solo instrument, the electric guitar conjures a modern version of the timeless Lulu; in the solo concerto it functions in what would seem to be a long-outdated genre; in chamber music it serves as a mediator for the whole history of electronic music from the theremin to today. And a shot of nostalgia, fortunately, is once again permitted in the world of contemporary Music. © Stefan Jena/Neos Music