AFEKT 2025

Though it has the semblance of being international, AFEKT is for the most part a German-oriented festival, in terms of both composers and performers. As usual, members of Ensemble Musikfabrik were in attendance – Marco Blaauw (trumpet), Christine Chapman (horn), Lucy Humphris (trumpet), Stephen Menotti (trombone) and Maxime Morel (tuba) …

Although this year’s AFEKT festival had a nominal theme, ‘Zwei Gefühle’ – from the eponymous work by Helmut Lachenmann – in practice it was a loose collection of thematic elements, primarily name-checking the 90th birthdays of Lachenmann and Arvo Pärt, and the 100th anniversaries of Berio and Boulez. Nonetheless, the …