Christian Löffler has reworked four Beethoven tracks from original 1920s recordings of his pieces.
The release, which comes through Deutsche Grammophon, comes as the world celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven.
Invited by the German label, Löffler set about reworking the four tracks earlier this year. While many musicians might have trembled at the task, Löffler began to work his way through the recordings and searching for connections with his own sound.
“I was just following my ears choosing them. I was searching for parts that really caught my attention,” Löffler tells EDMjunkies. “I was jamming on my synths or on the piano to find melodies and sounds that kept the original idea but took it into my universe. My focus was to find little nostalgic moments that can make a good link to my music.”
Beethoven compositions, although grand and architecturally complex, are also seemingly simple and always stirring, humorous even. With Löffler’s reworks, we’re told that much of the wild, erratic composer fades away into ambient textures and mellow soundscapes, but Beethoven’s humanism is given a new lease of life. “With more space added in between the composer’s provocative ideas, Löffler gives them a new arena in which to live and thrive in,” the label explains.
Although the EP tracks are intrinsically different from the original recordings, Löffler has largely left Beethoven’s voice untouched. He has instead used the composer’s music as the colours to his own painting, searching for simple motifs that gave a narrative to his own productions.
Alongside today’s announcement, Löffler has shared “Pastoral,” the EP’s opening track. It sees him taking Beethoven’s 6th Symphony and unearthing a short flute melody, then sampling it and adding his atmospheric synth and pad sounds.
“Working on ‘Pastoral,’ I had the insight that it was a good idea to focus on the quiet parts of the music, that was a milestone in the process of the whole EP,” says Löffler. “I wanted to highlight the darker but also brighter moments of the music and create an ebb and flow situation.”
For more information on Löffler, check out his EDMjunkies podcast here.
Tracklisting
01. Pastoral (03:40)
02. Fate (04:08)
03. Funebre (13:40)
04. Freiyheit (03:01)
Parallels is scheduled for November 27 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Pastoral” below and pre-order the record here.
