Press on Harry Pepl solo
What was written and broadcast about Harry Pepl and Harry Pepl solo: reviews, portraits, interviews and obituaries, with summary and source.
To the project page Harry Pepl solo
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1996 · Other
PAO Records (CD-Booklet, CD 10140-2): Booklettext zu „Flow“
Stephen Ferguson
English liner notes by the pianist and composer Stephen Ferguson for Harry Pepl’s solo piano album “Flow”, recorded digitally in a single take on Sunday, 10 March 1996, in the Brahms Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. Ferguson calls Pepl “a musician who hears”, who immediately translates what he hears into music from his own fingers and his own voice; on the guitar he is “one of Europe’s undisputed jazz masters”, on the piano a virtual stranger, which is exactly what gives the music its magic. He hears “a dream played awake”, a pure music played without technique, only with musicality and flow, a response to the big black Steinway in the acoustics of the Musikverein, and in it the pianistic heroes Gould, Jarrett, Debussy, Cecil Taylor, Bach, Schoenberg and Schubert. Pepl has the jazz man’s joy of real-time composition; the titles are chosen for personal reasons (childhood, “High Noon”, Gould). It closes with the master of the strings as “a masterly novice full of music”. The booklet also names Ferguson as editor (with Daniel Pepl) and as translator of Georg Pepl’s text. The text is available as a text PDF for signed-in users.
his very own instrument–the guitar–where he is one of Europe’s undisputed jazz masters
Harry Pepl is a musician who hears. He has that seldom gift–to immediately translate what he hears into music coming from his own fingers, into music coming from his own voice.
It is a dream played awake, full of snatches of music, gestures, spaces.
he is simply unafraid of any musical task, and has the jazz man’s joy of real time composition.
Let us simply enjoy the novelty and richness of this master of the strings becoming a novice at the keyboard, a masterly novice full of music, in a fast stream of rhythms and thematic lines, flowing.
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1996 · Other · DE
PAO Records (CD-Booklet, CD 10140-2): Booklettext zu „Flow“
Georg Pepl
Liner notes by Georg Pepl, musicologist and Harry Pepl’s elder son, for the solo piano album “Flow” (recorded on Sunday, 10 March 1996, in the Brahms Hall of the Vienna Musikverein), printed in the booklet also in Stephen Ferguson’s English translation. The text presents the improviser at the piano as an image of isolation and of freedom and draws a line from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s free fantasias via Mozart and Beethoven to jazz, which built dams against the “flood of improvisation”. He reads the flowing that gives the album its name through Rousseau’s “Reveries of the Solitary Walker”, Goethe’s “Werther”, Freud’s “oceanic feeling” and Herbert Marcuse. At the piano Pepl enjoys losing himself in the moment, the notes stream out “all by themselves, as silent water or as a flow”; in “Grace & Gary” and “2 Klavierpianos” he improvised a second piano track over the first. On the titles: “Man könnte Klavierspielen müssen” as a reminiscence of Glenn Gould, “Improv 2” of Schubert’s impromptus, “Grace & Gary” of the film “High Noon”; on “3 Mo” he quotes Pepl himself (“mothy, momenty, minory”). The German text is freely available as a text PDF, Ferguson’s English version for signed-in users.
While playing the piano Harry Pepl enjoys being able to elevate himself to the mood of the moment, or to plunge into a different sense of being. The notes are independent, streaming out all by themselves, as silent water or as a flow.
Just looking at the titles of his pieces one recognises that Pepl is a deeply musical and romantic artist. Musically his playing is related to language itself, he has listened to its rhythms and double meanings.
The improvising pianist flows out into the world of tones, the piano player melts into oneness with the piano, desists in his identity as a subjective entity.
3 Mo stands for mothy, momenty, minory. Mothy because the music sounds as if the moths are waiting to pounce.
Word play on his piano piece “3 Mo” from the album “Flow” (1996): three German adjectives beginning with “mo”, echoing Motten (moths), Moll (minor key) and Moment
Harry Pepl
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10 February 1998 · Interview · DE
Wiener Zeitung (p. 4, column „Jazzignal“): „Echtzeitkompositionen“
Christian Rösner
Portrait with interview on the piano album “Flow” (PAO Records). After his second brain haemorrhage and a break, Pepl has made the piano his instrument and developed his real-time composing further. He tells how for the recording he sat down in a Vienna concert hall (the article names the Bösendorfer hall), played a note and let himself be guided by the acoustics, and recalls an unprepared festival concert with Jack DeJohnette.
The guitarist and composer Harry Pepl may well be called Austria’s most independent and at the same time most uncompromising jazz voice.
What mattered to me was to play music that really comes from within and that happens in the moment
In 1998, on Real-time Composing at the piano
Harry Pepl
I played one note, then the second, and by the third at the latest Jack knew exactly where I was, and we were together.
On a festival concert with Jack DeJohnette without any joint preparation, in conversation in 1998
Harry Pepl
Pepl’s flowing real-time compositions on “Flow” are in any case full of energy and honesty; understandable in expression and eloquent.
Music is my life, and I cannot not play
Talking to the Wiener Zeitung, a Vienna daily, in 1998 about the time after his second brain haemorrhage in 1994: playing the guitar was out of the question at first, so he turned to the piano, which led to the album “Flow”; the double negative is deliberate
Harry Pepl
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20 March 2024 · Interview · DE
mica music austria (Online): „Uns geht es darum, Gegensätze in unserer Musik zu manifestieren.“ (Raphael Preuschl, Fabulous Austrian Trio, im mica-Interview)
Michael Ternai
Interview with the bassist Raphael Preuschl on the 20th anniversary of the Fabulous Austrian Trio with Alex Machacek and Herbert Pirker. Speaking of Machacek's guitar playing, he says it seeks to lift the limits of a string instrument, and recalls Harry Pepl's piece “Man könnte Klavierspielen müssen”.
Harry Pepl once wrote the song ‘Man könnte Klavierspielen müssen’. I believe it is Alex's intention to lift the limitation of a string instrument and to take on the polyphonic freedom of a keyboard instrument.
Raphael Preuschl