“Nature is always eavesdropping”

Lucerne Festival Forward is presenting no fewer than three works by the US-American composer Katherine Balch. In addition to the sound installation Aluminum Forest (which she will realize in collaboration with Ted Moore in the Peterskapelle) and the solo violin work Responding to the Waves, she will also introduce her orchestral piece Chamber Music on 16 November.

Chamber Music for Orchestra: The title sounds like a contradiction in terms – and yet it points to your central idea for the work, doesn’t it?
Yes! I am interested in exploring the chamber-like intimacy of subsets of large ensembles and the tutti ensemble sound as a way to magnify that intimacy. I think the contradictory title also invites a sense of playfulness, both for performers and for listeners.

You have characterized Chamber Music as an “intimate conversation between friends”: How do you compose for a large ensemble in such a way that something like a chamber music attitude emerges, with the musicians listening carefully to each other and a focus on the importance of the individual as well as the group? And in such a way that the audience can also perceive the subtleties of the dense musical fabric?
Since Lucerne Festival will be programming the sinfonietta version of this piece, rather than the full orchestra version, the contrast between the solo and tutti materials might be less dramatic or overt, but I still hope this sense of rapid dialogue, of chattering and gossiping subsets of duos and trios within orchestral choirs and mixing between the orchestral choirs comes through. I don’t know if it’s a matter of dichotomizing the “individual” and the “group” in any sort of sociopolitical sense, but rather playing with the crisp nimbleness that can come from soloistic writing within the orchestra and seeing how that nimbleness can exist even in large, tutti sounds. It’s the sort of feeling you get when you are in a loud restaurant and can either choose to experience the sonic environment as a wash or aurally “zoom into” a conversation.

Chamber Music also seems to be partly “eavesdropping” on nature, for example, in the “whisper music” of the first part, doesn’t it?
Nature is always eavesdropping. I love eavesdropping. I love trying to eavesdrop on nature the most.