Interview with: Modern Guitar Ensemble:

Johannes Tonio Kreusch – New ideas for classical guitar (I)

Fernando Bartolomé for MGE

I have a special feeling with Johannes Tonio Kreusch. He is an accomplished guitar

player but has different features that make him stand out the crowd. He has an
absolute original way of playing the guitar and a personal way of understanding
music. You only have to listen to the Villalobos preludes for make an idea of what I’m trying to say.
Also he has a very active work as a composer and he has several works in the area of chamber
music with guitar and he has collaborated with musicians like Markus Stockhausen or
TulioPéramo. Johannes gently talks for MGE .

What was it that introduced you to music with such artists open up my mind an give me
and, secondly, what made you finally devote new musical impulses and ideas!
your life to music?
What did you learn from him? Do you know
I come from a musical family. My mother is a something about his “Intuitive music and
classical pianist, my brother Cornelius Claudio more”?
Kreusch is a well known Jazz pianist, my wife
is a violinists and my sister a visual artist. So His idea, that everybody should find his own
music and art was always around also in my voice in music through improvising is really
childhood. My mother accompanied herself great. It is a pitty, that Improvisation is not a
with the guitar singing her own children songs part of everyone standard musical training. I
to us. So that was my first meeting with the wish it would be like that! I think improvising is
guitar. I played quite a lot of different helpful to everybody. Everybody is able to! I´m
instruments like the piano, the clarinet and not speaking about knowing all about
saxophone before I became serious with the improvising and being able to play along with
guitar. When I first heard somebody playing the everybody. Just sit down and take your
music of Bach on the guitar, I was totally instrument and try to find a simple melody. Try
electrified and began to really seriously start to find a melody, which you really like and
with the classical guitar. which you explored by yourself... To just do that
What I love about the guitar and what attracted can be a real treasure!
me from the beginning is its deep and modest To improvise opens up the mind also for the
sound, its warm and healing vibrations and its interpretation of other composers thoughts.
wonderful colours! While performing, we have always to create out
The great guitarist and poet Atahualpa Yupanqui of the moment - no matter, whether we
puts it in better words: “The guitar is the only improvise or whether we interpret. To train our
instrument when pressed upon one´s heart can ability to improvise will have an important
express the landscapes of music and being impact on the personal playing!
human”.
The trumpet and guitar duo is not usual for
How was the collaboration with Markus the obvious differences between them. Does it
Stockhausen? work for you due to the type of compositions
you did for Panta Rhei?
It was very inspiring to work with Markus. My
brother Cornelius brought the two of us together I think that the guitar fits great with the trumpet.
and he also produced the CD. I recently The guitar is a very versatile instrument, which
collaborated and recorded with quite a few great works with a lot of combinations. Next to the
artists like Andy York or Badi Assad. Working common chamber music combinations with
violin, voice or flute, I have also played with
instruments like piano or organ – and also in included is the piece in three movements Tres
these cases it works! imágenes cubanas. What can you tell us
about it?

Since we first met in 1994 at the Havana Guitar

Festival, Tulio Peramo has written various
guitar works for me, e.g. compositions for solo
guitar, works for guitar and chamber music and
concertos for guitar and orchestra. My CD
Portraits of Cuba, with guitar music by Tulio
Peramo, released in 2000, has turned out to be a
great success. The works dedicated to me
include the Quintet Tres Imágenes Cubanas,
which I first performed at a chamber music
series in Munich and later the orchestral version
at the guitar festival in Havana on the invitation
of Leo Brouwer in 1998. But he also wrote
other great chamber music works for me. I
Can you tell us about the pieces in which you premiered the song cycle Aires de la Tierra with
play the prepared guitar? What experiments the mezzo-soprano Nan-Maro Babakhanian in
have you done? 1999 in New York´s Carnegie Recital Hall. At
my Concert Series Ottobrunner Konzerte and
On the Panta Rhei disc I play next to my the International Guitar Festival Hersbruck, the
classical guitar also a twelve string acoustic suite Piezas para violin y guitarra was premiered
guitar and a steel string acoustic guitar. I use on by me and my wife, the violinist Doris Kreusch-
every piece different tunings and also Orsan. When I was invited by the Royal Welsh
preparations on the guitar. I have a solo program College of Music and Drama and Cardiff
with my own music in which I experience even University, I premiered the Cinco Preludios his
more with all kinds of preparations. I use for latest solo work for guitar, which he dedicated
example pen, rubber or other metal between the to me in Cardiff in 2006. This cycle can be
strings, so the guitar sounds sometimes like a heard on my latest disc Hommage à Heitor
different instrument - for example like an Villa-Lobos.
African Cora, an Indian Sitar or an Indonesian
Gamelan.

Music of Panta Rhei is like a stream of songs

that is slowly changing but always the same.
There is a general link that, although the
music changes, makes the atmosphere
generated is always present. What is
improvised on the CD and what is it
composed? How was the recording?

The basis of the recording is improvisation.

After the first takes where done, we started to
work on each composition and recorded Tres Imágenes Cubanas is indeed the first piece
additional tracks. But we didn´t write anything Tulio Peramo wrote for me. After I had heard
down. Through the productional process, the some of his music I asked Tulio to write a piece
improvisations, more and more, became for me. I came up with the idea that he should
compositions. write for guitar and string quartet, because I
loved the way how he composed for string
You have recorded a CD dedicated to Cuban players. A second idea evoked, when I asked
composer Tulio Peramo. One of the works him to write like Piazzolla in his l´Histoire du
Tango, a little “history“of Cuban music, the case of Peramo, Karmon or Roberto
combining all the different elements and styles Sierra, but they are few. Maybe it is because
of Cuban music. Tres Imágenes Cubanas was the difficulties it has to assemble. Why do you
born and with this piece our musical work think the composers don’t write more for this
began. Tulio is a great expert in the Cuban ensemble?
history and tradition. So all of his pieces breath
in a way a true Cuban spirit. The way how we I think the combination of the guitar with string
both approached our collaboration was always a quartet is absolutely great and can be really
process, which was connected with the two of challenging for composers. In my opinion
us. We were always connected during the origin composers would surely write more for this
of the pieces. I made suggestions like basic combination if guitarists would ask them and be
programmatic or structural ideas and he was willing to play more with this chamber music
always opened for my suggestions. Even after combination. [Continue soon...]
finishing the music, he was opened for changes
and suggestions. For me it is always important
to be with the composer during the process of
the origin.

Recently, we can find good works for the

string quartet and guitar ensemble, may be