Double String Trios presents three major works for two string trios, composed by John McGuire between 2012 and 2021 and conducted by Axel Lindner. This release began with Walter Zimmermann asking Bernd Härpfer of Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln – GIMIK e.V. to arrange a concert premiere in celebration of McGuire’s 80th birthday.
McGuire’s musical roots lie in the electronic studios of postwar Cologne, shaped through studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Krzysztof Penderecki, and grounded in the traditions of European serialism. Working with synthesizers capable of generating up to 1,800 pulses per second, he developed a beautifully harmonious, crystalline music shaped by the ear into a world of flowing continuities between one point and the next.
Transferred to stringed instruments, that world becomes infinitely more complex — suffused with the richness and impurities of human players and their acoustic technologies. Conceived as two facing string trios in antiphonal dialogue, the music links studio spatial thinking with older split-ensemble traditions, unfolding through Fibonacci proportions, rotating tempi, shifting meters, and continual harmonic transposition.
