Helicopter String Quartet

Helicopter String Quartet (screen title: Karlheinz Stockhausen: Helicopter String Quartet) is a 78-minute 1996 Dutch English- and German-language independent underground experimental documentary art film directed by Frank Scheffer.

This article is about the film by Frank Scheffer. For the composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen, see Helikopter-Streichquartett.

DVD cover

Synopsis
Irvine Arditti, leader of the Arditti Quartet, who premiered and made the first recordings of the Helikopter-Streichquartett
Dutch Grasshoppers aerobatics team, flying the Alouette helicopters they used in the world premiere of the Helikopter-Streichquartett

The film, whose producer is Ton van der Lee, documents the preparations and rehearsals in 1995 for the world-premiere performance by the Arditti Quartet of the 1993 composition Helikopter-Streichquartett (English: Helicopter String Quartet) by Karlheinz Stockhausen. This piece requires four separate helicopters (provided for the 1995 performances by the Royal Netherlands Air Force). Within it, each helicopter carries (in addition to the pilot) one member of a string quartet, a sound technician, television camera, video, and three-channel audio transmitters, and all flying through the air simultaneously. It was premiered at the Holland Festival. The film contains interviews with Stockhausen, the string players Garth Knox, Rohan de Saram, Irvine Arditti, and Graeme Jennings, and the pilots about the piece.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] The film was premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival in October 1996, where it was nominated for several awards, was also screened at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema in April 2005, and was released on DVD by Medici.tv's label Medici Arts.[8]

Reception

Critic Ben Sachs wrote the following regarding this film: "I'm a dunce when it comes to the music, but I found the movie fascinating, in part because the story has so much ready-made suspense. Any number of things could go wrong in the execution of the quartet, and it's entertaining to see how the composer and his crew respond to each problem that arises—it's something of an intellectual action movie".[9]

References
  1. Schweitzer, Vivien (13 July 2008). "Fulfilling a Dream With Strings and Rotors". The New York Times. p. AR21. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  2. Koch, Dr. Juan Martin (October 2008). "DVD-Tipp: Stockhausen: Helicopter String Quartet" [DVD Review: Stockhausen: Helicopter String Quartet]. Neue Musikzeitung (in German). 57. Regensburg: ConBrio Verlag. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  3. Clark, Philip (December 2008). "Stockhausen: Helicopter String Quartet". Gramophone. 86. London: Mark Allen Group. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  4. Schaefer, John (17 July 2008). "Music to the Extreme". New Sounds. New York, New York: New York Public Radio. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  5. Platt, Russell (12 August 2008). "Takeoff". The New Yorker. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  6. Bishop, Prof. Dr. Ryan Marion. The Force of Noise, or Touching Music: The Tele-Haptics of Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet. In: SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin–Madison's University of Wisconsin Press, Volume 40, Number 3, Issue 126: Plus d'un toucher: Touching Worlds, 2011, pp. 25–40. Retrieved 26 March 2018.
  7. Helicopter String Quartet. In: Holland Film, Amsterdam: Holland Film Promotion, 2000. p. 48. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
  8. Scheffer, Frank (24 June 2008). Helicopter String Quartet (DVD) (in German). Paris: Medici.tv's Medici Arts. OCLC 237054616. EDV 1333/3077508. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  9. Sachs, Ben (15 March 2012). "What's Wrong With Up in the Air?". Chicago Reader. Chicago, Illinois: Sun-Times Media Group. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
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