Kölner Ensemble für Neue Musik & Mauricio Kagel - Kagel: Acustica (1972/2026) [Hi-Res]

Mauricio Kagel’s Acustica, composed for experimental sound-producers and loudspeakers, stands among his most ambitious and radical works. Combining electroacoustic tape material created at WDR with acoustic performances on roughly 200 graphic-score cards, it embodies Kagel’s idea of ‘instrumentales Theater’ — where sound, gesture, and performer presence merge into a single dramatic and musical act. The work explores an expanded field of musicality, using invented instruments and found objects to free sound from traditional performance conventions.

Beyond its avant-garde innovations, Acustica reflects Kagel’s anarchic and deeply human vision. Its multitude of global sound sources mirrors the diversity of his Buenos Aires upbringing, transforming chaos into playful order and highlighting the autonomy of each performer within a collective whole. Through Acustica, Kagel forged a uniquely Latin American response to the European avant-garde: a vivid, democratic sound-world of invention and humanity.