Jürgen Schmitt on Bertold Hummel
When a highly esteemed person such as Bertold Hummel has passed through the gates of death, one reflects: when and where was the last time I was able to have a conversation with him? Which of his ideas have taken root within me? Or also: at what point on his journey did he last stand, and what might now lie ahead for him?
The piano piece Nachklang was created entirely out of the immersion in the dynamics of these questions and reflections; and it became clear to me that a great deal of the future and the imaginative can develop from an encounter with his personality.

Having, after all, recently been able to debate Sur Incises by Pierre Boulez with a mixture of admiration on the one hand and critical reservation on the other; here I gained the impression that he saw, for himself personally and, beyond that, in his assessment of the general historical situation, a moment of renewal and reconnection with long-buried and closed-off dimensions of musical possibilities.
Let the Beta-Sonata stand here as my contribution to a field of New Music for which Bertold Hummel had very concrete plans in mind: electronic music. We had already carried out a site visit to the University Church, for which he had commissioned a work for choir, orchestra and various soloists with flexible electronics, making use of spatial ‘multi-choir’ (electronic) arrangements. He had envisaged me as a consultant and collaborator for the electronic aspects of his composition. Unfortunately, the work was never realised.