1962
On July 17, 1962, Max Neuhaus performed excerpts from Makoto Shinohara’s Alternance pour percussion at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music (Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik) in Germany.
Performance Highlights
The Venue: The Darmstadt Institute, then the undisputed epicenter of the European avant-garde, where figures like Stockhausen, Boulez, and Maderna gathered to redefine contemporary music.
The Work: Alternance (1961) is a seminal work for solo percussion. It is famous for its complex graphic notation and requires the performer to navigate a massive, specifically arranged battery of instruments with extreme structural precision.
The Artist: This performance served as Neuhaus’s "arrival" on the European stage. His mastery of Shinohara's score immediately established him as a premier interpreter of the "New Music" movement.