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At the beginning of the year 1914, Otto Heinrich is a violinist with the Bath Pump Room Orchestra, an esteemed violin maker, and a popular member of the Bath musical community. But on August 4th, as Britain goes to war, he plays his last concert. As a German living in England, Otto has become an ‘alien’...

Otto - a brand new piece commissioned by Bath Pump Room - is based on his story. It has been created by Otto’s great-grandson Richard Barnard, and writer Peter Spafford. The piece weaves together original music and text inspired by the Pump Room concerts in which Otto performed, sounds recorded in a violin workshop, andstories passed down through Otto’s family.

The starting point for the piece was the search for the spiritual in ordinary, every-day places. This live piece for string quartet and electronics takes the sounds of an electric bar-heater cooling down after being switched off, and a defrosting fridge-freezer. Each section begins with one of these samples. The sounds are subtly manipulated by filtering, pitch-shifting or looping fragments of the material and subsequently transformed into musical ideas. The rhythms and melodies captured from the sounds of the appliances - inhabiting a space between randomness and order, insignificance and meaningful beauty - develop into music of vitality, poignancy and spirituality.