Press archive

As a musician, Pepl gave expression to inner avalanches.

Wolfgang Muthspiel

Füssl recalls the legendary JazzZwio of Pepl and Werner Pirchner between 1977 and 1985 and describes the contents: 43 minutes from the 15th Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland) in 1981 and excerpts from concerts at the Szene Wien in Vienna (1983) and the Konservatoriumssaal in Innsbruck, Austria (1984), with pieces such as “The Day We Know Paul Desmond is Gone”, “Against The Wind”, “Hosent’Raga” and “Air Love And Vitamins”. He calls the two “absolute individualists” whose interplay adds up to far more than the sum of its parts, notes that so far mainly the Muthspiel brothers (the Austrian jazz musicians Christian and Wolfgang Muthspiel) have kept their memory alive, and hopes the recordings will bring the Jazzzwio wider recognition, above all among younger musicians.

Great moments of brilliantly offbeat music and gnarled humour

the playful wit of these two strong characters, one Viennese and one Tyrolean to the core, still sounds fresh as morning dew more than 25 years after the recordings were made

On the CD/DVD “Live in Concerts” (2009) with Jazzzwio concerts from 1981 to 1984; Pepl was Viennese, Werner Pirchner Tyrolean, and each brought his own regionally coloured humour into the music

Students such as Wolfgang Muthspiel still count him among the most important driving forces in recent European jazz history.

In dialogue the two took the small chamber-jazz form to a previously unimagined communicative intensity.

He shaped a playing style which, with expansive arcs of tension, unexpected harmonic progressions and clear, at times metallic sounds, expanded the expressive range of his instrument melodically and rhythmically.

According to the obituary, Pepl then worked with Dino Saluzzi, Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland, as well as with the Vienna Art Orchestra. As a full professor in Graz from 1984, he set students such as the guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel on their way. It closes with a pointer to the CD “Light Blues” by Air Mail (Emarcy, 2001).

one of the defining instrumentalists of the European jazz scene

the rugged rhapsodic style of a Harry Pepl

The title comes from a composition by the grand old master of jazz guitar, Harry Pepl

At the same venue the brothers had heard the Jazzzwio as young listeners.

25 years ago the Muthspiel brothers themselves sat in the audience at Münzgrabenstraße 59 and marvelled at Werner Pirchner and Harry Pepl.

Christian Muthspiel tells how the Jazzzwio showed him artistic freedom beyond the academic standard repertoire; Wolfgang Muthspiel calls the duo’s concerts the spark for his own career.

When the two of them played, it was an event. The immense rhythmic power was incredible

Wolfgang Muthspiel

Through the Jazz-Zwio I learned that in this music you really could do exactly what you wanted yourself

Christian Muthspiel

The text praises the Jazzzwio as an irresistible combination of subtlety and intensity on a chamber-music basis.

Pepl’s guitar, whose notes could sound gentle but also strike with nerve-shredding force, remains unrivalled to this day, and not only in Austria.

Ljubiša Tošić

Pepl & Pirchner, that was once one of those irresistible jazz combinations that knew how to unite musical subtlety and intensity on a chamber-music foundation.

Ljubiša Tošić

Alongside Thelonious Monk and Vince Mendoza, Muthspiel paid tribute to his teacher Pepl in the programme.

Muthspiel’s most formative teacher, Harry Pepl

Klammer recalls that Pirchner once invented the name of the Graz concert promoter gamsbART, and calls the Jazzzwio a myth and the brothers’ own point of departure.

the legendary “Jazz-Zwio”, which the vibraphonist Pirchner turned into a myth in the mid-seventies together with the splendid guitarist Harry Pepl

It starts from the Jazzzwio piece “Homesick”, whose homesickness leaves open whether it is for faraway places or for home itself.

the duo also made audible the timeless aesthetic qualities of a music that has lost nothing of its relevance

Avalanches of sound also characterise the playing of the Austrian guitarist Harry Pepl.

Felber recalls the Jazzzwio’s triumphs on Europe’s festival stages; Christian Muthspiel explains why the brothers’ duo stays close to the originals on the three Jazzzwio records.

celebrated triumphs on Europe’s festival stages in the Jazz-Zwio with the guitarist Harry Pepl

Precisely because the energy of the Zwio cannot be separated from the actual pieces and compositions

Christian Muthspiel

Wolfgang Muthspiel, who studied guitar with Pepl in Graz, remembers lessons “like an extended concert” and Pepl’s laconic verdict, either “leiwand” (Viennese for great) or “net leiwand”; for Christian Muthspiel the Jazzzwio came “like a liberation”.

Pepl was one of the most interesting guitarists in jazz. Great musicians like Dave Liebman or Jack DeJohnette say so too.

The guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, once Pepl’s student in Graz; the title of the Falter article, “Leiwand oder ned leiwand”, is Viennese for “great or not great”

Wolfgang Muthspiel

Pepl and Pirchner showed us that you can make exactly the music you want to make.

The trombonist and composer Christian Muthspiel on the Jazzzwio as a model for his generation; the title of the Falter article, “Leiwand oder ned leiwand”, is Viennese for “great or not great”

Christian Muthspiel

listening again now, I noticed once more how magnificently Pepl and Pirchner played. That was improvisation in the best sense.

Wolfgang Muthspiel

He played something to me, I had to play along, and every few bars he commented on how it was going. In his words that was, laconically, either ‘leiwand’ or ‘net leiwand’ [Viennese for ‘great’ or ‘not great’].

Wolfgang Muthspiel

The time I studied with Pepl was very formative. The lessons with him at the conservatory were like an extended concert.

Wolfgang Muthspiel

They offered an impressive homage to the “Jazzzwio” of Werner Pirchner/Harry Pepl, disbanded in 1985: the brothers Christian and Wolfgang Muthspiel.

Wolfgang Muthspiel recalls a concert by Pirchner and Pepl in Graz in 1982 as a formative experience; until 1986 Pepl was his teacher at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Christian Muthspiel describes what the Jazzzwio showed him. Werner Pirchner congratulated the brothers on their first duo record “Schneetanz” with a postcard, without knowing them personally.

When Pirchner/Pepl played, it was an event. I personally still remember Pepl’s avalanche-like improvisations very well, where things always somehow got ‘dangerous’, hot. His immense rhythmic power was unbelievable.

During my studies, standards and the academic jazz repertoire were held in high esteem. Through the ‘Jazz-Zwio’ I learned that in this music you really could do exactly what you wanted yourself.