For Wols (It's all over) (1991)
(Four Pieces for Piano)

For WOLS was written in 1991 at the suggestion of the Cologne pianist Michael Graubner and commissioned by the Düsseldorf Tonhalle.

The premiere took place in Düsseldorf in 1993, and in 1994 For WOLS was produced by Hessian Radio.

For WOLS was produced by Hessischer Rundfunk in 1994.

The dedication and subtitle of these four pieces for piano refer to the restless and tragic

and tragic life and various works of the great German abstract painter

WOLS, who was born Wolfgang Schulze in Berlin in 1913, grew up in Dresden and died

died prematurely, aged just 38, completely impoverished in Paris.

‘ For WOLS (It's all over) is an endgame. But it doesn't lead to a decision like in chess or

football game; ‘endgame’ would be better understood here in Beckett's sense, as an

‘old endgame that has always been lost’. Development takes place here, if at all, only in the

only in the smallest, often stuttering dimensions, tending to freeze into a point without development.

freeze. In the end, the ultimate opposition: two opposing voices in widely

widely splayed positions. In an apparent contradiction of seeming static and

and violent outburst, the two inspiring starting points to which the title alludes are found

alluded to in the title: the paintings of the painter Wolfgang Schulze, whose abstract works

Franke describes as partly filigree-silent, partly violently expressive; as well as Franke's

thoughts and feelings during the Gulf War.’

(Manfred H. Wenninger, excerpt from a portrait programme on Hessischer Rundfunk in 1996)