One recent afternoon, I met up with the German-born, New York-based composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher at a Berlin seafood restaurant. He wore a v-neck t-shirt, and after twice asking the waiter whether the oysters were 100 percent safe to eat, ordered nine of them for us to share, along with a glass of white wine. Rehearsal, for a concert the next day with Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Pierre Boulez Saal, wasn’t planned until the evening, he said.
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