Happy Birthday Hans
Zender!
Hans Zender was this year’s composer in residence at the Klangspuren Schwaz.
View a list of works by Zender that are published by Universal Edition and listen to his music.
An extensive (German) review of Zender’s opera Stephen Climax, which is based both on James Joyce’s Ulysses and on the life of Saint Simeon Stylites, is available on the homepage of the German newspaper Die Zeit.
Franz Welser-Möst and Wolfgang Rihm before and after yesterday’s world première of Verwandlung 5 with the Cleveland Orchestra at the Musikverein, Vienna. Further performances of the orchestral piece will take place next week at the Semperoper in Dresden.
Wolfgang
Rihm: Verwandlung 5
for orchestra | 11'
2 2 2 2 - 4 2 3 1 - timp, perc, str
German prem. 27.11.2013, Semperoper, Dresden; Staatskapelle Dresden, cond. Franz Welser-Möst
Further performances: 29.11.2013, 01.12.2013
Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland
Orchestra will première Wolfgang
Rihm’s Verwandlung 5, commissioned by the
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien, today, 20 November, at the Musikverein
in Vienna. Also on the programme: Symphony No. 6 by Schostakowitsch and
Beethoven’s Eroica.
Wolfgang Rihm: Verwandlung
5
for orchestra | 11'
2 2 2 2 - 4 2 3 1 - timp, perc, str
world prem. 20.11.2013, Musikverein, Vienna; Cleveland Orchestra,
cond. Franz Welser-Möst
Ivan Hewett has reviewed the UK première of Georg Friedrich Haas’ in vain at the hcmf: you can find the review on The Telegraph.
Don’t miss out on the next performance of the piece for 24 instruments: Emilio Pomàrico will conduct the London Sinfonietta on 6 December at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
A (fantastic) recording of in vain is available on Kairos.
Georg Friedrich Haas:
in vain
for 24 instruments | 70'
2 1 2 1 - 2 0 2 0 - perc(2), hp, acc, pno, sax, vln(3), vla(2), vc(2), cb
06.12.2013, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London; London Sinfonietta, cond. Emilio
Pomàrico
The French musicologist Alain Galliari, who wrote a large biography on Anton von Webern in 2007, has recently published his study Concerto à la mémoire d’un ange. Alban Berg 1935 (Fayard), which focuses on Berg’s famous last work. The study presents a delicate reading of the Violin Concerto “to the Memory of an Angel” [Dem Andenken eines Engels], based both on the biographical data of the composer and on the characteristics of the musical language of the work, which seeks the reality behind the legend and opens new perspectives on the secret significance of the work, and on the last months of the composers life.
General Manager of the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in Paris, Alain Galliari has also published a book on the religious inclination of Franz Liszt (Franz Liszt et l’Espérance du Bon Larron, Fayard, 2011) and an essay on the topic of Redemption in Wagner’s librettos (Richard Wagner ou Le Salut corrompu, Le Passeur Editeur, 2013).
Congratulations
to Oleg Dorman, whose documentary “The Note. Rudolf Barshai, a lifelong quest
for one single note” has made it on the list of the best and most interesting
publications of the last three months of Schallplattenkritik in the category DVD/Video.
Bernt Feuchtner on Rudolf Barshai: “Rudolf Barshai conducted the Tenth with the Austrian Radio Orchestra at the end of the 1980s, in Vienna and Montpellier, but soon discovered that the dissatisfaction he felt could not be dispelled by a few corrections here and there. Changing details was pointless: he had to make his own revision. [...] Such refinements, which of course critically determine the overall musical form, could only have become first apparent to a musician like Rudolf Barshai, who has devoted his life to the interpretation of the great European symphonic tradition and lived with Mahler’s music for several years.” (Read the full text).
Listen to an excerpt of the finale from a recording of Barshai conducting the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie in September 2001 at the Konzerthaus Berlin:
A trailer for the DVD is available on YouTube:
Naxos: Rudolf Barshai: The Note – A lifelong quest for one single note
Five works by Georg
Friedrich Haas will be performed at the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik [Bludenz
contemporary music days], four of which will be performed by the ensemble recherche. The festival runs from 20 to 23 November.
Georg Friedrich Haas on his various versions of „... aus freier Lust ... verbunden ...”:
Each of the work’s ten individual parts is simultaneously a solo piece; to state it differently, the ensemble piece is an interlacing of ten completely independent, autonomous solos. […] As regards pitch, the parts are bound together by an identical harmonic structure, although it is to be noted that in the solo parts “harmony” is thought of primarily as the effect of successive sound events. As for form, caesuras and units are formed in each individual part, not only independently of other instruments, but also simultaneously with them (as a sort of “solidarity”).
The full programme of the festival in Vorarlberg is available here.
Nach-Ruf ... ent-gleitend ...
for flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, violoncello | 16'
„... aus freier Lust ... verbunden ...”
for bass clarinet in Bb | 11'
„... aus freier Lust ... verbunden ...”
for viola | 11'
tria ex uno
for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin and violoncello | 12'
20.11.2013, Remise, Bludenz; ensemble recherche
de terrae fine
for violin solo | 17'
22.11.2013, Remise, Bludenz ; soloist of the Formalist Quartet
Today, 14 November, is the third chance to see the Stuttgart Ballet’s current
production FORT//SCHRITT//MACHER [Ground Breakers], featuring
three abstract ballets by three pioneering choreographers.
On the programme: workwithinwork
by William Forsythe (music: Luciano
Berio: Duetti
per due Violini), Marco Goecke’s on velvet, with music from Edward Elgar and Johannes
Maria Staud’s Segue, and the Frank Bridge Variations by Hans van Manen (music: Benjamin Britten:
Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge).
Further performances will take place on 1, 7, 8, 10, 15 and 18 December.
An teaser for the performance is available on the homepage of the Stuttgart Ballet.
Staud on Segue:
“When you tell people you’re working at the moment on a piece for cello often you find yourself being asked: ‘Ah, so you mean a cello concerto?’ No, I always answer – not a cello concerto! A music for cello and orchestra.
Perhaps,
in the beginning, I coined this expression just as an aid for myself. Naturally
I might also have called the work Piece
for Cello and Orchestra – or quite simply Cello and
Orchestra, as for example Morton Feldman did. Or I could have
decided on retro-modern titles like Confrontation,
Constellation, …(con)cert(are), or even chosen the totally
post-modern Symphonic
Sketches for Violoncello and Orchestra.”
Read more and listen to an excerpt.
The latest Universal Edition newsletter, with information on world premières by David Fennessy, Wolfgang Rihm, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Alban Berg, is avaialble here.
Georg
Friedrich Haas is this
year’s composer in residence at the Greatest
Hits Festival (14 to 17 November) in Hamburg, a festival for contemporary
music created by Laeiszhalle
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and Kampnagel.
On the programme will be Haas’ third string quartet, “In
iij. Noct.”, and limited
approximations for 6
micro-tonally tuned pianos and orchestra, as well as works by Kagel,
Reich,
Cage, Zender
and many more.
Find the full programme here.
View the study score of limited approximations.
Georg Friedrich Haas on limited approximations:
The twelfth-tone interval is so small that it is no longer heard as an
interval, but rather as the shading of a single note. A single tone played by a
romantic orchestra has a wider frequency. The aural effect of a scale in
twelfth-tone intervals is thus similar to a glissando. The effect of a cluster
of twelfth-tones depends on the register: higher up, it is sharp, abrasive,
biting, lower down it is soft, melting, rich. Of course it is also possible to
build raw, dissonant chords with twelve-tone intervals – much more
differentiated (also in the degree of acuteness) than with the traditional 12 tones
per octave. But it is also possible to build much more “consonant” chords then
in the traditional twelve-note scale: a close approximation of the twelve-tone
scale can be produced in the overtone scale, accurate up to a twelfth of a
tone.
Read the full text.
Georg Friedrich Haas: “In iij. Noct.”
| String Quartet no. 3
for string quartet | 50'
15.11.2013, Kampnagel, Hamburg; Jack Quartett
Georg Friedrich Haas: limited
approximations
for 6 micro-tonally tuned pianos and orchestra |
30'
4 1 4 1 - 6 1 4 0 - pno(6), vln.I(10), vln.II(10), vla(6), vc(6), cb(8)
17.11.2013, Kampnagel, Hamburg; Klaus Steffes-Holländer, Pi-Hsien Chen, Florian
Hoelscher, Julia Vogelsänger, Akiko Okabe, Christoph Grund, pno; SWR-SO
Baden-Baden und Freiburg, cond. François-Xavier Roth
In the latest article of
his symphony guide series Tom Service of the Guardian writes about Gustav
Mahler’s Symphony
No. 1, and describes the symphony’s opening as “one
of the most spellbinding moments of symphonic inspiration in the 19th century”.
Find out more about key recordings of the so-called Titan and read Service’s full article on The Guardian.
Universal Edition is currently working on two versions of Mahler’s First Symphony: an edition that is broadly consistent with the version that has been available from UE to date, but now corresponds to the requirements of the new Gustav Mahler Complete Edition in its academic preparation. And the Hamburg version, which was produced especially for Hamburg; it has distinctly different instrumentation and includes the Blumine movement which was later discarded.
Dress rehearsal of Peter
Kolman’s 3
Essays on 9 November at the concert hall of the Slovak Philharmonic. Zsolt
Nagy conducts the Slovak Philharmonic.
Dress rehearsal of György
Ligeti’s Atmosphères
on 10 November at the large concert studio of the Slovak Radio. Chungki Min conducts
the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Click the link to find out more about the Melos-Ethos Festival in Bratislava.
Gavin Plumley of Entartete Musik visited us
today for a chat in our office. In the picture: our portrait of Emil Hertzka (by
Tom v. Dreger), Gavin and our promotion manager Sarah Laila Standke.
Franz Michael Fischer, vln; Sylvie Lacroix, fl; Milan Karanovic, vc; Krassimir Sterev, acc; cond. Martin Kerschbaum; Lars Mlekusch, sax.
Snapshots from the successful world première of Wen
Liu’s Impossibility
of being still for ensemble on Thursday, 7 November, at the RadioKulturhaus in Vienna.
Wen Liu is the winner of the Ö1 Talentebörse composition prize 2012, a cooperation of Radio Ö1, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and Universal Edition.
The Austrian radio station Ö1 will broadcast a recording of the concert on 13 November at 23:03, the live webstream is available here.
Pascal Gallois and the
Hugo Wolf Quartet will perform the Belgian première of Johannes Maria Staud’s K’in
on 10 November at the Concertgebouw in Bruges. The composer has dedicated he
piece for bassoon and string quartet to Gallois and the quartet. Afterwards, Gallois will perform Celluloid for bassoon.
Staud on K’in:
In the Mayan language, K’in means “sun.” It is also the smallest unit in the Mayan calendar, corresponding to one day.
On 21 December 2012, when I was in the middle
of working on this piece, the world was supposed to end – at least according to
some apocalyptic prophets who based their predictions on the Long Count of the
Mayan calendar, but who, in truth, had probably read too much H.P. Lovecraft. […]
Johannes Maria Staud: K’in
for bassoon and string quartet | 12'
prem. 10.11.2013, Concertgebouw, Bruges; Pascal Gallois, bsn; Hugo Wolf Quartet