The great hall of the Philharmonie de Paris has been named for its ‘spiritual father’, Pierre Boulez. The inauguration ceremony took place on 26 October in attendance of French Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay and Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris.
“Ideas in this piece are torn apart by a strange energy and reform in new, dynamic relationships. There is a constant tension between growing and collapsing. That which seems durable can vanish in an instant.” (Luke Bedford on Instability)
Congratulations! Luke Bedford’s Instability for large orchestra has been shortlisted for this year's British Composer Award. We’ve uploaded the full study score for you:
[Ernst Krenek] saw parallels between McCarthyism and the development of Nazism in Germany. Having survived the Hitler menace in Austria and now, shortly afterwards, living with McCarthyism in the USA, his adopted country, was a great shock to him! Krenek had always been interested in social problems and having just lived through various crises in regard to these problems he turned to writing about them in the most dramatic, illuminating medium for him – opera. […] Pallas Athene weeps is more timely today than ever! (Gladys Nordenstrom Krenek, 16 October 2013)
The Neue Oper Wien’s production of Pallas Athene weint [Pallas Athene weeps] by Ernst Krenek premières on 25 October at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna. Walter Kobéra conducts the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich.
Further performances take place on 27, 28 and 29 October.
The orchestra takes over the melody: the whole orchestra begins to sing. (Georg Friedrich Haas on dark dreams)
Georg Friedrich Haas’ dark dreams for orchestra will receive its Estonian première today, 21 October, at the AFEKT International Modern Music Festival in Tallinn. Michael Wendeberg conducts the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra.
We have prepared the full score for you:
Ernst Krenek’s 1926 Der Diktator plainly rejects the lush romanticism of Wagner, the sentimental beauties of Puccini. In their place we find a brevity, a condensed sense of time, and a transparent mix of neo-classical and romantic musical rhetoric articulated with new sonorities in a drama made up of fleeting episodes. (Leon Botstein)
On 19 October the American Symphony Orchestra presents concert versions of two one-act operas with strikingly different reactions to tyranny: Ernst Krenek’s Der Diktator will be performed together with Richard Strauss’s Day of Peace at Carnegie Hall. Leon Botstein conducts the American Symphony Orchestra.
Krenek composed Der Diktator in 1926, three years after Hitler’s unsuccessful putsch in Munich and two years after Mussolini gained a two-thirds majority in the Italian parliament. Der Diktator urgently highlights the dangers of fascism and predicted the tragedy of National Socialist dictatorship.
Bologna Modern runs from 14 to 23 October at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Universal Edition is strongly represented, with performances by Georg Friedrich Haas, Wolfgang Rihm, Friedrich Cerha and Alban Berg.
On Friday, 14 October, Diego Collatti, his ensemble Minimal Tango and Uruguayan guitarist Ignacio Giovanetti bring a homage to Astor Piazzolla and Jorge Luis Borges to the stage of the ORF RadioKulturhaus.
Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Nuevo will be performed, as well as compositions and arrangements by Collatti.
Congratulations to Johannes Maria Staud, who was awarded the Coup de Coeur des Jeunes Mélomanes for his work Oskar (Towards a Brighter Hue II) on 4 October by the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco.
The work is dedicated to Midori, and was premièred by the renowned violinist and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra in 2014 at Lucerne Festival.
Midori will perform the work’s Japanese première on 19 October at the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Sylvain Cambreling conducts the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. The Austrian-Korean Philharmonic (Soyoung Yoon, vln; cond. Chungki Min) will soon tour Oskar (Towards a Brighter Hue II), for more information visit our performance calendar.
Steve Reich turns 80 today – Universal Edition wishes him a very, very Happy Birthday!
“This work belongs on every stage.” (Eleonore Büning, FAZ)
Frank Martin’s secular oratorio Le Vin herbé – based on Joseph Bédier’s novel Romance of Tristan and Iseult – will be performed today and on 1 and 9 October at the Chicago Opera Theater.
After its first staged performance at the 1948 Salzburg Festival a critic of the Neues Österreich newspaper described the work as “A Tristan with a difference”. The concert version had already been premièred six years previously in Zurich. In its more than 60-year history Le vin herbé has enjoyed countless concert performances and several staged productions.
Congratulations to Victoria Borisova-Ollas, whose work Vinden som ingenting minns has been nominated for this year’s Swedish Music Publishers Association Prize in the category “Classical Music Award of the Year – orchestra/opera”.
Victoria Borisova-Ollas has previously received Swedish MPA Awards for The Ground Beneath Her Feet (2008) and Golden Dances of Pharaohs (2010), her work Open Ground was nominated in 2007.
The award ceremony will take place on 11 November in Stockholm.
David Sawer’s orchestral piece the greatest happiness principle is featured on a new CD included with the October issue of the BBC Music Magazine, titled “Best of British: Modern masterworks commissioned by Radio 3”.
The work was inspired by the utopian ideas of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham and by his application of the panoptic principle to prison design.
It was recorded by Mark Wigglesworth and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
Soprano Cornelia Ptassek, violist Danka Nikolic, the Heinrich-Kaminski-Chorgemeinschaft and the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss (cond. Fred Buttkewitz) will perform Heinrich Kaminski’s Magnificat on 24 September in the frame of the Internationalen Musiktage 2016 – Dom zu Speyer (22 September – 8 October).
Kaminski’s composed the Magnificat in 1925 and said that it was “… Mary’s hymn of praise, elicited by the shining message of the Annunciation and thus the rejoicing of every soul illuminated by that light.” It was frequently performed – sometimes paired with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – until the Nazis banned Kaminski’s works.
The Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart are performing Georg Friedrich Haas’ 3 Liebesgedichte on their current tour of Asia.
The composer about the works, which were composed for the six musicians of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart:
For the most part, Stramm does away with syntax in his poems; he orders words to words into an expressive series of substantives, adjectives and pronouns, predominantly conditioned sonically and rhythmically, whereby neologisms may result. He may shape grammatically complete sentences but, if so, they convey nothing contextual; they formulate metaphors and images, linked together in a freely associative manner.
The torn echo of one of the most dramatic forms of Andalusian Flamenco Singing: the ‘Seguiriya’, revolves at the centre of gravity of our composition for orchestra. A centrifugal movement in the form of a spiral of the musical mass of the orchestra leads us slowly towards a kind of vibrant rhythmic texture in a ternary rhythm: Bulería de sombras. (Mauricio Sotelo on Muros de dolor... III)
Thomas Søndergård and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra present the Dutch première of Mauricio Sotelo’s Muros de dolor... III on 22 Septemberat HET Concertgebouw.