Info text: Music as sound speech A portrait of the poet in sounds: York Höller The premiere of Topic by the orchestra of the Cologne University of Music in the large broadcasting hall of WDR Cologne brought York Höller his breakthrough in 1967. A representative of the Schott publishing house then signed the young composer, and at the instigation of the music editor Otto Tomek, the WDR played […]

Info text: Composing in the tonus virgineus About Helmut Lachenmann's string quartets I keep the matter secret by stripping it. Anselm Kiefer When he was honored with the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2008 for his life's work, the committee's statement stated that in his compositional oeuvre, Helmut Lachenmann had "given sound to matter [...]

Info text: In changing voices and verses, the singing goes up into the jubilant light and down into the shadows. Helge Slaatto (violin) replaces Klaus-Peter Werani (viola), gives the floor back to him and takes it up again for a short duet with Frank Reinecke (double bass). Then again, and until the end, the song […]

Info text: Vigil is the nightly part of the hourly prayers of the Catholic liturgy, which are distributed throughout the day. Formally, a vigil consists of a sequence of prayers, psalms and hymns from the so-called Gregorian chant. Vigilia also adheres to the principle of sequence form: the instrumental and vocal ensembles are used alternately seven times before they act together in the “Miserere” at the end. […]

Info text: Impulses from tradition Thoughts on Jörg Widmann's composing Perhaps the most significant characteristic of Jörg Widmann's work is the conscious acceptance of impulses from tradition. The preference for the emotional emphasis of Romanticism, which is expressed in the use of an expressive tone as well as in the use of tonal elements and traditional compositional procedures, is […]

Info text: Works for viola solo It was not until the 20th century that an independent solo repertoire emerged for the viola. Especially in the period after the First World War, when virtuosity and late romantic pathos were distrusted, the dark colors, the simplicity, but also the rough and pithy nature of the viola began to be of interest. However, many works remain […]

Info text: After fleeing occupied Poland, Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996) lived in Soviet exile. Defended by Shostakovich in times of crisis, he was tolerated as a symphonist and film music composer (“The Cranes Are Pulling”, 1957), but remained an outsider throughout his life. From his rich chamber music work, Julia Rebekka Adler recalls the four solo sonatas for viola, which were written between 1971 and 1983 [...]

Program: music for double bass Giacinto Scelsi (1905–1988) Nuits (1972) 09:41 [01] C'est bien la nuit 03:24 [02] Le réveil profond 06:17 Isang Yun (1917–1995) [03 ] For Aki I (1981) 00:54 [04] For Aki II (1981) 01:01 Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) [05] Theraps (1976) 14:40 Manfred Stahnke (*1951) [06] Streetmusic III (1995) 08:00 dedicated to Frank Reinecke Hans Werner Henze (*1926) [07] S. Biagio 9 Agosto ore 1207 (1977) 08:37 Ricordo per un […]

Info text: He is an engineer, a designer of fragile structures. His “sound actions” do social work: professional musicians and amateurs work together, playing on self-made and traditional instruments. Disabled people can communicate with non-disabled people. Graphic, gestural and acoustic forms of expression intertwine. Skepticism and playfulness, and a fascinating transparency in thinking characterize the work of Josef [...]

Info text: Vital, lively music from an excellent soloist who studies the tricks and finesse of his own and many other instruments in great detail, always makes new discoveries and creates pointed, funny scenes on this basis. Matthias Arter, a student of Heinz Holliger, is a composer, oboist, conductor, creative project developer and organizer. His pieces are playful, concrete, associative: of themselves […]

Info text: The focus of the second part of the Maderna edition is on concert works, some of which became building blocks for the opera “Hyperion”. Arturo Tamayo can fill the instrumental solos entirely from the ranks of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra: in Hölderlin's Aria and the flute concertos with Thaddeus Watson, Sebastian Wittiber and Clara Andrada de la Calle, in the Stele per [...]

Info text: Everything has to be re-examined: Bruno Maderna follows this post-war maxim by choosing simple, workshop-like titles. Composition, practice, improvisation – for him this means a maximum of freedom, and at the same time a commitment to developing polyphony, to the logic and mobility of thoughts. To a weightless, transparent form that points beyond itself and questions itself […]