ensemble

PHACE »Figuren am Horizont«

15.May.2020 // 19:30
Wiener Konzerthaus, Berio Hall

PHACE Series 19/20 – N°4

a production by PHACE & Wiener Konzerthaus

ARTISTS

Ivana Pristašová, Violine
Johannes Kalitzke, Dirigent

PHACE

PROGRAM

Johannes Maria Staud
Am Horizont (…schon ganz woanders…)   
Music for ten instruments and tape (2020) (UA)   14′
commisioned by PHACE, Osterfestival Tirol, kindly supported by Wiener Konzerthaus

Anna Korsun
Plexus for ensemble (2014) (Austrian premiere)

Joanna Wozny
like little … sunderings
for flute, clarinet, saxophone, piano, violin, cello, double bass and tape (2016)

Johannes Kalitzke
Figuren am Horizont
– five obituaries for violin solo and six players (2011)

Screaming, gasping and shimmering – emerging from pulsing, tonal shoals, just to vanish into dizzying heights. Playful, but virtuous, Anna Korsun’s piece for ensemble, Plexus, creates a compelling hyper-instrument, where separate instrumental actions constitute tiny segments, which come together as an eerily beautiful sound structure.

Like little … sunderings by Joanna Wozny engages with the acoustics of language from two different angles: Playing with electronic effects, the elements of speech are transformed, mutating into noise. By dissolving whispered words into their reduced form of hissed sounds, into filtered, white whirring of electronic sounds, noises are sensed as (imaginable) language.

Johannes Kalitzke’s work Figuren am Horizont (figures on the horizon) evokes sonorous memories of departed artistic colleagues. No names are mentioned – the composer stages different types of obituaries: In each of the five movements, a different approach guides the change of state. The transition from life to death is either faced in approval or total reluctance. Abstract mathematical principles, historical points of reference function as metaphors as well as a fundament for the composition. A concluding sketch of a house of light assembles familiar elements, underlying a process of clarification, “only leaving the shadow of the Wienerlied”.

Johannes Maria Staud’s new piece for ensemble is expected with excitement.