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Hans Werner Henze’s oratorio, Das Floß der Medusa, with a text by Ernst Schnabel, will be performed by the SWR Symphonieorchester and Peter Eötvös on 15 November at the Konzerthaus in Freiburg and again on 17 November at Hamburg Elphilharmonie. The work was inspired by the 1816 maritime disaster and shares a name with Théodore Géricault’s painting of the event.

In 1816, the French frigate Méduse ran aground off the west coast of Africa. A shortage of lifeboats meant a hastily constructed raft was used in an attempt to ferry 150 survivors to shore. However, soon after setting off on the 30 mile journey, it became clear that towing the raft was impractical and the decision was made to cut the connecting ropes. The rudderless and ill equipped raft was abandoned to its fate.

Henze uses the tragic events to explore the moment where morality, law and social convention dissolve. In today’s climate, the work resonates as a critique on the response to the refugee crisis in Europe, with parallels to the thousands of lives lost at sea.

Hans Werner Henze: Das Floß der Medusa: A fight for survival

The stage is divided in two between the living and the dead. On the side of the dead is a soprano who attempts to lure survivors with her siren song. Jean-Charles, a cabin boy, represents the living and their struggle to remain alive. In the course of the performance the chorus crosses the stage from the side of the living to the side of the dead. Charon, named after Hades’ ferryman in Greek mythology, is the narrator and slips frequently between the two worlds.

Henze transfers the mood and characters from Géricault’s iconic painting to his music, for example using the woodwind section to underscore the living chorus, with ‘breath like noises’ and screams. The journey to the side of the dead is accompanied by the string section.

I had Théodore Géricault’s magnificent painting, The Raft of the ‚Medusa‘, clearly in my mind’s eye when I started work on the music. The pyramid-like pile of human figures in the painting, which is now in the Louvre in Paris, is surmounted by our hero, the mulatto Jean-Charles, waving a fragment of tattered red cloth at a boat that is seen sailing past the distance and that signifies hope and perhaps also salvation – an idea present in our own piece from the very outset. – Hans Werner Henze

As part of ‘Elbphilharmonie+’ there will be a lecture-performance on 16 November featuring a string quartet made up of musicians from the SWR Symphonieorchester who will trace the experience of escape through the music of Béla Bartók and Emin František Burian interjected with readings from texts written by refugees. The concert featuring Henze’s Das Floß der Medusa will be broadcast on SWR 2 on 26 November. In March 2018, Dutch National Opera will present staged performances of the work.

 

• Hans Werner Henze – profile


• Das Floß der Medusa – workdetails


• Elbphilharmonie Hamburg - program information


• Konzerthaus Freiburg - programinformation

Atsuhiko Gondai’s Omnia Tempus Habent for piano and string orchestra will have its world premiere on 9 November 2017 at a concert celebrating composer Valentin Silvestrov’s 80^th Birthday. Conductor Yuta Shimizu will be joined by pianist Alexej Ljubmov at the Musashino Civic Cultural Hall, Tokyo for a programme which also includes Silvestrov performing a selection of his own piano and chamber works.

In his music, Gondai seeks to create a cultural dialogue between Europe and Asia by reconciling new compositional techniques with traditional philosophical ideas. In order to do this, he studied Catholic Church music and worked with the Buddhist priest Shomyo to explore new ways of integrating the musical traditions of these religions.

Atsuhiko Gondai – Omnia Tempus Habent: an attempt to capture a moment

Sound is ephemeral; it fades quickly without leaving a trace. In Omnia Tempus Habent, Gondai attempts to capture the moment sound is produced. The title Omnia Tempus Habent (‘Everything has its time’) is a reference to a parable. Everything passes: every activity, every action, every feeling.

“Music is time. There is always a beginning and an end. To compose is to listen to ‘that moment’ along with the progression of sounds, in other words ‘the fixed moment’ within the irreversible and limited time that was cut out, with an eternal ear that only exists within your heart.” – Atsuhiko Gondai

Like Silvestrov, Gondai returns regularly to certain themes in his works. In his 2015 work for orchestra, Vice Versa, he rejects notions of reconciliation to explore musical contradictions and opposites. Find out more about Vice Versa below.

• Atsuhiko Gondai – profile 


• Vice Versa – workdetails


• Work of the Week - Vice Versa

Jörg Widmann’s Au cœur de Paris (“In the heart of Paris”) was written in celebration of Orchestre de Paris’ 50th anniversary. The piece will be premiered on 1 November at the Philharmonie in Paris with Daniel Harding. The concert will also feature Widmann, who is their Artist in Residence, performing his Fantasie for solo clarinet.



Paris is the city of love: one can easily conjure images of lovers walking hand in hand along the Seine, the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower behind them. Accordion music wafts through the midsummer air and you can almost taste the red wine. Widmann was inspired by two Edith Piaf chansons about being in love, La vie enrose and La ciel de Paris. In La vie en rose, a woman sings about her immortal love to a man, while La ciel de Paris is a declaration of love to the city.

Jörg Widmann – Au cœur de Paris: a musical expression of love

Piaf’s melodies linger in the mind long after the song has finished playing. Widmann teases the audience by quoting these melodies, orchestrating them to pair the deep emotion with a musical lightness.

There are always sounds at the beginning. These sounds gradually solidify over weeks, they compress. During this time I do not write. Then suddenly…I cannot stand it so I write, I write furiously until the piece is finished. – Jörg Widmann

The concert will be repeated on 2 November at the Philharmonie in Paris and broadcast live. It will be available for viewing on Arte Concert for six months.

• Jörg Widmann - composer profile


• Orchestre de Paris

March 2018 marks the centenary of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s birth. Among the performances in celebration of this occasion are two concerts on 29 October featuring Sinfonie in einem Satz in its two versions, one with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern and Peter Hirsch, and the other with the Gürzenich Orchester Köln conducted by Harmut Haenchen.



When approached by the Nordwestdeutcher Rundfunk Köln to compose a symphony, Zimmermann extensively deliberated on the form. He settled for a continuous 18 minute-long movement scored for large orchestra with extra woodwind, harp, organ, and a solo string septet.

Sinfonie in einem Satz was premiered in 1952 by the Kölner Rundfunk Sinfonie Orchester and Hans Rosbaud. Unfortunately the piece was slammed by critics who cited the inclusion of the organ as old fashioned. Unfazed, Zimmermann reworked the piece with Rosbaud’s assistance, removing the organ and rewriting the long and complex bars. This revised version was premiered a year later in Belgium. 

Bernd Alois Zimmermann – Sinfonie in einem Satz: a reworking of the symphonic form

The innovation in Zimmermann’s symphony lies in the protracted growth of its single movement, which ensnares the audience from the opening. Sinfonie in einem Satz maintains a nervous tension punctuated by unexpected accents, culminating in an explosive finale.

The thematic material develops by linking various musical germ cells to create an organic structure of the whole…with each cell passing through all stages of musical development via heavy dynamic evolution. - Bernd Alois Zimmermann

More performances of the revised version of Sinfonie in einem Satz by the Gürzenich Orchester will take place on 30 and 31 October. The original version can be heard again on 2 March 2018 at the Staatstheater in Mainz and on 5 May 2018 at the Köln Philharmonie. An award winning 2016 recording of the original version with conductor Peter Hirsch is available on the WERGO label.

• Bernd Alois Zimmermann - profile


• Sinfonie in einem Satz (1. Fassung) – workdetails and score


• Sinfonie in einem Satz (2. Fassung) – workdetails and score


• Saarbrücken Concert (1. Fassung)


• Cologne Concert (2. Fassung)

Chaya Czernowin’s inspiration for her new cello concerto, Guardian, grew from her in depth research of the human experience of time. The work is dedicated to cellist Séverine Ballon who along with the SWR-Sinfonieorchester and Pablo Rus Broseta, will give its world premiere at the closing concert of the 2017 Donaueschingen Festival on 22 October.



In our dreams, the brain creates its own worlds using fragments from our waking reality combined with figments of our imagination. In the same way, Czernowin creates works using fragments from the natural world expressed through her own creative voice. Guardian creates a gloomy alternative reality, in which time is elongated and compressed like an accordion.

Chaya Czernowin – Guardian: exploring the elastic quality of time

On the surface, Czernowin seems to adhere to traditional concerto form: a distinct solo line is supported by an orchestral accompaniment, interspersed with orchestral tuttis and a final cadenza.  But if we look more closely, the roles are anything but traditional.

Guardian is a floating exchange between the merging and parting of two sound bodies.  In one instance, the cello emerges from the orchestra but increasingly pulls away, getting louder and louder. At times the orchestra acts as a single cello.  The wind instruments for example are instructed to create breathy tones instead of distinct clear notes in order to resemble the bow being pulled on a string. The resulting dense clusters, played at pianissimo, create the illusion of a unison sound.

Two speakers amplify the solo cello, which ranges in sound from plaintive cantabiles to roaring like a wild animal. In the orchestra, extended techniques add shade and colour to Czernowin’s alternative world.

The field of Open Form in algorithmic visual computer work enables a multi-dimensional development of objects […], at any moment one or the other parameters of the shape takes over, impacting the overall form. This is the way in which this concerto thinks. – Chaya Czernowin

Guardian will be performed again at the rainy days festival in Luxembourg on 17 November with Roland Kluttig conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg with Séverine Ballon.

• Chaya Czernowin – profile


• Guardian – workdetails and score


• Donaueschinger Musiktage

When Yuri Gagarin became the first human to journey into space in 1961, he sparked a generation’s interest in the mysteries of the universe. This included a young Peter Eötvös, whose latest work, Multiversum for concert organ, Hammond organ, and orchestra, sets out to explore this theme. The composer himself will conduct the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and soloists Iveta Apkalna and László Fassang in the world premiere on 10 October 2017 in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

Peter Eötvös: Multiversum - creating a universe out of sound

Eötvös was inspired to compose a piece that would envelope the listener in the same way the universe envelopes the earth.  A three-dimensional sound is created by the staging: the strings are placed to the left of the audience and the woodwinds to the right, while the brass and percussion are spread over the stage alongside the Hammond organ.  A carefully placed Leslie rotary speaker creates a Doppler effect that obscures the Hammond organ’s location, allowing it to seemingly float above the whole audience. Even immovable instruments are presented in a different light - the Klais organ, which is built into the wall of the Elbphilharmonie behind a section of the audience, is played at a keyboard at the front of the hall. The overall effect is a visual break from traditional orchestral staging and an immersive sound experience for each audience member.

I try to describe the world with sounds, just like writers do it with words, painters with a brush, and directors with a camera. We often describe the same thing; only the medium is different. – Peter Eötvös

Eötvös will conduct Multiversum again on 11 October at the Philharmonie Köln, 12 October at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brüssel, 14 October at the Müpa Budapest and 19 and 20 October at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

• Peter Eötvös – profile


• Multiversum– details and score


• Elbphilharmonie Concert

Aribert Reimann’s new opera, L’Invisible, conjures a mysterious and foreboding atmosphere. On 8 October, the world premiere of this “trilogie lyrique” will be presented at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in a production by Vasily Barkhatov conducted by Donald Runnicles.



Reimann first encountered the plays of Maurice Maeterlinck in the 1980s at the Berliner Schaubühne and was immediately inspired to write an opera, however thirty years passed before the idea became a reality. L’Invisible is based on three short Maeterlinck plays, L’Intruse, Intérieur and La Mort de Tintagiles, woven together through musical language and the recurring character of a young boy. Another Maeterlinck play, Les Aveugles also provided inspiration.

Aribert Reimann – L’Invisible: Living in the shadow of death

In L’Intruse a family waits for a doctor, called to attend to the daughter who has just given birth. However, before he arrives the blind grandfather notices death is amongst them. This opening scene is accompanied only by strings, but the texture is shattered at last by the baby’s first cry: a shrill chord in the woodwinds. At the same moment, the mother takes her last breath. Three countertenors hidden in the wings represent the invisible messenger of death and create an atmosphere of omnipresent foreboding.

In contrast, Intérieur is scored for only woodwinds. The audience peers through a window at the family. Outside, a stranger is telling the Grandfather about the eldest daughter’s suicide after he dragged her body out of the river. As the grandfather prepares to break the news to the family, the two girls in the inside room take up the melody previously sung by the countertenors. Only the young boy, Tintagiles, remains on stage to provide the link to the final scene.

In La Mort de Tintagiles the entire orchestra is used for the first time. An old queen issues the command to have all her potential heirs killed. Afraid that Tintagiles may be on her list, his sisters try unsuccessfully to protect him and the countertenors reappear as the queens’ executioners. Reimann ends the work as it opens, as if the story were to begin again.

From the moment a human is born, they live with death. Maeterlink explores this theme in his three plays. In the third, somebody is being kidnapped and murdered. Every day humans are murdered because of an order. If one drives into a crowd of people, they don’t know who their victims are. They’re invisible, just like here. – Aribert Reimann

Reimann wrote both French and German versions of the libretto, and the premiere will feature the French libretto with German and English surtitles.  L’Invisible will run at the Deutsche Oper Berlin until 31 October.

• Aribert Reimann – profile


• L'Invisible – workdetails and score


• L'Invisible at Deutsche Oper Berlin

The London Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates Valentin Silvestrov’s 80^th birthday with the UK premiere of his Symphony No. 3 (“Eschatophony”) at Royal Festival Hall on 27 September with conductor Vladimir Jurowski.



Silvestrov was 15 when he began teaching himself the craft of composition. While studying engineering in Kiev, he continued his musical education in the evenings, eventually winning the Koussevitzky Prize at the age of 30. However, he was expelled from the Composers’ Union of the USSR shortly after for embracing the “Kiev Avantgarde” movement.

During this period, Silvestrov experimented with significant contrasts in his compositions. Symphony No. 3 is one such example, featuring interactions between complex rhythms and free improvisation. It was this rejection of traditional forms and structures that led to his works being banned in his home country of Ukraine, though they achieved great success in Europe and America.

Symphony No. 3 by Valentin Silvestrov: Music from the beginning of a new world

The subtitle “Eschatophony” is a neologism fusing eschatology, the area of theology concerned death, judgment and the final destiny of the soul, and the Greek word for sound, phoné, to lend a musical connotation.

According to [Silvestrov], everything already exists – everything has already been written. In order to understand this you have to think of the Lord Almighty. Everything has been created before, all you have to do is to listen to it carefully and call it up again. Then another thing begins to vibrate. It’s always been there but now we can feel its vibration and understand it as music. – Sofia Gubaidulina on Silvestrov’s understanding of music

A new world is created in every performance of Symphony No. 3 as the score is peppered with instructions such as “chromatic cluster of indefinite size” or “atonal improvisation corresponding to the graphic model”. Improvised passages for the strings and percussion also occur in each of the three movements.

Further performances of Silvestrov’s works are planned around the world in honour of his 80^th birthday on 30 September.  On 28 September Symphony No. 8 can be heard in the Sibelius Hall in Lahti, Finland played by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and John Storgårds; on 30 September and 1 October at the Kulturpalast Dresden, Serenade and Elegy for string orchestra will be performed by the Dresden Philharmonic conducted by Kirill Karabatis; on 27 October, Adelphi Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Lyndon-Gee will present Postludium at the Adelphi University Performing Arts Center in New York; on 4 November Symphony No 4 and Postludium can be heard in Tokyo played by the NCTS Orchestra and Dennis Russell Davies; and on 11 November, the Svetlanov Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski will perform Dedication in Moscow.

His publishers Belaieff and Schott Music send Valentin Silvestrov their warmest congratulations on this occasion.

• Valentin Silvestrov – profile


• Symphony No 3 – details and score


• To the limits: Concert of the London Symphony Orchestra

The genre of the symphony includes many strange beasts: "Unfinished" works, others labelled "No. 0", and even some with alternate or multiple opus numbers. Krzysztof Penderecki’s Symphony No. 6 may well be one such oddity. His Symphonies No. 7 and No. 8 were completed decades ago and have enjoyed multiple performances, however, Symphony No. 6 has only recently been completed.



Long Yu will conduct the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and baritone Yuan Chenye in the world premiere on 24 September.

Krzysztof Penderecki – Symphony No. 6: A farewell to the genre?

Subtitled “Chinese Songs”, Symphony No. 6 comprises eight songs based on Chinese texts connected by solo intermezzos played on the erhu, a Chinese stringed instrument. Evoking a melancholic atmosphere, the use of a small orchestra creates an intimate chamber music feel and at just under 25 minutes, the work contrasts his earlier extended symphonies. Penderecki has declared this to be his farewell to the symphonic genre - although one never knows what the future may bring.

I have spent decades searching for and discovering new sounds. I have also closely studied the forms, styles and harmonies of past eras. I continue to adhere to both principles … my current creative output is a synthesis. – Krzysztof Penderecki

Michael Sanderling will conduct the Dresdner Philharmonie in the German premiere on 5 May 2018.

• Krzysztof Penderecki – profile


• 6. Sinfonie – work details and score


• Saisoneröffnung - 60 Jahre Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra

“…Your son is leaving. He won’t be able to hear the bells of freedom”, wrote Konstantinos Sirbos in a farewell letter hours before his murder by the Nazis. Luigi Nono chose this and other similar letters as the basis for his work Il canto sospeso ("Floating chant"), which will be performed on 11 September by the SWR Symphonieorchester and the SWR Vokalensemble at Musikfest Berlin with Peter Rundel conducting and soloists Mojca Erdmann (soprano), Jenny Carlstedt (mezzo soprano) and Robin Tritschler (tenor).

During the Third Reich, many people chose to resist the injustices of the Nazi regime and most of them faced death as a result. Letters written by such fourteen- to forty-year-old members of the resistance from around Europe just before their death were published in a documentary in 1954. Nono's work sets fragments from these letters in nine connected sections and is dedicated to all those who lost their lives in the fight for freedom.

Luigi Nono‘s Il canto sospeso: Overcoming death through music

At the work's opening, Nono uses floating orchestral sounds to draw the audience in before the choir sings the first episode. “I’m dying for justice. Our ideas will win”, wrote a young man from Bulgaria. In the next episode, the three soloists simultaneously sing the words of three different Greek patriots. At the climax of the piece, Nono uses lines written by a condemned woman describing moment the Nazis came to execute her, with the music moving from heart-rending brass and timpani to a contrasting, stark string accompaniment. The soprano soloist then sings words of farewell from a young Russian woman to her mother, accompanied by the hums of the women in the choir and a selection of high instruments. The piece ends with the choir singing the words “I’m leaving, having faith in a better life for you”, with only timpani accompanying. Nono connects each cryptic text fragment with instrumental Intermezzi, creating an atmosphere of farewell, desperation, and bewilderment around the listener.

Now as much as ever, works dedicated to remembrance and reflection are of great importance, giving a voice to thoughts and feelings and even serving as focal points for discussion, talks, and educational activities. You'll find more works of remembrance by following the link below. In these works it is evident that composers at all times have deeply believed that music has the ability to remind, admonish, but also comfort and reconcile. Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein put it like this:

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

This year offers another opportunity to hear Il canto sospeso on 26 November at the Sendesaal des Hessischen Rundfunks in Frankfurt, Germany.

• Luigi Nono – profile


• Il canto sospeso – work details and score


• Musikfest Berlin