Musica Austriaca

The organizers of the coma festival in Madrid have asked the œnm to present a program of exclusively Austrian contemporary music in the Spanish capital. On the part of the œnm, those works by Jorge É. López, Klaus Lang, Beat Furrer, Olga Neuwirth and Friedrich Cerha, which we will present in Madrid and before that in Salzburg.
It would be hard to imagine a stronger contrast than that between López’s jagged soundscape and the static and calm exuded by Klaus Lang’s “Hungry Stars.”
The title of Beat Furrer’s “Aer” refers to thoughts of the pre-Socratic natural philosophers, who assumed air to be the primordial substance of all that exists. It is no coincidence that the “air instrument” clarinet plays an important role.
Olga Neuwirth also traces back to antiquity in “Marsyas II”. “A fulminant dance on or even in the volcano, which impressively illustrates the artist’s power, her suggestive sense of sound,” Pedro Obiera commented in the Aachener Zeitung in 2005 after a performance of this composition.
Friedrich Cerha’s Five Pieces for clarinet, violoncello and piano go back to a suggestion by Heinrich Schiff, as Cerha reports: His request that I should come up with something for the instrumentation of clarinet, violoncello and piano, because the musicians were always at a loss as to what to play between the two relevant works by Beethoven and Brahms, led me to compose the Five Pieces as a tribute to his 50th birthday.”