Introducing «Music With Moons» at the Sonic Lab concert hall | Photo: Andreas Weixler
On June 19 I was invited to present «Music With Moons» at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz
In the course of the Austrian Composers’s Week 2023 organized by the Austrian Composers’ Association my work was showcased at the Bruckneruni’s Sonic Lab, a great new concert hall opened in 2015 and dedicated particularly for performances of computer music. Prior to the event a call for scores was advertised and I feel very much obliged that Mr. Andreas Weixler, head of the Computer Music Studio (CMS) at the Bruckneruni who curated the programme, chose my work for a performance.
In the meantime I have uploaded the concert version of the piece — feel free to listen to the piece here. To start the piece, hover over the invisible play button below the title (which then will become visible) and click Play ►.
Here are some impressions of the presentation and the concert:
Within the frame of the «23. Lange Nacht der Musik» my piano piece »four stars and one dark nebula« will be premiered by the German pianist Annette Kurz in Oldenburg on June 17. The work was awarded a second prize in the 21st Carl von Ossietzky Kompositionswettbewerb organised by the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.
A primary goal of the composition competition was to find and present new works that are ideally suitet for discovering experimental playing techniques and expanding a student’s pianistic skills in that respect:
Die eingesendeten Werke sollen von geschulten Laien bzw. interessierten Klavierstudierenden gut zu lesen und aufführbar sein, um die Literatur experimenteller Spielweisen am Tasteninstrument kennenzulernen und als Erweiterungen des Klangspektrums erfahrbar zu machen.
Admittingly most of my piano pieces are quite hard to learn and require solid pianistic abilities in many ways—however, everything I write remains perfectly playable and several of my compositions have been staged by students thus far. It is very important to me that on the one hand no compromises are made with regard to what it takes to create a certain soundscape: If it means to be techically difficult it will simply turn out to become an arduous piece to learn—so what. We take things seriously and practising takes a lot of time, but if we love what we’re doing professionally, we love practising something very hard whenever the outcome is good.
On the other hand, I keep striving towards being a ‹friendly composer› in terms of notation. Perhaps, because of creating graphical works as an artist as well, I am definitely not interested in complexifying my scores graphically. That’s old school in my opinion, we have had that since the 60s of the very past century and I feel there isn’t any need to emulate this tradition any longer.
I’m really happy that my attempt of creating a piece that conveys my personal language uncompromisingly while being still attractive for young and less experienced piano students to learn was awarded a prize in composition. It means a lot to me, because if our music is not eligible for young musicians at all, they will just keep loving the old pieces forever, but not the new ones.
Generative AV «Music With Moons» will be staged at the Austrian Composers Week 2023 at the Anton Bruckner University’s Sonic Lab on June 19
Winning a call for scores by the Austrian Composers’ Association «Music With Moons» will be played at the Austrian Composers Week 2023 in a concerts that takes place at the new campus of the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz. The Sonic Lab which only opened in 2015 was designed as a computer music concert hall at the ABPU in Linz.
In the concert on June 19 works between the poles of notated compositions, fixed media, improvisation and real-time processed structures will be presented. The programme includes works by Sam Erpelding, Ángel Hernández Lovera, Christoph Renhart, Belma Bešlić-Gál, Se-Lien Chuang, Dieter Kaufmann, Peter Trabitzsch, Tom Aitken, Andreas Weixler, Gabriel Bramöck and Markus Bless.
I’m particularly looking forward to this very first public concert in which a large work of mine from the field of computer music will be staged.
«Échos éloquents» to be staged in South Corea in 2023
I’m delighted to announce that my work Échos éloquents, composed for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola and violoncello has won an international call for scores launched by the renowned South Corean ensemble blank. The jury—consisting of the members of the ensemble—selected from nearly 150 submissions Eungjin Lee’s composition Geste I alongside my work. Both winning works will be played by the ensemble blank in the next season and will be recorded respectively. Moreover, the winners are awarded a cash prize, too.
Corea’s leading ensemble for contemporary music
ensemble blank was founded in 2015 by the composer and conductor Jaehyuck Choi, the pianist Da-hyun Chung, flutist Ji Weon Ryu and the percussionist Won Lee. In its concerts, the ensemble often combines classical masterworks and modern pieces. Vivaldi & Ligeti, Brahms & Furrer, or a wonderful programme entitled Definition of the Beauty where the audience was offered a subtle mixture of music by Messiaen, Pintscher, Furrer, Choi and Dalbavie contour quite an extraordinary curating—have a look at the ensemble’s concert history here, it’s absolutely remarkable.
In 2020 the young ensemble announced its first call for scores, this year being the third time such an opportunity was offered to composers under 35 years from all over the world.
About Échos éloquents
My successfully submitted piece was written in 2016 and premiered in the same year by the Schallfeld Ensemble in Graz. Back then I tried to compose a piece which has its climax far before its second half (one might typically try to avoid this as a composer). After having written a rather tradtional piano concerto before, I attempted to write a sort of concerto for a small ensemble with a cadenza somewhere in the middle and a rather long second half that functions a bit like a shadow of the first half (and thus being much longer). Of course the outcome deviates more or less from the original idea, however we can easily detect the two parts and the cadenza in (before) the middle when listening to this piece for the first time, I believe.
Being a concerto somehow, the music features many virtuous passages (not only with regard to the playing techniques but also harmonically). Besides it invokes many bell-like sounds (in many possible ways—I really love the sound of bells, plates, gongs and so forth) and also some melodic fragments that might be faintly reminiscent of a Chinese song.
To understand why I inwove such a pseudo-quotation we must have a look at the (already too) many versions of the piece. The version for 7 instruments was composed alongside a version where two Chinese instruments (pipa and erhu) were involved which was commissioned for a concert with the Klangforum in 2016 at the Konzerthaus in Vienna. Both versions are like Siamese twins (there are several differences nonetheless, thus the version with the Chinese instruments has got a different name, miroirs noirs, too). A few years later, in 2019, I have made a third version from the Échos for the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles in the course of the ‘tactus Young Composers’ Forum. They have made a great video of this version in which I have added a trombone and a guitar to the seven original instruments in Mons. I’d really like to recommend this recording (see YouTube player below).
Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles is playing «Échos éloquents» (Mons version for nine players).
A short piano piece of mine with the title four stars and one dark nebula was awarded the second prize at the 21st Ossietzky-Kompositionswettbewerb in Oldenburg, Germany. The successfully submitted works of this year’s composition will be premiered in the summer term next year at the University of Oldenburg that carried out the international composition competition.
This year’s prize in composition was awarded to works for experimentally played piano (with or without live electronics). The selected works should be of medium difficulty in order to be playable by talented music students.
I’m very happy that my submitted work could persuade the jury. In the recent years, several works of mine have been played by music students and I really believe that it is important for composers to be able to write high-class music that can be played also by musicians not yet specialised in contemporary music. It requires our scores to be notated in a very clear and appealing way at the first place, too. I do feel honoured that one of my works has now been quasi officially lauded for being especially eligible as an educational work.
Einladung zum [‘tactus] Young Composers’ Forum 2019
Eine internationale Jury wählte aus 94 Einsendungen vier Komponisten für eine Zusammenarbeit mit dem Brussels Philharmonic von 25. bis 27. November und weitere fünf Teilnehmer für das Composers’ Forum im belgischen Mons von 28. bis 30. November mit dem Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles.
Meine beide erfolgreichen Einreichungen werden im November in Brüssel und Mons zu hören sein. Das Forum findet alle zwei Jahre statt und ermöglicht KomponistInnen und HörerInnen den Reading Sessions bei freiem Eintritt beizuwohnen.
Beim 66. Internationalen Rostrum of Composers in Argentinien wurde «Catalogue des Arts et Métiers», von Ö1 aufgenommen beim ORF musikprotokoll, unter die 10 «recommended works» gewählt. Damit ist weltweites Airplay garantiert: Die 27 teilnehmenden öffentlich-rechtlichen Radiostationen präsentieren die prämierten Werke in ihren Sendungen. Somit ist das Rostrum die weltweit reichweitenstärkste Plattform für Aufnahmen zeitgenössischer Musik. Gewonnen hat mit Petra Strahovnik erstmals eine Einreichung aus Slowenien. Quelle: Ö1 via facebook
«Catalogue des Arts et Métiers» beim 66. International Rostrum of Composers
Zum 66. Mal findet 2019 das internationale Rostrum of Composers statt — in diesem Jahr erstmals außerhalb Europas in Bariloche, Argentinien. Das Forum des internationen Musikrats der UNESCO wurde 1949 gegründet. Über 30 Rundfunkanstalten nehmen auch in diesem Jahr am IRC und reichen jeweils aktuelle Aufnahmen in den letzten Jahren entstandener Kompositionen ein. Das IRC versteht sich als Forum der Vernetzung und des Austauschs zeitgenössischer Musik durch nationale Rundfunkanstalten auf internationaler Ebene und ist laut eigener Beschreibung die «wichtigste Plattform zur Förderung zeitgenössischer Musik via Radio mit etwa 800 Ausstrahlungen der ausgewählten Werke in der letzten Saison».
Für das diesjährige Rostrum of Composers wurde u.a. meine Komposition «Catalogue des Arts et Métiers» ausgewählt und durch den Radiosender Ö1 eingereicht. Die Aufnahme entstand im Rahmen des ORF musikprotokolls 2018 in der Grazer Helmut List Halle. Die Interpreten waren das Ensemble Zeitfluss unter der Leitung von Edo Micic. Die Erstausstrahlung des Konzertmitschnitts erfolgte in der von Rainer Elstner gestalteten Sendung «Zeit-Ton» am 9. Oktober 2018 in Ö1.
