Klangforum Wien – Musica nova Helsinki, 1.3.2023

Clara Iannotta: a stir among the stars, a making way (2022)
Sara Glojnaric: Pure bliss (2022)

Olga Neuwirth: Magic Flu-idity for solo flute and typewriter (2018)
Olga Neuwirth: Vampyrotheone (1995)

Open-minded, virtuosic in performance and aurally perceptive, Klangforum Wien – one of the internationally most renowned ensembles for contemporary music – devotes itself to the artistic interpretation and expansion of experiential space. A performance of Klangforum Wien is an event in the best sense of the word; it offers a sensual experience, immediate and inescapable; and the novelty in its music speaks, acts and beguiles.

Ever since it was founded by Beat Furrer in 1985, the ensemble – which, over the years, has received a great number of awards and distinctions – has written music history: It has presented around 600 world premières of works by composers from four continents; it boasts an extensive discography of more than 90 releases, appearing at the most important concert and opera venues, but also in the context of young, committed initiatives, and at the major music festivals in Europe, America and Asia. In a mutually rewarding collaboration with many of the world’s leading composers, the ensemble has formed a great number of formative artistic friendships. Since 2009, the musicians of Klangforum Wien have devoted themselves to sharing their comprehensive mastery of playing techniques and forms of expression with a new generation of artists in the context of their collective professorship at the University of Music, Graz.

Klangforum Wien is made up of 24 musicians from Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. From the start of the 2018/19 season until summer 2022, Bas Wiegers was Klangforum Wien’s Principal Guest Conductor, taking over from Sylvain Cambreling who, however, has maintained a close relationship with the ensemble as its Principal Guest Conductor Emeritus. Peter Paul Kainrath has been the ensemble’s new director since January 1, 2020.

Klangforum Wien has its own annual concert series at the Wiener Konzerthaus. Every year, the ensemble commissions composers and gives numerous world and territorial premieres. Honorary members of Klangforum Wien are George Aperghis, Sylvain Cambreling, Friedrich Cerha, Barbara Fränzen, Beat Furrer, Georg Friedrich Haas, Lothar Knessl, Bernhard Lang, Olga Neuwirth, Peter Oswald, Enno Poppe, Rebecca Saunders, Salvatore Sciarrino.

Elena Schwarz, conductor
Vera Fischer, flute
Daniel Dundus, saxophone
Michele Marelli, clarinet
Samuel Toro Pérez, electric guitar
Lukas Schiske, type writer

Peter Böhm, principal

KLANGFORUM WIEN
Vera Fischer, flute
Martha Effe, flute
Ivana Nikolic, oboe
Ettori Biagi, clarinet
Anna Koch, clarinet
Michele Marelli, clarinet
Daniel Dundus, saxophone
Edurne Santos, bassoon
Christoph Walder, horn
Anders Nyqvist, trumpet
Michael Büttler, trombone
József Bazsinka, tuba
Tina Žerdin, harp
Krassimir Sterev, accordion
Samuel Toro Pérez, electric guitar
Florian Müller, Klavier, celesta
Jan Satler, electric organ, keyboard
Lukas Schiske, percussion
Alex Lipowski, percussion
Gunde Jäch-Micko, violin
Annette Bik, violin
Paul Beckett, viola
Ulrich Mertin, viola
Benedikt Leitner, cello
Andreas Lindenbaum, cello
John Eckhardt, double bass
Aleksi Ruonavaara, double bass

Swiss-Australian conductor, Elena Schwarz is rapidly gaining a reputation for her musical vision, versatility and insightful interpretations. With regular invitations from orchestras such as the WDR Sinfonieorchester and BBC Philharmonic, her re-invitations in the 2022/23 season also include the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and South Netherlands Philharmonic.

Widely admired for her advocacy of new music, she has conducted world premiere performances by Peter Eötvös and George Aperghis and works regularly with specialist contemporary ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Intercontemporain, and the Luzern Festival Contemporary Orchestra conducting works by George Benjamin, Thomas Adès, Arnulf Herrmann, Olga Neuwirth, Lisa Streich and Francesco Filidei amongst others.
Full bio »

Clara Iannotta (1983) is an Italian composer and curator based in Berlin. Her music is commissioned and performed by renowned ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including Arditti, Quatuor Diotima, Ensemble Intercontemporain, JACK, Klangforum Wien, Neue Vocalsolisten, Münchener Kammerorchester, Nikel, WDR, RSO Wien, and SWR Orchestra.

Iannotta has been a fellow of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD in 2013, Villa Médicis (Académie de France à Rome) in 2018–19, and the recipient of several prizes including the Ernst von Siemens Composers’ Prize 2018, Hindemith-Preis 2018, Una Vita nella Musica Giovani 2019, Premio Abbiati 2021. Her three portrait albums A Failed Entertainment (Edition RZ), Earthing (Wergo), and Moult (Kairos) were all awarded a place on the Bestenliste der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics’ Award). She is a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Since 2014, Iannotta has been the artistic director of the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik.

Sara Glojnarić (1991) is a composer whose artistic practice is dealing with pop culture, its aesthetics and socio-political consequences, nostalgia and collective memory, as well as the vast network of pop cultural data and their byproducts arising through their juxtaposition.

Her works, which include opera, orchestral, and chamber music pieces, as well as video works and multimedia and multi-sensory installations, have been performed by renowned ensembles such as Ensemble Musikfabrik, Trio Catch, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Mosaik, Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Trio Catch, Sarah Maria Sun, Dirk Rothbrust, Ensemble Mimitabu, Rubiks Collective, Decoder Ensemble, The Black Page Orchestra, Croatian Radio Symphony Orchestra and many others, at festivals such as ECLAT Festival Stuttgart, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Ultraschall Festival Berlin, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Showroom of Contemporary Sound, Warsaw Autumn and Music Biennale Zagreb.

Olga Neuwirth (1968) is internationally renowned for the versatility of her musical statement that pushes boundaries to explore the possibilities of renewal and chart the unknown. Her output over the past 30 years has made her one of the most celebrated personalities in the contemporary art world. Her genre-crossing works, which cannot be associated with any one school, are free and uninhibited. In many works she fuses live-musicians, electronics and video into audio-visual experiences and calls her main aesthetics an “Art-in-between”.

Born in Graz, Austria, Neuwirth studied at the Academy of Music in Vienna and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. During her stay in the States she also attended an art college, where she studied painting and film. She first burst onto the international scene in 1991, at the age of 22, when two of her mini-operas were performed at the Wiener Festwochen. Ever since her works have been presented worldwide. With Nobel Prize winning novelist Elfriede Jelinek she has created two radio plays and three operas. Her opera Lost Highway, based on the film by David Lynch, premiered in 2003 and won a South Bank Show Award for the production presented by English National Opera at the Young Vic in 2008. Her opera Orlando after Virginia Woolf was premiered at the Vienna State Opera in December 2019 with huge international success. She was the first-ever woman to be commissioned by the Vienna State Opera in the 150 year history of the house.