PRESS RELEASE
What can be the starting point for a musical composition? The human voice, a single tone, sounds from the surrounding environment, a synthesizer or an algorithm? Where does the composer end and technology begin? The festival Exposition of New Music will offer answers to these questions; this year’s edition bears the subtitle Ars Spectrum. “People can look forward to a six-day exploration of the world of spectral music. Among other things, spectralists draw on the acoustic properties of sound itself and use them as a starting point for harmony, instrumentation and musical form. It could be said that they focus on the tone itself, its inner structure, spectrum and transformations over time. Audiences can look forward to the music of predecessors of spectral thinking, such as Giacinto Scelsi, through the work of Tristan Murail and Fausto Romitelli, all the way to contemporary live electronics and algorithmic composition,” said Marie Kučerová, Director of Filharmonie Brno, which organises the festival.
The theme of spectral music was chosen for the festival’s 38th edition by its new dramaturg Otto Wanke. “For me, spectralism is not just a historical musical movement, but above all a way of thinking about sound and how we perceive it. Here, timbre can transform into harmony, the inner structure of a single tone can develop into an extensive musical form, and electronics, improvisation and new technologies are also entering these processes today. The individual concerts therefore show very different forms of spectral thinking – from solo and chamber music through a large orchestra to installations and algorithmic composition,” explained Wanke.
The opening evening on Saturday 3 October will offer an extraordinary experience combining music, video and light with the aesthetics of psychedelic rock, noise and electronic music. All this in the underground car park near Brno’s Bobycentrum. The programme of the concert An Index of Metals features the eponymous work by Italian composer Fausto Romitelli. His monumental video opera is, in the words of its author, intended to be a “total perceptual experience” in which sound, image and light merge into a single stream leading to a hypnotic trance. The work will be performed by soprano Kaoko Amano and BCO – Brno Contemporary Orchestra. The opera will be preceded by Michal Rataj’s composition A Game of Chess, which was commissioned by the orchestra. “The musical exchange between two groups of players imaginatively connected by the piano can be full of surprising twists and turns as well as silence, tension and release. Ultimately, however, it is mainly the chess players who, through the dynamics of their game, move the entire ensemble forward through musical time,” Rataj described his work.
Sunday’s concert by the string quartet Fama Q, From Scelsi to Post-Spectralism, will present the work of several generations of composers united by a fascination with timbre and the inner structure of sound. Giacinto Scelsi was able to focus attention in his music on a single tone and its constant transformations – a principle that later had a fundamental influence on spectral thinking and composers such as Jonathan Harvey, Kaija Saariaho, Georg Friedrich Haas and Franck Bedrossian. In addition, the concert will also feature the composition Periphéria by Jan Kavan, which was commissioned by the festival. “When we focus on a single tone, we suddenly discover that there is an entire world inside it. Spectral composers began to explore this world much as we look through a microscope – not in order to find something we already know, but to discover something new,” Wanke describes the principle behind the work of spectralists.
One of the highlights of the festival will be Monday evening’s Music, Mind and Machine, which will place two radically different approaches to working with electronics side by side. Karlheinz Essl, a pioneer of algorithmic composition, will present live electronics and modular synthesizers, including several world premieres. Polish composer and performer Franciszek Araszkiewicz will then transform human brain activity into electronic sound in real time in his performance Deep Thought. Both projects are connected by the question of how technology can enter directly into the creation of music. In Essl’s case, electronic sound is shaped through algorithmic processes and real-time interaction, while Araszkiewicz incorporates data obtained from human brain activity into the musical process. The evening thus confronts two different relationships between humans, machines and musical decision-making. “Order and chaos are not opposites, but different forms of the same thing,” says Essl. According to him, the creative process can take place precisely between these two poles. His performance thus fits into one of the main themes of this year’s Exposition: technology is not merely a means of reproducing finished music. It becomes an active part of the creative process.
Tuesday evening’s Specula Sonorum will offer a journey from the inner world of a single sound through the noises of everyday surroundings to mutual listening among improvising musicians. In Tenney’s In a Large, Open Space, the audience will be able to move freely among the performers and observe the transformations of a single harmonic spectrum from different places within the space. Ablinger’s composition Outside, on the other hand, will let the sounds of the surroundings of Besední dům into the concert hall, to which the musicians will respond immediately. The evening will culminate in an extensive collective improvisation led by Venezuelan composer, turntablist and performer Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, in which Romanian singer Claudia Cervenca, the ensemble Dust in the Groove and other guest musicians will meet. The resulting musical form will emerge directly from mutual listening, spontaneous reactions and the interweaving of different musical experiences.
On Wednesday 7 October, the festival will focus on Tristan Murail and his view of the piano as a complex sonic organism. In a performance by pianist Marek Keprt, Murail’s compositions will be heard together with the world premiere of three interludes by Keprt. The programme will be complemented by a composition by Daniel Oliver Moser and the premiere of a new composition by Dan Dlouhý, which works with contemporary algorithmic and computer-assisted procedures. In Murail’s music, according to the festival’s dramaturgical concept, the piano becomes not only an instrument but also an object of investigation. The focus is on resonances and hidden processes that create musical form within sound. Electronics then further expand its acoustic possibilities.
The festival will culminate on 8 October with the concert Partiels. The organising orchestra Filharmonie Brno, conducted by Polish conductor Szymon Bywalec, will perform four works that fundamentally influenced the development of spectral music in the second half of the 20th century: Scelsi’s Quattro pezzi su una nota sola, Grisey’s Partiels, Murail’s Désintégrations and Vivier’s Lonely Child. The soloist will be French soprano Donatienne Michel-Dansac, one of the leading interpreters of contemporary music. Grisey’s Partiels and Murail’s Désintégrations in particular are among the iconic works of spectralism. Their authors were members of the ensemble L’Itinéraire, whose work fundamentally transformed traditional ideas about harmony, form and orchestration and turned attention towards the physical nature of sound.
Ars Spectrum will also extend into public space this year. Two site-specific works by Filip Dobrocký will be accessible throughout the festival. Hear will offer a sonic walk through Špilberk Park, while Ecosystem 2.0 in the foyer of Besední dům will create a network of fictional organisms that communicate with one another through musical patterns. Their behaviour is influenced by a wireless network, creating a dynamic system in which sound structures continuously change through communication, mutation and adaptation.
The festival takes place from 3 to 8 October, all concerts begin at 7 pm at Besední dům, the only exception being the opening concert, which takes place at UnderZone Garage on Drobného Street.
Tickets are available online on the Filharmonie Brno website, in advance or at the venue before the event. Those interested can create their own Festival na míru, which works so that the more concerts they attend, the greater the discount they receive.
The complete festival programme can be found here.
The festival catalogue can be downloaded here.
From this year’s 38th edition, the festival’s dramaturgy is taken over by Otto Wanke and Matej Sloboda, who will alternate in preparing the programmes. This year’s edition was prepared by Otto Wanke (1989), a Czech composer based in Vienna. In his work, he combines vocal-instrumental composition with electronics, multimedia and sound art. He studied composition at mdw and KONS in Vienna, completing his studies with a doctorate focusing on spectral music. From 2018 to 2023, he worked as an assistant at the Institute of Ethnomusicology at mdw. Since 2020, he has taught composition at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. Following successes in international competitions – including the Frederic Mompou Award in Spain, FIMS in Switzerland, the Nikolaus Fheodoroff Kompositionspreis and the Theodor Körner Preis in Austria – his music has been performed at festivals such as Ars Electronica, Acht Brücken, Carinthian Summer, Visiones Sonoras and Wien Modern, as well as at the National Opera in Warsaw and ZKM Karlsruhe. His compositions have been performed by renowned ensembles, orchestras and soloists, including PHACE, OENM, Grafenegg Symphony Orchestra, Lars Mlekusch, Wolfgang Mitterer, Yuri Revich and Paul Gulda. His work is published by Verlag Neue Musik Berlin. Alongside composing, he is also active as an electronic music performer and works in improvisation.
Media contact: Mgr. Kateřina Konečná, Head of PR and Marketing, Filharmonie Brno, +420 775 426 040, katerina.konecna@filharmonie-brno.cz
