From Stefan Schubert’s Tour Diary, USA 2010 (www.williresetarits.at)
March 25, 2010
The bus trip to New York offers little scenic variation. For hours, we traverse monotonous deciduous forests (dismally leafless at this time of the year), but they take on a certain degree of enchantment when you imagine that barely 200 years ago painted Indians (members of the Huron tribe) prowled through these woods trying to get the better of good old Leatherstocking.
Then it’s Newark Airport to the left and a garbage-dump-like industrial landscape to the right with the NYC skyline rising up behind it. The sight of it takes our breath away, and even our ever-eloquent vocalist is so awed that for the span of several minutes he drops into silence (otherwise not one of his greatest virtues).
Manhattan, an island, has to bear the weight of all these concrete blocks! Venice should take it as an example. Then we drive in and the Moloch devours us whole. We see the sky for the last time (on this day). Between the hotel and the soundcheck, we have about 25 minutes for sightseeing – luckily we’ve seen most of the stuff on television.
The Austrian Cultural Forum, where we’ll be playing, is one of the ten most important architectural achievements on the planet (1: Vienna’s Riesenrad Ferris wheel, 2: Empire State Building, 3: Arlberg Tunnel, ... 8: Austrian Cultural Forum, and so on). It’s a wonder it’s not built more stably – it sways noticeably on the 16th floor. But the most remarkable thing about Manhattan is that even air space costs money here. In this place, it’s not enough to buy a two-dimensional lot (square footage). Without the airspace above it (cubic footage), it will get you nowhere, because you can’t build into airspace that doesn’t belong to you. The clever Onassis (so aptly bearing the first name Aristotle) snapped up his neighbors’ airspace from the 10th floor upward because he didn’t want to have the Kennedys looking into his bedroom. One thing to take in mind is that it’s not enough to buy a thin layer of airspace, say, an amount you could measure in cubic inches. You have to take everything, almost up to the moon!
We get over our fatigue and give a good performance. One person comes up to us and emphatically insists that “if you wanna make it in the States, you have to sing in English.” Never mind that. Most people in the audience thank us with tears in their eyes.
Afterwards we come together and go back to the hotel, where we listen to the unfamiliar sounds of the Big Apple as we drift off into sleep.
If it’s Thursday, it must be New York ...
Postscript: Everything is much bigger here, and the biggest of all are the steaks courtesy of the wonderful Johannes, another first-class attaché on this journey that is not exactly short of attachés. We ate a whole bison in a single sitting, sewed a tent with the skin, and made a great set of bass strings for Klaus out of the nerves and sinews.
Video clips by Daniel Pi.
The "Neue Wiener Concert Schrammeln" are considered a fresh breeze that sweeps through Viennese music within the genre of chamber music. The four members of the ensemble combine elegance and Viennese charm to make their sensitive interpretations of original Schrammel music. The musical understanding and the virtuosity of each musician, and their modern approach allows the ensemble to make every facet of concert Schrammel music come alive.
Like the Tango, Fado, or Rembetiko, "Schrammel music" developed in a city and contains elements of both folk music and composed music. It is a style of Viennese folk music originating in the late nineteenth century and still performed in present-day Austria. The style is named for the prolific folk composers Johann and Josef Schrammel.
The RadioKulturhaus characterizes the "Neue Wiener Concert Schrammeln" as "some of the best that this city of music has to offer". On June 7, 2010, they performed in the Theater of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York with DJ Christopher Just, who offered up some live re-mixes of their music.
AUDIO TRACKS FROM THE CONCERT AT THE ACFNY
Track #1
Track #2
Works by Fabien Lévy performed by the Argento Chamber Ensemble
by Simona Sivkoff
On June 4th, 2010 the Austrian Cultural Forum enjoyed a full house presenting the works of the renowned French composer Fabien Lévy performed by the Argento Chamber Ensemble. The New York audience, which also included a large number of Lévy’s own students, was immediately captivated by his music that with its “particular intensity and inventiveness, occupies an aesthetically unique position” as the musicologist Joël-Marie Fauquet aptly observed.
Argento Chamber Ensemble gave a virtuoso performance of Lévy’s highly challenging oeuvre and especially impressive that evening was the American premiere of à peu près de for two trumpets. The piece required removing parts of the trumpets, adding another layer of complexity to the musicians’ performance. Both trumpet players engaged in a beautifully choreographed stage performance which gave the piece visual movement and even greater originality. Having the composer attend in person was a great opportunity to try to find out how these pieces originated and what influenced them. Lydia Rilling, a graduate student in music, discussed with Fabien Lévy the intricacy of the world of composition, the challenging process of creation, and Lévy’s future musical engagements. The evening concluded with a reception at the ACF at which the audience had a chance to meet and talk to Fabien Lévy and the musicians from the Argento ensemble.
- Christian Fennesz, by Katja Moritz
a festival devoted to sound and its roles in contemporary music
THURSDAY SEP 02 - SUNDAY SEP 05
Austrian Cultural Forum New York
by Katja Moritz
Four days of music, visual media and aesthetic dialogue, where numerous musicians demonstrate the relationship of music and sound, create new music theories and transform music genres live on stage: this is what the annual Moving Sounds Festival is all about. Presented by the Austrian Cultural Forum, in cooperation with the Argento New Music Project, Mica Music Austria, and the Czech Center, the festival investigated the phenomena of sound by pairing leading contemporary classical music performers with electronic and alternative performers.
The festival kicked off with a world premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas' piece "ATTHIS" - a composition about the suffering for love, and anxiety over separation - performed by the Argento Chamber Ensemble, the performance arm of the Argento New Music Project. Georg Friedrich Haas' music had a central role at this year's Moving Sounds Festival and was extremely well received by the audience and media. Steve Smith of The New York Times described the opening as a “spurt of babbling winds fused into a throbbing microtonal mass, buffeted and lofted by shivering strings.”
In his article “Let there be Haas” Alex Ross of The New Yorker described him as “an artist who has no interest in playing intellectual games but who instead has something absolutely essential to express.” What Ross finds “especially compelling in Haas's music is its visceral feeling for the elemental ebb and flow of sound, as if the composer were translating into instrumental or vocal terms the aural storms and surges that you find in nature.”
Haas' composition "string quartet #3, performed by the rising stars known as the JACK quartet at the festival's finale on Sunday Sept. 5, was particularly appreciated and received standing ovations by the audience. For this particular composition the theatre of the Austrian Cultural Forum was completely sealed up, so that the piece could be performed in the dark, which in turn facilitated a different and innovative way of listening. Allan Kozinn of The New York Times mentioned that “it would be hard to think of a more involving way to hear a new work,” than “in the darkness, with sounds coming from every direction,” where “you focused fully on every tone and texture, and your imagination forced the episodic piece to coalesce into a singular, visceral statement.” Harry Rolnick of concertonet.com described the concert in his article “Darkness on 52nd Street”; he found that “the work began to show its ebony treasures“, “once one got in the spirit of the thing – and once one simply wondered at the marvels of the JACK String Quartet.”
An equally memorable performance within Moving Sounds 2010 took place on Saturday, Sept. 4th, when the festival moved to Greenwich Village and three bands took to the stage Le Poisson Rouge that couldn’t be any more musically different. Due East started the evening off with their very unique and esoterical folk performance with percussion, flute and electronic sounds. The club was packed and the audience was curious when the stage then turned completely dark and sounds of grunting pigs mixed with electronic beats blasted out of the speakers: Anja Plaschg aka Soap&Skin entered the stage. The combination of her piano playing, background mixes from her laptop and her haunting voice hooked the audience for the next 60 minutes, when she presented songs from her album "Lovetune for Vacuum". Soap&Skin sang - at moments even screamed - the misery and beauty out of her body, while she played soulful and intense melodies on her piano, accompanied by electronic and orchestral sounds.
Christian Lehner of Austrian radio FM4 found her concert “beautiful, infatuating and stirring”, and described the entire evening as “superb”. He went on to deign the final musician and headliner of the night Christian Fennesz as “the most successful Austrian Pop and Avant-garde musician in the USA”. Indeed, Christian Fennesz’ works have caused international sensations, with their frequent combination of classical microphone recordings, made in special rooms, with synthesized sounds. With this method of working Christian Fennesz created his own musical world that night, in which the audience could fully immerse themselves. He combined compositions for guitar with ambient sounds and electronic effects and presented a concert filled with multilayered and flowing musical creations - “moving sounds”, so to speak.
Idea/conception/direction: Andreas Stadler
Curator: Michel Galante
Festival Coordination: Martina Laab
Festival Coordination Assistance: Katja Moritz
Co-Presenters: ACFNY, mica, Czech Center and Le Poisson Rouge
MOVING SOUNDS PREVIEW VIDEO
The Argento Ensemble, Georg Friedrich Haas and Steven Takasugi at the ACFNY
Photos by Katja Moritz
The Argento Chamber Ensemble performs with Victor Adan's spatialized Installation, and Edmund Campion at the Czech Center
Photos by Katja Moritz
Soap&Skin performs at Le Poisson Rouge
Photos by Katja Moritz
Photos of Christian Fennesz performing at Le Poisson Rouge
Photos by Katja Moritz
Audio Tracks from the performance
Christian Fennesz performs at Le Poisson Rouge on September 4, 2010
Another Track by Fennesz at Le Poisson Rouge
Photos of Due East in performance at Le Poisson Rouge
by Katja Moritz
Audio Tracks from the performance
Due East perform at Le Poisson Rouge, September 4, 2010
Another track of Due East at Le Poisson Rouge
July 10, 2010
by Katja Moritz
The four members of the radio.string.quartet.vienna, Bernie Mallinger (violin), Johannes Dickbauer (vioin), Cynthia Liao (viola) and Asja Valcic (cello), took to the stage of the Austrian Cultural Forum on the 10th of July, 2010 and gave a fascinating and entertaining concert before a thoroughly enthralled audience.The “radio” in the quartet’s name stands for contemporary, multifaceted music as well as for entertainment. They demonstrate their uniqueness by playing works from McLaughlin’s thrilling 70’s electric jazz band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and giving much attention to the details and structure of the original compositions. The quartet presented a varied and energetic program, that captured everybody's attention from beginning to end. While the powerful, joyful, and harmonious appearance of the four members helped to make the concert unique - it was their tremendous musical skills, that amazed the audience and was appreciated with rousing applause.
AUDIO TRACKS FROM THE CONCERT AT THE ACFNY
Track #1
Track #2
On June 17 2010, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York hosted a concert by the Momenta Quartet featuring Hungarian violinist Édua Zádory and works by Austrian Composer Johanna Doderer. Johanna Doderer who studied composition in Graz and Vienna and specialized in composition for film and media, creates excitement by using sounds modeled on the late romantic period which she links to minimal and modern music.
The evening included a performance of her piece “Wutmarsch” which was first released as a composition for piano-solo in 2008. Johanna Doderer’s inspiration for the composition came from the novel “The Merovingians or the Total Family” written by her granduncle, Austrian author Heimito von Doderer (“The Strudelhof Steps”, 1941). For the program at the ACFNY Doderer embedded “Wutmarsch” in the performances of other works composed for violin solo, piano, and strings.
The musical part of the evening began with a violin solo by Édua Zádory, who in 2007 performed the world premiere of that piece, which Doderer dedicated to her. The solo was followed by Momenta Quartet´s piano trio. Violinist Zádory and pianist Blair McMillen performed Doderers piece “Wutmarsch”, followed by a piece for string quintet (two violins, viola and two celli) performed by members of the Momenta Quartet.
Johanna Doderer’s conversation with musicologist and journalist Lydia Rilling was also part of the event. Lydia Rilling studied musicology and comparative literary in Berlin, Paris, and St. Louis and currently works as an author and moderator for the Südwestrundfunk, the Berliner Philharmonics and the Komische Oper Berlin.
Lydia Rilling spoke to Esther Mlenek recently, and talked about her conversation with Doderer at the event.
EM: Did you learn anything new about Johanna Doderer and her work when you interviewed her at the Austrian Cultural Forum?
LR: I was surprised to discover how much she focuses on the immediate musical material and its expressive effect. Moreover, I was intrigued by the degree to which she separates herself from the current developments of contemporary music.
EM: What associations do you have with Johanna Doderer’s music and where would you place her oeuvre within the framework of today’s musical world?
LR: Johanna Doderer’s work is part of a tendency that seeks to return to the tradition of tonal music. Composers like Doderer take a decided turn away from the developments of the avant-garde movements after 1945. Instead she draws upon musical aesthetics and techniques from earlier eras and by doing so avoids the notion of musical “progress”. For Doderer, music is a means of subjective and deeply emotional expression of the composer’s personality.
EM: Doderer says that through her compositions she doesn´t want to provoke, she wants to evoke emotions. For you as a musicologist, would you say it is important for modern music to offer political or social critique?
LR: If the composer wants his or her music to be part of contemporary society, the music necessarily must position itself within this society and therefore also take a position regarding social and political issues. But this position does not need to take an obvious form. To be provocative is not in itself more political than to avoid provocation. There is no “safe place” outside of contemporary society, so trying to find one is a statement in itself.
