30 YEARS OF WIENER MUSIK GALERIE
FRANZ KOGLMANN AT THE FOCUS
Saturday, 24 November 2012, 8 p.m.
ORF RadioKulturhaus Grosser Sendesaal
DAYS OF YORE
for cello and piano (2003)
Florian Kitt, cello
Aima Maria Labra-Makk, piano
When women’s dresses still rustled: Days of Yore is both a walk down memory lane and a new take from a here-and-now perspective. The memory chamber resonates with Debussy’s ninth chords as well as with 1940s Birth-of-the-cool sessions. All of this seen through the prism of a contemporary sensitivity that has learned its lessons from the revolutions of past decades. Tempi passati, tempi moderni: a dialectic exchange between past and present. Condensed and concentrated in a chamber-music vignette between impressionism and a cool that takes one directly to a road going anywhere: come out into the open, friend!
After performances throughout the world by Florian Kitt, to whom the composition has been dedicated, the piece will now see its Viennese premiere.
BIX AND THE BOYS
Four songs after poems by Ronald Pohl (2012) world premiere
Martina Claussen, mezzosoprano
Josef Mayr, piano
An aspect that is shared by the three iconic jazz trumpeters Bix Beiderbecke, Miles Davis and Chet Baker is their supreme sense of sound. Their cool statements that reverberate with yearning, suffering and beauty not only reflect a deep awareness of the fragmented and brittle nature of Modernism. It is also the very myth of the USA which they emphatically endorse and subtly deconstruct in their delicately timbred excursions. Fragments, particles and miniatures from a reality both complex and contradictory. Connected by the logic of dreams and the surreal evocation of all-too-human inadequacies: four poems as the product of an explorative journey into the bruised, midnight-blue heart of the USA.
NIGHT DRIVE
Concerto grosso for chamber orchestra (2011)
exxj - ensemble xx. jahrhundert
conductor: Peter Burwik
The concerto grosso was composed last year for Peter Burwik’s exxj - ensemble xx. jahrhundert and premiered in the context of an anniversary concert.
NIGHT DRIVE was born from the interval of the perfect fourth. This interval – which we all know from police and fire-fighting sirens – is the one motif everything else is derived from. And we hear it in the context of an audio-movie or an acoustic video clip. Perhaps we feel that we are listening to a midnight drive on Vienna's Gürtel beltway ; it is not a mimetic soundtrack, but a passage full of tiny allusions, contrasts and disturbing noises. Cruising along a boulevard between red-light hues and flashing blue lights. The stark contrasts between light and dark and the abrupt changes in rhythm between allegro, adagio and presto are invested with a magic all their own.
NIGHT DRIVE is jazzy without being jazz. A dance of syncopation and at the same time a concerto grosso for chamber orchestra. Form, function and intuition. The clichés of jazz are taken at face value and turned against themselves with relish: Drive all night, to get away from it all.
BÖRSENKONZERT (Stock Exchange Concert)
For voice, ensemble and screens (2012) world premiere
Text: Alfred Zellinger
Markus Hering, voice
Franz Koglmann, trumpet, flugelhorn
Attila Pasztor, cello
Robert Brunnlechner, bassoon, contrabassoon
Günter 'Baby' Sommer, drums
In the second part of the concert, Franz Koglmann presents the world premiere of Börsenkonzert by Alfred Zellinger. A former banker, Zellinger describes dramatic days at the trading floor in times of crisis: Tokyo 11/3/11, when the great earthquake struck and a trader, profit maximisation uppermost in his mind, continues working to the close of trading while the ground is shaking; City of London 8/8/11, when Moody's had just downgraded the USA and a day trader was waiting for the world to end; and in between Frankfurt stock exchange 3/11/11, when the G20 met and the crisis in Greece reached another climax. The musical form corresponds to the plot. The musicians perform modern-day stock charts: “a music of co-ordinates” in which the co-ordinates of the charts replace traditional musical scores ...
1. Satz: DIE LETZTE VIERTELSTUNDE / 1st Movement: THE LAST FIFTEEN MINUTES
TOKYO STOCKEXCHANGE 11/3/2011
2. Satz: EIN BÖRSENTAG / 2nd Movement: A DAY AT THE STOCK EXCHANGE
FRANKFURT 3/11/2011
3. Satz: DAYTRADER’S WEEK / 3rd Movement: DAYTRADER’S WEEK
LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE 8 - 12/8/2011
All compositions by Franz Koglmann
Presentation: Irene Suchy