Klangforum Wien, Elena Schwarz

One of the most prestigious contemporary music ensembles in Central Europe, Klangforum Wien challenges and inspires with its candid, brave and creative approach. The ensemble collaborates with some of the most significant contemporary composers in Europe. Helsinki Festival brings Klangforum Wien to Finland in full force for the first time and opens the festival with a titillating programme. The ensemble consisting of top soloist chamber musicians is conducted in Helsinki by Elena Schwarz, whose contemporary music interpretations have been highly praised.

Sara Glojnaric’s Pure Bliss (2022) sends chills down your spine through its exploration of tonal pleasure, prolonged ecstasy and pure bliss.

Written for Klangforum Wien, Clara Iannotta’s a stir among stars, a making way (2022) is a new version of the composer’s orchestral work MOULT (2018–19), which was inspired by the moulting of a spider – a physically-demanding, dangerous yet vital process that takes place a couple of times during the spider’s lifecycle, during which the animal stops breathing and is particularly vulnerable for some time. The double temporality of the cast-off ghost of a shell and the renewed animal makes us confront the past within the movement of the present. The composer has imagined the orchestra as an animal that can shed its skin, thereby shedding pasts that continue to haunt the form of the piece.

The concert ends with Olga Neuwirth’s fairly early work Vampyrotheone (1995), in which the listener is subjected to a mix of the most heterogeneous sonic events and Neuwirth’s unorthodox way of using familiar instruments. Pitch, timbre, gestures and movements – all the features through which a listener’s senses may focus on a particular instrument – fade and are washed away. Neuwirth’s Magic Flu-idity for Solo flute and typewriter (2018) uses an Olivetti typewriter. Unpredictable developments result in a certain disorder, but her music unfolds organically, rampantly, leading to a strange, unusual, particular equation, the solution of which lies in itself.

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)