Olga Neuwirth is featured composer in Stockholm
Stockholm’s Tonsättarfestival focuses on the music of Olga Neuwirth in November, including the Swedish premiere of her recent orchestral work Dreydl, featuring the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.
Olga Neuwirth travels to Stockholm this month as featured composer at the annual Tonsattarfestival festival at the Konserthuset. Running between 24 and 27 November, the collection of events includes 13 works by the Austrian composer including a world premiere and a number of Swedish premieres. Performers include the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and the Quatuor Diotima.
As a prelude to the opening concert on 24 November, Olga Neuwirth is interviewed by music journalist Sofia Nyblom. The evening programme includes the Swedish premiere of Neuwirth’s recent orchestral work Dreydl, whose title alludes to the incessant dancing of a spinning top. The composer describes how “as with dice, the dreydl is a game of chance… the continuous rhythmic patterns are used to underline the fatal circularity of destiny such as we have experienced during the two years of the pandemic – where time has been suspended and nobody knows what the future will bring.”
Other highlights of the opening programme include a new work EVVIVA! celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, the Mahler tribute Masaot/Clocks without Hands, and Keyframes for a Hippogriff (all published by Ricordi). Baldur Bonnimann conducts the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra with countertenor Andrew Watts, trumpeter Joakim Agnas and the Stockholm Boys’ Choir. The concert is repeated on 26 November.
Two concertos are combined in the concert by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra under Stefan Asbury on 25 November. The piano concerto_locus…doublure…solus_, dating from 2001, features Nicolas Hodges as soloist, moving through seven tableaux emphasizing different aspects of pianism, while Robyn Schulkowsky is solo percussionist in Trurliade – Zone Zero (published by Ricordi).
Quatuor Diotima’s programme on 27 November includes the Swedish premiere of Neuwirth’s string quartet in the realms of the unreal, a homage to the American artist Henry Darger. The concert offers a selection of chamber music including her new work for quartet and sampler, Georg Baselitz, premiered at Wien Modern earlier this month.
Further Neuwirth performances in Sweden over coming months include the double concerto According to What with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra in Orebro (26 January) and the viola concerto_ Remnants of songs… an Amphigory_ with soloist Ellen Nisbeth and the Norrlandsopera Orchestra in Umea (9 February). On 23 April According to What travels to the Cité de la Musique in Paris for its French premiere with soloists cellist Tanja Tetzlaff and percussionist Hans Kristian Kjos Sorensen and the Orchestre de chambre de Paris.
> Further information on Work: Dreydl
Photo: Harald Hoffmann