Music Information Center Austria (MICA) is the Austrian partner in the project, while the active concert performance of the project is represented by Klangforum Wien and the Ensemble Reconsil. The project’s extrovert activity consists in the 22 participating European ensembles exchange repertoire, so that the ensembles and their audiences become acquainted with new – thoroughly selected – European works.
All ensembles in the project have committed to select and recommend at least 8 pieces of newly composed music from their national repertoire. Both Austrian ensembles have reacted to an appeal of adding more works if possible, and the total number of added Austrian works in the RE:NEW MUSIC “repertoire pool” is therefore 27 works.
From a national point of view, one of the benefits of the project is that national pieces of music are performed outside the country – often for the first time. Each country so to say “exports” a number of music pieces, and in the case of Austria this goes for 7 works (by 6 different composers), that have been chosen by 6 different ensembles.
3 of the 7 works have been chosen by 2 different ensembles, which means that there have been a total of 10 unique choices (and performances) of Austrian music. Scandinavia is the place where the Austrian music have had the greatest “success” as 9 of the 10 performances have taken place in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Notice that the Swedish KammerensembleN have been particularly fond of Austrian music, choosing 3 Austrian pieces out of their total of 4 RE:NEW performances.
In most cases where pieces of Austrian music have been played abroad, the composer have travelled along with the piece and rehearsed the music at a workshop with the performing ensemble. In several cases the travelling composer have also given a master class, talked at a seminar, presented the music to the concert audience or done some other activity.
Performances in Europe of Austrian works
Beat Furrer, Still, Esbjerg Ensemble, Denmark
Beat Furrer, Still, Uusinta Chamber Ensemble, Finland
Beat Furrer, Spur Uusinta Chamber Ensemble, Finland
Beat Furrer, Spur Court-Circuit, France
Georg Friedrich Haas, String Quartet No.5, Cikada Ensemble, Norway
Klaus Lang, The book of serenity, Oslo Sinfonietta, Norway
Norbert Sterk, Die Ankunft des Atemzugs, Oslo Sinfonietta, Norway
Norbert Sterk, Die Ankunft des Atemzugs, KammerensembleN, Sweden
Roland Freisitzer, Music for flute and five musicians, KammerensembleN, Sweden
Olga Neuwirth, Construction in Space, KammerensembleN, Sweden
This way of letting the composer help “implementing” the music in the foreign country is a core activity of the RE:NEW MUSIC project. Each country in the project has also “imported” some works, as its two ensembles have chosen works from the repertoire pool to be played in the ensembles’ own country.
The ensembles have each been committed to play 4 works from the pool, whereby their country/ensembles in all have “imports” 8 foreign pieces. In the case of Austria this number is in fact 11, as Ensemble Reconsil – by special agreement with RE:NEW – took upon them to give an extra concert featuring some of the rarely chosen works of the RE:NEW repertoire pool.
Performances by the Austrian ensembles
Klangforum Wien, Simon Holt, Lilith, UK
Klangforum Wien, Allain Gaussin, L’harmonie des sphères, France
Klangforum Wien, Jon Øivind Ness, Interrupted Cycles, Norway
Klangforum Wien, Marc-André Dalbavie, La marche des transitoires, France
Ensemble Reconsil, Bent Sørensen, Ständchen, Denmark
Ensemble Reconsil, Pawel Szymanski, Appendix, Poland
Ensemble Reconsil, Lotta Wennakösk, Kule, Finland
Ensemble Reconsil, Marko Ruždjak, Prudent Views of My Love Passing by the Season, Croatia
Ensemble Reconsil, Mirela Ivicevic, Dominosa FF00FF, Croatia
Ensemble Reconsil, Petra Oliveira-Bachratá, Subjective Risk……, Slovakia
Ensemble Reconsil, Lukáš Borzík, Ask the Mirror, Slovakia
The 11 works were by 11 different composers from 8 different countries, and have been performed over 5 different concerts in 2009 and 2010. All the above mentioned activity is made possible through the RE:NEW project and the subsidy paid from the project administration to the ensembles. This money is generated by funds from the national partners and from the EU.
Thomas Demidoff
Project manager
RE:NEW MUSIC