There is a lot going on in the field of contemporary music in Austria. Mainly responsible for this positive development is a new generation of composers, who enrich the spectrum of contemporary music with refreshing and never-before-heard facets. One of the most promising young composers of this country is Sonja Huber.
Fast Facts
Sonja Huber was born in 1980 in Wiener Neustadt and graduated with distinction from the University of Music and Dramatic Art with diplomas in Piano Performance, music theory composition with M. Jarrell, D. Müller-Siemens (1998-2006). Among others, she attended master classes by Helmut Lachenmann and Hanspeter Kyburz. She received numerous honors and awards for her compositions, among them the Cultural Recognition Award for Music by the City of Wiener Neustadt in 2006, and the Cultural Award for Music of Lower Austria in 2010. She is currently working on her doctoral dissertation in musicology, entitled “Piano Concerts at the turn of the 21st Century “. Since 2008 she has been a teacher at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts.
Portrait
Sonja Huber’s wish is to take the audience on an atonal adventure. For her absolute music, she first relied on construction models and occasionally used systematic additives, which were however no longer recognizable after completion of the composition. She increasingly engages in the compositional process without planning details in advance – and also calls on her audience to approach her music without reservations. Although her interests as a pianist, conductor, musicologist and teacher lies in the techniques of different eras, she approaches the direct adaption of historic compositional modes in her work with skepticism. And she doesn’t acknowledge a program as a necessity, because music is her view, is self-sufficient.
Important compositions:
“Spurensuche” for orchestra, 2005,
premiered: Wiener Konzerthaus, 27.1.2006
“Der Mann, der Erdrutsche sammelte” for soprano, oboe, clarinet, violin and cello, 2004/09, premiered: Wiener Musikverein, 21.10.2009
“Gratwanderung” for piano, 2006