The Eurovision Song Contest has been around since 1956 – but another, similar contest took place two years earlier…albeit with (one imagines) less of an emphasis on over-the-top pageantry. The International Rostrum of Composers (IRC) is an annual forum of national broadcasters who meet to exchange and broadcast contemporary music.
The International Rostrum of Composers is a program of UNESCO’S International Music Council, with the participation of the European Broadcasting Union. The goal of of the event is the promotion of recordings of recent contemporary music. The program has a 70-year track of helping composers on their way to international stardom – past winners have included Luciano Berio, Tōru Takemitsu, Witold Lutosławski, György Ligeti, Erin Gee, and Georg Friedrich Haas.
The 70th edition of the Rostrum took place from May 14-17 in Vilnius, Lithuania. 21 countries from three continents submitted pieces, and the results are in: the winner is the piece “Totentanz“, by the Polish composer Rafał Ryterski. A politically telling choice: Polskie Radio attempted to submit the piece a year ago, but the radio’s management rejected the idea – besides being a composer, Ryterski is known as an activist for LGBTQ+ rights, a fact that was apparently unpalatable for the ultraconservative PiS government in power at the time. However, a year has brought a new government and a restructuring of the Polish broadcasting system. “Totentanz” was submitted at this year’s conference – and promptly won.
Vienna Composer named to short list
But Austria didn’t go away empty-handed: one of the two submissions from Ö1 made it into the top ten “recommended works”. Otto Wanke’s “Micrographies”, premiered as part of the “Ink Still Wet” series at the Grafenegg Festival in 2023, was chosen for the short list. More than anything else, that means airplay, since participating networks agree to broadcast the selected pieces in the course of the coming year. Austrian Music Export congratulates Mr. Wanke on his success!
Rainer Elstner, translated and adapted from the German original by Philip Yaeger.