guest performance

Swissness?

In collaboration with “Musikpodium Zürich”


Is there a “Swissness” in terms of composing? Instead of an answer to this question, we confront the audience with three new works by Swiss composers from three generations, flanked by a work by our friend Erik Oña, who died much too early.

The youngest – Sebastian Meyer – is, like his teacher Erik Oña, in constant search of the best sound with reduced material, be it in terms of choice of instruments or compositional means.

Trumpet player, composer and improviser André Meier – also a former composition student of Erik Oña – deals in his compositional work mainly with algorithmic or machine processes, sonifications, modular and open forms.

The pianist and composer Jean-Jacques Dünki is also active as a musicologist, dealing with both historical performance practice (fortepiano and clavichord) and the composers of the New Viennese School and contemporary music. As a composer he is largely self-taught. He is writing a “Concertino” for cello and ensemble for the French cellist Pierre Strauch and us.


Program

Jean-Jacques Dünki (*1948) “Concertino” for cello and 8 instruments (2022/23, WP, commission EPhB) – 17’ André Meier (*1974) “Threads” for trumpet and ensemble (2019/20, WP, commission EPhB) – 15’ Sebastian Meyer (*1994) “inmitten” in memoriam Erik Oña for ensemble and electronics (2023, WP, commission EPhB) – 15’ Erik Oña (1961–2019) “Alles Nahe werde fern” for 8 instruments (2001) – 8’
Pierre Strauch
cello solo
Nenad Marković
trumpet solo
Jürg Henneberger
conductor
Phœnix

Swissness?

Is there a “Swissness” in terms of composing? Instead of an answer to this question, we confront the audience with three new works by Swiss composers from three generations, flanked by a work by our friend Erik Oña, who died much too early.

The youngest – Sebastian Meyer – is, like his teacher Erik Oña, in constant search of the best sound with reduced material, be it in terms of choice of instruments or compositional means.

Trumpet player, composer and improviser André Meier – also a former composition student of Erik Oña – deals in his compositional work mainly with algorithmic or machine processes, sonifications, modular and open forms.

The pianist and composer Jean-Jacques Dünki is also active as a musicologist, dealing with both historical performance practice (fortepiano and clavichord) and the composers of the New Viennese School and contemporary music. As a composer he is largely self-taught. He is writing a “Concertino” for cello and ensemble for the French cellist Pierre Strauch and us.


Program

Jean-Jacques Dünki (*1948) “Concertino” for cello and 8 instruments (2022/23, WP, commission EPhB) – 17’ André Meier (*1974) “Threads” for trumpet and ensemble (2019/20, WP, commission EPhB) – 15’ Sebastian Meyer (*1994) “inmitten” in memoriam Erik Oña for ensemble and electronics (2023, WP, commission EPhB) – 15’ Erik Oña (1961–2019) “Alles Nahe werde fern” for 8 instruments (2001) – 8’
Pierre Strauch
cello solo
Nenad Marković
trumpet solo
Jürg Henneberger
conductor
music theatre

Einstein on the Beach

Walk-in music theater installation between intoxication and ritual

In their first opera production, Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg create a posthumanist “Gesamtkunstwerk”. In doing so, they break down boundaries between man and machine, future and past, theater, visual art and virtual reality. The constantly rotating stage becomes the living space of a new kind of community. It cultivates a hieroglyphic language of movement and seems to live according to its own enigmatic rules. Inspired by the unconventional genius Albert Einstein, Philip Glass created a 20th century musical masterpiece that breaks all the rules of opera and follows no linear narrative structure. Repetitive patterns make time sensually tangible and put the audience into trance. The audience can move freely and experience the work individually.


other artists:

Performance/Dance – Suzan Boogaerdt, Tarren Johnson, Frank Willens, Tommy Cattin, Dominic Santia, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández
Basler Madrigalisten (conductor: Raphael Immoos) – Anna Miklashevich, Viola Molnar, Viviane Hasler (soprano), Barbara Schingnitz, Schoschana Kobelt, Leslie Leon (alto), Patrick Siegrist, Daniel Issa, Christopher Wattam (tenor), Othmar Sturm, Valerio Zanolli, Amir Tiroshi (bass)

Opéra, Grande Halle de La Villette, Paris

Production of Theater Basel in cooperation with the “Philharmonie de Paris” and “Festival d’Automne”


further information:

https://philharmoniedeparis.fr/fr/activite/opera/26308-philip-glass-einstein-beach

https://lavillette.com/programmation/s-kennedy-m-selg-p-glass_e1727


Program

Philip Glass (*1937) “Einstein on the Beach” opera in four acts (1976) – 220’
André de Ridder
conductor
Jürg Henneberger
musical direction
Susanne Kennedy
stage direction
Markus Selg
stage
Richard Alexander
sound design
Diamanda Dramm
violin
Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir
soprano
Emily Dilewski
soprano
Sonja Koppelhuber
alto
Nadia Catania
alto
Christoph Bösch
flute, piccolo
Josef Feichter
flute
Toshiko Sakakibara
bass clarinet, EWI Solo
Raphael Camenisch
soprano saxophone
Sascha Armbruster
alto saxophone
Ludovic Van Hellemont
electric organ
Samuel Wettstein
electric organ
Phœnix

Phœnix Satellite 2022/2023

With “Octandre” Edgard Varèse wrote an epoch-making work for a large chamber music ensemble and at the same time founded a new genre: Four woodwinds and three brass instruments are supplemented by a double bass to form an octet – with the complete omission of keyboard instruments and percussion. In our competition for young musicians “Phoenix Satellite” we have set the task to compose a new work in this instrumentation, which in some way refers to “Octandre” and circles this work like a satellite. The two prize winners will present their new “Satellite” compositions together with “Octandre” by Edgard Varèse at the end of this workshop.

The work “Monolith” by the German composer Thomas Bruttger was commissioned by the “Ensemble Aventure” (Freiburg i. Br.) in 1991.


Program

Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) “Octandre” for 8 instruments (1923) – 8’ Thomas Bruttger (*1954) “Monolith” for 8 instruments (1991) – 9’ winner «Phœnix Satellite» I new work for 8 instruments (2023, WP, commission EPhB) – 15’ winner «Phœnix Satellite» II new work for 8 instruments (2023, WP, commission EPhB) – 15’
Jürg Henneberger
conductor
Christoph Bösch
flute, piccolo, bass flute
Antje Thierbach
oboe, English horn, baritone oboe
Toshiko Sakakibara
clarinet, clarinet in Eb, bass clarinet
Lucas Rößner
bassoon, contraforte
Aurélien Tschopp
horn
Nenad Marković
trumpet, piccolo trumpet
Michael Büttler
trombone
Aleksander Gabryś
double bass
Phœnix

Russia’s other voices

Our response to the global boycott of Russian artists in a pacifist frame of mind. These “other” voices from Russia must and should be heard, for they have significant things to say, whether older or younger.

The composer Galina Ustvolskaïa was once a favorite student of Dmitri Shostakovich and lived in seclusion in Siberia after the end of the Second World War until her death. Her works were hardly played until 1968. It was not until the 1990s that she achieved a certain degree of recognition abroad.

Alexander Khubeev uses multimedia means to set to music and illustrate the poem “Don’t leave the room” (1970) by the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who was expatriated from the Soviet Union in 1972. This poetic warning against the threat of the outside world takes on prophetic significance after the current “Corona” experiences.

The Russian composer Marina Khorkova lives and works in Berlin. In her work “collision” extreme registers, fragile and brutal sound gestures, static and unmediated eventfulness collide with each other in numerous contrasting sound fields. It was premiered by the ensemble “ascolta” in Stuttgart in 2015.

The youngest composer in this concert is Daniil Posazhennikov, a native of St. Petersburg who is currently studying musical theater direction in Zürich.

Program

Marina Khorkova (*1981) “collision” for seven instruments (2015) – 26’ Alexander Khubeev (*1986) “Don’t leave the room” (on text by Joseph Brodsky) for performer in sign language, ensemble and live-video (2020) – 14’ Daniil Posazhennikov (*1994) new work for ensemble (2023/24, WP, commission EPhB) – 15’ Galina Ustvolskaïa (1919–2006) Symphonie No. 5 “Amen” for speaker and 5 instruments (1989/90) – 13’
Daniel Stalder
performer
Kirill Zvegintsov
speaker
Miro Widmer («mirofilm»)
film
Jürg Henneberger
conductor
Phœnix

Kon-text

Programming William Walton’s and Edith Sitwell’s once provocative work with Graham Valentine as narrator is a pleasure for us in different ways! The English poet Edith Sitwell became an icon of lesbian-gay movement not only through her poems, but also through her eccentric lifestyle and her uncompromisingly non-conformist views, provoking many a scandal with her appearance already in the early 1920s. At the premiere of “Façade,” she spoke her surrealist verses invisibly behind a painted screen with a hole cut out for a giant megaphone.

In combination with the commissions to the two young composers Asia Ahmetjanova from Latvia and Charlotte Torres from France, both living in Switzerland, current artistic dynamite is guaranteed.


Program

Asia Ahmetjanova (*1992) “Fledermäuse und Ikonen (bats and icons)”  for ensemble (2024, WP, commission EPhB) – 15’ Charlotte Torres (*1979) “Ton tonton tond ton thon et d’autres tons”  for amplified ensemble (2024, WP, commission EPhB) – 20’ William Walton (1902–1983) “Façade – an Entertainment”  with poems by Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) for recitor and ensemble (1922) – 38’
Graham Valentine
speaker
Jürg Henneberger
conductor
Phœnix

Noriko Hisada Portrait

The Japanese composer Noriko Hisada is a quite extraordinary voice of Japan, whose music is unjustly performed far too rarely. The “ensemble für neue musik zürich” has been promoted the music of this composer, who was still unknown in Europe at the time, for over 30 years and premiered her quintet “Prognostication” in Boswil in 1991 with Jürg Henneberger at the piano. EPhB now presents this work together with the seven-part ensemble piece “Led by the Yellow Bricks”, written 25 years later and inspired by Lyman Frank Baum’s children’s book “The Wizard of Oz”.


Program

Noriko Hisada (*1963) “Prognostication” for 5 instruments (1990) – 15’ Noriko Hisada (*1963) “Led by the Yellow Bricks” for piano and 5 instruments (2015) – 55’
Jürg Henneberger
piano solo
Sebastian Gottschick
conductor
Blanko

Blanko 2024

Once a year, EPhB invites experimental musicians with a rather non-academic background to collaborate. These artists come from fields such as noise, free improvisation, sound art, etc. The young percussionist and improviser Camille Emaille and the Zurich composer, sound artist, theater musician and improviser Thomas Peter will each conceive and curate a concert half. In this case, the ensemble does not “merely” implement a musical text, but participates in the composition in a direct way.


Program

Camille Emaille (*1993) new work (2024, WP, commission EPhB) – 30’ Thomas Peter (*1971) new work (2024, WP, commission EPhB) – 30’
Christoph Bösch
artistic direction