Programme

John Adams
Grand Pianola Music for two pianos, orchestra and thress female voices (1981)

Bernhard Lang
»Monadologie XXXIX« for violin and orchestra (2019) [commissioned by musica viva, world premiere]

Louis Andriessen
Mysteriën (Mysteries) for orchestra (2013)

Brad Lubman, Conductor

Trio Mediæval

Anna Maria Friman

Linn Andrea Fuglseth

Jorunn Lovise Husan

Ilya Gringolts, Violin

GrauSchumacher Piano Duo

Andreas Grau

Götz Schumacher

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

It sounds like science fiction: granulator and cellular automata generate the music of the future from snippets of music history. The Austrian composer Bernhard Lang works with algorithms in his “hyper-virtuosic clockwork textures”. Now music viva has commissioned him to write a violin concerto that chases Ilya Gringolts through the dust of history, extracted from works ranging from Bach to Ligeti. In this brave new world, a world fractured and crumbling, even mistakes have a raison d’être. It is no accident that the aesthetic of mechanical imperfection has found its way into music history precisely in the Digital Age.  As far back as 1981 John Adams proclaimed the “glitch” to be the keystone of his Double Concerto. Minimally shifted piano parts generate the constant backdrop of a digital playback error against which Adams wallows in clichés – not in order to jolt the avant-garde, but “just for the fun of it”. That the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen waited so long before turning to the orchestra has something to do with this jolt. After rebelling against ossified structures in the 1960s, he has finally allowed the ensemble to glow enigmatically in Mysteriën while proceeding as ever on his search for “a better world”.