Composer Festival HK Gruber – Into the open

Like none other, HK Gruber has the capacity to imbue music with a humorous dimension while always retaining a spirit of the deepest earnestness. He played double bass in the avant garde ensemble Die Reihe in the early 1960s and in the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1969 to 1998. He is also a singer and has appeared in both his own and others’ work, including Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and in music by Hanns Eisler and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Gruber has guest conducted many of the major orchestras in the US and Europe, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and both the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics. 

Gruber’s work Into the Open for Orchestra and Percussion premiered in 2015 at a Proms concert in the Royal Albert Hall in London. Here, Gruber has focused on percussion instruments with distinct pitches, such as marimba, vibraphone, gongs and cowbells. Northwind Pictures features exquisite playing by the orchestra’s wind section, and we will also hear how weather forces can truly take musical form. 

In addition to his own pieces, Gruber has chosen to highlight the French-Ukrainian composer Igor Markevich, who, like Gruber, was also active as a conductor. His Le Nouvel Age is full of surprises and whimsy, and is rather reminiscent of another Igor: Stravinsky.