Composer Festival – In the Realms of the Unreal
French Quatuor Diotima and English pianist Nicolas Hodges performing chamber music.
With varying techniques, in the string quartet Akroate Hadal, she draws both frightening and ethereally beautiful sounds from the instruments. In this powerfully expressive music, these tonal extremes gradually chase one another, eventually uniting in a common point.
In the Realms of the Unreal, which is also music for string quartet, is a tribute to American artist Henry Darger (1892–1973). It is as if Olga Neuwirth were painting Darger’s highly contradictory fairy tale world, as he described it in a manuscript found after his death. The long title of the manuscript is usually shortened, simply to: In the Realms of the Unreal.
As in both Akroate Hadal and In the Realms of the Unreal, in Quasare/Pulsare II, sharp and rhythmically dense sections are presented beside sections of aural contemplation. Even the piano is prepared to achieve certain effects: objects are placed inside of it to modify the sound. In a concluding incidendo/fluido, the piano engages in commentary on a recording of a tone through curt outbursts, repeated gestures and entire clusters of sound. This masterful music leverages the full potential of the piano.
Olga Neuwirth’s music includes traces of Stravinsky, Monteverdi, jazz, pop and hip-hop. But its roots reach all the way back to Gustav Mahler, Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. She is also particularly inspired by visual arts, performance and installation art, literature, theatre and film. It all merges in her music into something entirely new, personal, and infused with a contemporary sound.
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The music
Approximate times -
Olga Neuwirth Akroate Hadal – String Quartet No. 113 min
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Olga Neuwirth Georg Baselitz for string quartet and sampler4 min
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Olga Neuwirth in the realms of the unreal – String Quartet No. 318 min
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Intermission25 min
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Olga Neuwirth incidendo / fluido for piano and playback-CD12 min
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Olga Neuwirth Quasare / Pulsare II for violin, cello and piano15 min
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Participants
- Diotima Quartet
- Nicolas Hodges piano