Vibes of Collaboration

Founded in 1985, the Klangforum is a co-op ensemble of 24 virtuoso musicians - Photo: Lukas Beck

“The only thing worse than classical music is new music,” said a close friend who in early May refused to join me to a concert of the Klangforum Wien, the virtuosos of the contemporary music scene in Vienna. I knew what he meant: Rhythm, melody and tonality as we are still used to considering essential to music were long ago abandoned by composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. The feeling of tension and release we get from tonality has given way to disconnection and wandering. There is nothing to hold onto anymore. We can’t walk out of the concert hall humming a tune.

The music of the 20th century has “left home,” as conductor Simon Rattle describes it; it has entered a landscape of unfamiliar tone colors, new sounds and, as my friend might say, “just plain noise.”

But despite Vienna’s reputation as a guardian of old musical traditions, the Klangforum Wien, celebrating its 25th anniversary in the coming 2009/10 season, has become internationally known as one of Europe’s leading soloist ensembles for interpreting new music. For its jubilee, it has commissioned 25 pieces by 25 composers, all intimately associated with the ensemble and whose works have defined its sound. Of these works, 23 will be premiered next year in the Klangforum’s series “Vorwärts/Rückwärts” in the Mozart-Saal of the Konzerthaus.

Founded in 1985 by Beat Furrer, the Klangforum Wien has a core of 24 members, each of whom has a say in the artistic decisions. It is a forum for compositions of the 20th and 21st century, from the works of the Second Vienna School to experimental jazz and free improvisation, and performs worldwide up to 80 concerts a year.

The concert on May 7 was dedicated to four French composers born between 1943 and 1952. Three are members of the group “L’Itinéraire,” founded in 1973. It was clear that the compositions of this evening were speaking a similar language, even if not the same and definitely not French.

Photo: Lukas Beck

Michaël Levinas’s Appels (1974) is for 11 instruments, each accompanied by a snare drum reacting to any tone, rattling away, softer and louder, like the ever-present din of the city.In Antiphysis (1978), a virtuoso piece for solo flute (Eva Furrer) and chamber orchestra by Hugues Dufourt, the flute seemed to be in a monologue about the sounds of daily life, full of fluttering tones and furious frenzy, wide leaps and shrill whistling. In Strange Ritual, (2005) by Philippe Manoury, 21 musicians play punctuated unisono chords, while underlying sheets of sound anticipate small interjections of connecting rhythmic beats. And in Tristan Murail’s Pour adoucir le cours du temps (2004/05) for 18 instruments and electronic tones, semblances of repeated musical phrases introduced by cascades of piano tones give way to interludes of metallic reverberations, the piece ending with a last fading, lingering note. All four pieces were receiving their Austrian premiere. With their convoluted complexity, as difficult to describe, as they were to listen to, these pieces were nevertheless never boring and continually brought new imagery to mind.

The Klangforum was also part of the Wiener Festwochen production of Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne, an opera by Belgian composer Philippe Boesmans with staging by Luc Bondy. It had three performances from May 13 to 16 at the Theater an der Wien and just had its premier in Paris in January of this year. An uncanny story about contempt, love and the fear of the abnormal, it is full of wonderful, passionate music that reflects the emotions of the characters like a seismograph.

The Klangforum Wien, under the absolute precision of its main conductor, Sylvain Cambreling, is able to create infinite nuances of tonal colors, and masters intonation and rhythmic minutiae to utter perfection. This virtuosic ensemble understands that in this new century, we still haven’t returned home, that Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night,” which broke into a new world of non-tonality in 1899, is still leading us in new directions. Sometimes noise, perhaps. But who am I to draw the line between meaningless racket and meaningful beauty? I remain curious.

See: www.klangforum.at
For its concert series “Vorwärts/Rückwärts”: www.konzerthaus.at
See also: “Leaving Home: Orchestral Music in the 20th Century, A Conducted Tour by Sir Simon Rattle,” seven-part series on DVD from Arthaus Musik: www.arthaus-musik.com