© Valerie Maltseva
Together with Needcompany, Klangforum Wien traverses the glowing and forbidding realms of love in the revival of the concert-performative meta-opera AMOPERA. The ensemble is invited to present this foray through 100 years of operatic history three times at the Hong Kong Arts Festival and at the Daegu Opera House, before it returns to the Wiener Konzerthaus on 11 May.
The title’s wordplay on „Amo(r) opera”, conflates a reference to the theme of love with the question concerning the nature of the work “(I) am opera?” as a direct allusion to the medium of opera itself. This musical expedition, featuring excerpts from works by Zemlinsky through Sciarrino and Saunders all the way to Xenakis and Glojnaric, opens up surprising new perspectives characterised by an array of impossible and intoxicating, as well as enchanting episodic love constellations.
The amorous adventures of the "Waltz King" Johann Strauss resulted in and inspired his Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka. This piece now also lent its name to tritsch tratsch by the "congenial music root canal specialst" Wolfgang Mitterer, who compiled 19 Strauss hits into 13 five-minute pieces, exploring the music's fascinating ambiguities. After the recent Vienna premiere, everyone is eager to find out, how the audiences in Hong Kong and at the Tokyo Harusai Spring Festival will respond to the immanent dissociation from Strauss, which characterises this new composition.
→ Interview with the composer and Klangforum clarinettist Bernhard Zachhuber
With Luciano Berio's song cycle Folk Songs, a tribute to the mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, and two characteristic and groundbreaking milestones from the oeuvre of Pierre Boulez, the ensemble celebrates the two composers' 100th birthday in its the debut at the Tokyo Harusai Spring Festival. The programme also includes Passacaille pour Tokyo – a play with form in the spirit of Boulez, composed by Philippe Manoury, who for many years now, has cultivated a close relationship with Japan’s musical scenes.
The tour dates at a glance
📍Hong Kong Arts Festival 🇭🇰
📍Daegu Opera House 🇰🇷
📍Tokyo Harusai Spring Festival 🇯🇵
