For 100 years now, the Donaueschinger Musiktage have been synonymous with New Music. The festival provides an uncompromising forum for exploits of acoustical daring and experimental forms, for the bold visions of internationally known composers and newcomers alike.

On this anniversary we offer our heartfelt congratulations to the festival – to its makers and advocates in Donaueschingen and at SWR – and we look forward with special interest to the premieres of Francesco Filidei, Yair Klartag, Liza Lim and Enno Poppe. All performances will be streamed live by the SWR.



17.10.2021 (WP)

Francesco Filidei – The Red Death (2021)

Per Soli, Coro, Orchestra ed Elettronica
Chr - 3.3.3.2 – 4.3.3.1 – 4perc.timp – hp.cel-fsm - str
Commissioned by SWR and IRCAM on occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Donaueschinger Musiktage with special support from the SWR Symphony Orchestra and the SWR Vokalensemble 

Rinnat Moriah (Soprano), Tora Augestad (Mezzosoprano), Hagen Matzeit (Countertenor), Ed Lyon (Tenor), Dietrich Henschel (Baritone)
IRCAM
Chorwerk Ruhr
SWR Vokalensemble
SWR Symphonieorchester
Sylvain Cambreling (cond.)

About the work

"The Red Death" devastates the country. A section of society, cut off from the rest of the world, imagines itself safe and indulges in decadent revelry. The author Edgar Allan Poe witnessed a cholera epidemic in America as a young man and he processed his impressions in the story “The Masque of the Red Death”, first published in 1842. (…)
Another pandemic shook the foundations of world society when librettist Hannah Dübgen and composer Francesco Filidei, in the midst of working on another subject, decided to choose Poe's narrative as the framework for their work on the occasion of 100 years of the Donaueschinger Musiktage. The deceptive sense of "security" to which Western society had long succumbed had given way to a sense of latent threat, coupled with the stretched-time experience of the lockdown. Dübgen and Filidei put the audience right in the middle of Prospero's festive company, three choral groups frame it from three sides, loudspeakers create a ring around the audience. The twelve strokes of the clock, which Poe describes in his narrative, structure the plot just as the idea of the seven rooms was taken up in a transformed form: in a negotiation of the seven deadly sins (...)   Read more




16.10.2021 (WP)

Yair Klartag – Awkward Dances and Passacaglia (2019)

for ensemble
fl.cl.trb.2perc.acc.pf.2vl.vla.vc.db

Klangforum Wien
Bas Wiegers (cond.)

Commissioned by Südwestrundfunk

Further performance: 18.10.2021, Wiener Konzerthaus 

Composer's note

Awkward Dances and Passacaglia comes out of an attempt to compose a dance suite. While I found the form of a suite too restricting, a medley of dance-like fragments started to emerge as a musical form. The first fragments address features that are normally associated with "danceability” like regularity and rhythmic predictability. Then, the chain of dances gradually moves towards non-traditional embodiments of abstract music. "Dance” here is not only music that prompts concrete motoric bodily response, but rather a musical structure that seeks self-choreographed listeners and allows unexpected reverberations of sound and movement (...)   Read more





15.10.2021 (WP)

Liza Lim – World as Lover, World as Self (2021)

For Solo Piano & Orchestra
pf - 1.1.1.1 - 1.1.1.0 - perc - str (min. 3.3.3.3.2)

Tamara Stefanovich (piano)
IRCAM
Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg
Ilan Volkov (cond.)

Commissioned by the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2021

Composer's note

The title of the work comes from the book World as Lover, World as Self by Joanna Macy, eco-philosopher, activist, teacher, and scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking and deep ecology. The section titles refer to the structure of Macy's teaching which moves in a spiral sequence from "gratitude, then, honoring our pain for the world, seeing with fresh eyes, and finally, going forth." Each stage is a portal to compassion that reaches beyond the small self to a connection with the intra-dependent co-arising nature of the larger Self of existence (...)   Read more




15.10.2021 (WP)

Enno Poppe – Hirn (2021)

for 29 wind instruments and percussion
4.4.4.4 – 4.4.4.1 – 5perc – 0.0.0.0.0 

Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg
Ilan Volkov (cond.)

Commisioned by Südwestrundfunk, Philharmonie Luxembourg & Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg and Festival AFEKT

Further performance: 19.11.2021, Philharmonie Luxembourg

Composer's note

Gladly and again the expression "overly intellectual" is used. This is generally meant to denigrate thinking and comes from an unpleasant, very German tradition that sees the mind as the adversary of the soul. In reality, the brain (Hirn) does everything. Hypnosis is a cerebral process, trance takes place in the brain. The brain is our largest sexual organ. Where should the soul be if not in the brain? In Hirn (Brain) I observe how the sound space changes continuously. The music is fast, the changes are slow. The energy state of the music increases the more we lose our orientation. Again and again I experience that rationally designed orders end up in a frenzy and in loss of control. This is because I trust the music more than the calculus. But all of that, the control and the frenzy, are very close to each other in one place: the brain.