regel:bruch (rule:break)

2.10.‒5.10., Graz

Music as rule:breaking: ORF musikprotokoll 2025 scrutinises musical and perceptual orders. What can music be today? Numerous commissions to contemporary musicians show different ways of dealing with rules and expectations.

Three commissioned compositions rethink the role of the orchestra. Peter Ablinger, who died in April 2025, electronically doubled the orchestra in his last orchestral work. Sara Stevanović sees the ensemble as a social construct, and Ailís Ní Ríain creates a visual soundscape as a deaf composer. Setting rules, breaking new ground - this is part of the everyday life of an ensemble with an unusual line-up. Founded in 1993, the Aleph Guitar Quartet adds exciting new facets to its repertoire: Anna Korsun, Bernhard Lang, Tristan Murail and Lisa Streich have composed something new.

In emblemata sonantes. Klaus Lang and ĀRT HOUSE 17 take us on a journey through the soundscape of the baroque Eggenberg Palace. They interweave historical instruments with modern interpretation. The Ensemble Cantando Admont and the Graz Keplerspatzen combine old and new vocal music in Junge Stimmen to create a participatory concert experience. We present two sound installations by Peter Ablinger and Winfried Ritsch, which are dedicated to each other. In both, slow glissandi and overtone vibrations form the centre of gravity around which our hearing revolves.

Most of the control systems that have been designed throughout history in order to better grasp sound are based on the standardising perspective of the listener. "But what is deafness if not a different form of perception?" asks Marco Donnarumma, who is himself late-deafened, with his project I Am Your Body. Laikka and David Obermaier aka silentbeat also fundamentally expand the concept of music with their first joint composition.

Marko Ciciliani also dares to break with the expected with his transmedia project BAROGUE: baroque opulence meets digital excesses that challenge the senses. Ciciliani refers to Johann Joseph Fux's textbook Gradus ad Parnassum, which was published exactly 300 years ago. Emanuel Gollob creates a performance at the interface of dance, sound art and robotics, in which man and machine test new forms of relationship at eye level through hearing, feeling and moving. In an expansive installation and live performance, Daniel Lercher and Sabine Maier create an environment that is not demanding but welcoming. An invitation to disappear - into a field of vibration, shadow and silence.

In the phonoECHOES competition and the Student 3D Audio Production Competition, artists explore new dimensions of audiovisual art and 3D audio computer music. DeComposing the Archive scrutinises colonial orders of knowledge and creates new narrative spaces. Café Wolf is once again the festival's late-night stage this year. Ui-Kyung Lee's chamber opera Nachhall, which won the Johann Joseph Fux Prize, will conclude the festival. Here, an abandoned flat becomes a space of memory in which sounds echo between dream and reality.

Curated by Rainer Elstner, Susanna Niedermayr and Fränk Zimmer
Directed by: Elke Tschaikner
Production: ORF Radio Austria 1 and ORF Styria
In co-production with steirischer herbst ʼ25

In co-operation with ACOM - Austrian Composers Association, Café Wolf, esc medien kunst labor, ICAS - International Cities of Advanced Sound, IEM - Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics, Institute 1 for Composition, Music Theory, Music History and Conducting at KUG - University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Ö1 Kunst zum Hören, PPCM - Performance Practice in Contemporary Music Instrumental and Vocal, SHAPE+ Sound, Heterogeneous Art and Performance in Europe, Sounding Future, VDT - Verband Deutscher Tonmeister*innen, Vokalensemble der KUG - University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, equalizent Schulungs- und Beratungs GmbH, Graz Museum, Neue Galerie Graz.

Individual projects were funded by the Province of Styria, the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, the City of Graz, Steiermärkische Sparkasse, VGR - Verwertungsgesellschaft Rundfunk, SKE Fonds, K_on_temporary initiative of the Korea Cultural Centre and the Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport.