regel:bruch (rule:breaking)

2.10.‒5.10., Graz

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

Three commissions rethink the role of the orchestra. In his final orchestral work, the late Peter Ablinger has electronically doubled the orchestra. Sara Stevanović sees the ensemble as a social construct, while Ailís Ní Ríain, a deaf / hard of hearing composer, creates a visual world of sound. Establishing rules, breaking new ground—this is part of the daily routine of an ensemble with an unusual lineup. Founded in 1993, the Aleph Guitar Quartet is expanding its repertoire with exciting new facets: Anna Korsun, Bernhard Lang, Tristan Murail, and Lisa Streich have composed new works.

In emblemata sonantes., Klaus Lang and ĀRT HOUSE 17 guide listeners through the soundscape of the Baroque Eggenberg Palace, interweaving historical instruments with modern interpretations. In Junge Stimmen, Cantando Admont and the Grazer Keplerspatzen combine old and new vocal music to create a participatory concert. We present two sound installations by Peter Ablinger and Winfried Ritsch that they dedicated to each other. In both, slow glissandi and overtone vibrations form the gravitational center around which our hearing revolves.

Most rule-based systems designed throughout history to better capture sound elevate the perspective of hearing people to the norm. “But what is deafness if not another form of perception?” asks Marco Donnarumma, himself d/Deaf, 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, too, dares to break with expectations in his transmedia project BAROGUE: Baroque opulence meets digital excesses that challenge the senses. Ciciliani draws upon Johann Joseph Fux’s textbook Gradus ad Parnassum, published exactly 300 years ago. Emanuel Gollob creates a performance at the intersection of dance, sound art, and robotics, in which human and machine explore new relationships on equal footing through hearing, feeling, and movement. Through a large-scale installation and live performance, Daniel Lercher and Sabine Maier craft an environment that does not demand but rather absorbs. An invitation to disappear—into a field of vibrations, shadows, 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 questions colonial knowledge systems and creates new narrative spaces. Café Wolf once again serves as the festival’s late-night stage. Its finale is Ui-Kyung Lee’s chamber opera Nachhall, winner of the Johann Joseph Fux Prize. Here, an abandoned apartment becomes a space for memory, where sounds echo between dream and reality.

Curated by Rainer Elstner, Susanna Niedermayr, and Fränk Zimmer
Direction: Elke Tschaikner
Production: ORF Radio Österreich 1 and ORF Steiermark
Coproduced with steirischer herbst ʼ25

In cooperation with ACOM – Austrian Composers Association, Café Wolf, equalizent Schulungs- und Beratungs GmbH, esc medien kunst labor, Graz Museum, ICAS – International Cities of Advanced Sound, IEM – Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics, Institute 1 Composition, Theory of Music, History of Music and Conducting at KUG – University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Neue Galerie 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, KUG Vocal Ensemble

Individual projects were supported by European Union “Creative Europe” Program, Federal Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport, K_on_temporary-Initiative des Korea Kulturzentrums, Province of Styria, Austrian Cultural Forum Warsaw, Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, City of Graz, SKE Fonds, Steiermärkische Sparkasse, and VGR – Verwertungsgesellschaft Rundfunk