50 years of musikprotokoll

A ball at musikprotokoll? Yes, seriously! Contemporary composers write, the Vienna RSO performs, and the audience dances along.

To celebrate the fiftieth edition of musikprotokoll, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra are not giving a concert in the Stefaniensaal of Grazer Congress, no: they are striking up a dance – in all seriousness. At the same time, there will be lots of fun: the dancers are visitors to musikprotokoll, so the dance-floor belongs to the audience. There will be dancing to the music of such composers as Gabriele Proy, Judit Varga, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, Peter Herbert, Johannes Kalitzke, Bernd Richard Deutsch and Johannes Maria Staud, who are writing new pieces for this dance evening format. Johannes Kalitzke is also conducting the RSO on this occasion.

Listen – and dance to – compositions by Johanna Doderer, Arturo Fuentes, Gerald Resch, Gerhard E. Winkler and many others. So even if musikprotokoll is harking back – with a slight touch of anniversary irony – to such an age-old format as the “ball” for its birthday celebrations, musically, of course, this is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the future. At the same time, it is firmly rooted in the present.