RSO Wien

Chimera
Kaija Saariaho

konzert für klavier und großes orchester (2014/20)
Philipp Maintz

Disparates
Jorge E. López

Hardly any composer in the history of music – as we wrote in one of our texts at the beginning of this “Beethoven Year” – has left behind a trail of blood and a comet tail in the sky of composition like him. Again and again, composers have dared to “slave away at” Beethoven. This year’s Vienna RSO concert at musikprotokoll shows this as if with a bracket: the concert opens with a brief, almost fanfare-like, and somehow tongue-in-cheek homage to Beethoven by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. It concludes eye to eye from man to man: the Austria-based composer George E. Lopez, who has never been averse to large orchestras, works his way through Beethoven’s Bagatelles with the assistance of the orchestra. At the central point of the concert there is a premiere. Composer Philipp Maintz (*1977) has created a new version of his concert for piano and orchestra for the Finnish-born, Vienna-based pianist Joonas Ahonen. With this program, Marin Alsop, the chief conductor of the Vienna RSO, gives her first guest performance in Graz as part of musikprotokoll.

Kaija Saariaho Kaija Saariaho is a prominent member of a group of Finnish artists who are making a worldwide impact. She developed techniques of computer-assisted composition and acquired fluency in working on tape and with live electronics. This experience influenced her approach to writing for orchestra, with its emphasis on the shaping of dense masses of sound in slow transformations. Although much of her catalogue comprises chamber works, she has turned increasingly to larger forces and broader structures. Saariaho has claimed the major composing awards: Grawemeyer Award, Wihuri Prize, Nemmers Prize, Sonning Prize, Polar Music Prize. In 2015 she was the judge of the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award.

Philipp Maintz (*1977, Aachen) studied composition with Robert HP Platz at the Maastricht Conservatory and with Karlheinz Essl at the Studio for Advanced Music & Media Technology in Linz. He was awarded the Composers’ Prize by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2005 and received a scholarship to the Villa Massimo German Academy, Rome, in 2010. The Munich Biennial for New Music Theatre opened in 2010 with the premiere of his opera MALDOROR. In 2019 his chamber opera THÉRÈSE was performed at the Salzburg Easter Festival and in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

Pianist Joonas Ahonen’s musical interests take him from performing late 18th-century music on fortepiano to giving premiere performances of the music of our times. He is a member of Klangforum Wien, an ensemble concentrating primarily on new directions in contemporary music. Over the years, Ahonen has performed as a soloist with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Avanti! Chamber Orchestra and Ictus Ensemble. He regularly collaborates with violinists Pekka Kuusisto and Patricia Kopatschinskaja and the soprano Agata Zubel. Ahonen’s recordings of the music of G. Ligeti and Ch. Ives have received critical acclaim in the music press. Ahonen attended the Sibelius Academy Helsinki as a student of Tuija Hakkila and Liisa Pohjola.

Jorge E. López was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1955 and moved to the USA in 1960, where he grew up in New York City and Chicago. He studied composition with Leonard Stein and Morton Subotnick and music at the California Institute of Arts from 1971–76, but describes himself as self-taught. He sees his roots as equally in Western art music, in Surrealism (seen as a method), in science and in experiencing the elemental force of nature. In 1990 he moved to Europe, living from 1991–2008 in Upper Carinthia, Austria, and since 2008 in Vienna. From 2000–03 he was a guest artist (video and sound design) at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe. His orchestral and chamber ensemble works have been performed at prestigious festivals for new music throughout Europe. He is supported by the Academy of Arts, Berlin; the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Munich; Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel; Heinrich Strobel Foundation of South West German Radio and through an Austrian State Scholarship.

The ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra is a top orchestra of world renown; it defines itself in the Vienna orchestral tradition. The orchestra is known for its exceptional, bold programming. By combining nineteenth-century repertoire with contemporary pieces and rarely performed works of other periods, the programming often places Romantic era classics in unexpected contexts. Since 2007, the Vienna RSO has successfully collaborated with the Theater an der Wien, thereby gaining an excellent reputation as an opera orchestra. The Vienna RSO has also launched a broad-based educational programme, comprising workshops for children and young people. Highly talented musicians have been admitted to the orchestra’s own academy since 1997. In 2018 the Vienna RSO won the renowned ICMA in the category “Symphonic Music” for its 3-CD-set Martinů: The Symphonies. Marin Alsop took over as Chief Conductor in September 2019.

Marin Alsop is internationally recognised for her innovative approach to programming and audience development, deep commitment to education, and advocacy for music’s importance in the world. The 2019/20 season marks Alsop’s first as Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. As Chief Conductor and Curator of Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, she also curates and conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming summer residencies. In 2021, Alsop becomes Music Director Laureate at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. This concludes her 14-year tenure as Music Director, besides founding OrchKids, its music education program for the city’s most disadvantaged youth. The only conductor to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, Alsop has also made history as the first female conductor of the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms. To promote and nurture the careers of her fellow female conductors, in 2002 she founded the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship.