ORF musikprotokoll 2023

interconnected | interdependent
5.10.–8.10., Graz

The recent burst of crises calls into question our individualism, which has been driven to extremes by neoliberalism. Under the motto “interconnected | interdependent,” musikprotokoll invites us to consider our surrounding environment not as a static place, but as a dynamic network of relationships that today, perhaps more than ever, needs conscious shaping.

The kickoff on 5 October focuses on the generation whose future lives will be shaped by current changes: children and young people deal with the festival theme in their own compositions.

As a founding member of the festival network ICAS and the platform SHAPE+, musikprotokoll has been maintaining a lively exchange with like-minded festivals around the world since 2010. Numerous SHAPE+ artists perform this year.

Artists whose work is characterized by cross-border research come to Graz for concerts: Sappho/ Bioluminescence by the Australian composer Liza Lim can be heard for the first time in Austria, played by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSO Wien) under Marin Alsop. It is a work somewhere between erotic trance and hallucination that makes phosphorescent plants and genetically modified creatures glow acoustically. The orchestra also plays the Austrian premiere of new instrumental concertos by Clemens Gadenstätter and Bernhard Gander, as well as a new work by Clara Iannotta. Afterward, the Austrian-Iranian trio Gabbeh presents the world premiere of its new program.

Canada-based composer Sandeep Bhagwati has shaped current postcolonial discourses in music with his essays. He has written a new work for Klangforum Wien. Madli Marje Gildemann of Estonia, Kristine Tjøgersen of Norway, and Karen Power of Ireland use biological processes as a source of inspiration for their music.

Local anchoring remains part of how musikprotokoll sees itself: Graz-based Schallfeld Ensemble presents new and recent music by Beat Furrer, Sehyung Kim, Carlo Elia Praderio, and Katharina Klement. At Café Wolf, the festival networks with the local scene. Further collaborations with cultural institutions in Graz illuminate additional facets of the theme.

Four days full of new things: the festival closes on 8 October with a musical theater premiere in cooperation with the Johann Joseph Fux Competition for Opera Composition. In canvas, Nina Šenk of Slovenia turns the Don Juan syndrome on its head: a man serves as a canvas for women’s projections. The radio essay An Emotional Encyclopedia of War by the Kyiv-based artist Anna Kravets forms the finale on Ö1 Kunstradio.