Samstag

Saturday at this festival is a day of chamber music. It begins with a focused solo and ends with a chamber music joint venture from two rather eccentric »bands.« At the heart of the day are two »Chamber Plays«–world premieres of vocal miniature dramas, marking the start of a new anniversary concert series.

 

The Neue Vocalsolisten have something to celebrate: founded 40 years ago as a pool of freelance voice specialists, they have been a permanent chamber music ensemble since 2000. The seven soloists, ranging from high soprano to countertenor to bass, collaborate directly with composers to develop up to 30 new scores annually. Hundreds of new works have been composed specifically for them in these 25 years, as the nuanced vocal techniques, the instrumental possibilities of the voice, as well as text, subject matter, performance, and the personalities of the singer-performers often play an important role in these compositions. Over the course of these 25 years, a new genre has emerged: Vocal Chamber Music Theatre.

 

And this new genre is celebrated by the Neue Vocalsolisten with their concert series Kammer-Spiele, where they will invite audiences in the coming months to rediscover outstanding works from the most recent vocal literature. But at ECLAT, the future perspective is on the program. Six new works tell six often very personal stories: Stefan Pohlit reflects on his homeland, a fishing village on the German-French Rhine border, »in search of a new music that draws from the old, the lost, European social history.« Tomoko Fukui musically comments on an ancient Japanese myth, Fernando Manassero looks ironically into a dystopian future, and Elena Rykova examines the sadly dystopian methods of her Russian homeland. Finally, Kuba Krzewinski provides us all with an empathetic look at the psychological and social issues within the music scene.

 

The vocal chamber music is framed by two string chamber works where absolute music is at the forefront–even though Timothy McCormack, in his piece for Marco Fusi, explores the physicality of the viola, Salvatore Sciarrino (who has also written fantastic works for the Neue Vocalsolisten) makes the violin sing, and the three young composers accompanying the debuting Fabrik Quartet at ECLAT find strong metaphorical images for their works. Coincidentally, two world premieres–Sebastian Clarens’ String Quartet and Luxa M. Schüttler’s Vocal Sextet–will face each other directly in concerts 11 and 12, both of which take romantic works as their starting point.

 

Late on Saturday evening, there will be a cheeky, ironic-dystopian revue, where Annesley Black and Katrin Plavčak, together with their two bands, Kinky Muppet and The Nubes, will stage comic sculptures in a cheerful, coarse manner: a virtuosic mix of electronic experimentalism and Renaissance music, electro-pop, and punk rock, with a late-night singing performance as well.

 

Christine Fischer