Cantus Ansambl
Cantus cycle
 
 

The Cantus Ensemble Concert Cycle / 32nd Music Biennale Zagreb

17/04/2023
 
 
The Cantus Ensemble Concert Cycle / 32nd Music Biennale Zagreb  
The Cantus Ensemble Concert Cycle 2022/2023 and Music Biennale Zagreb 2023
April 17th 2023, Monday, Pogon Jedinstvo Hall

Viktor Čižić, piano
Srebrenka Poljak, sampler
 
 
Višeslav Laboš, electronics
 
Berislav Šipuš, conductor
Cantus Ensemble
 
 
Milko Kelemen, Musik für Judith, electronics
Clemens Gadenstätter,  FIGURE – ICONOSONICS I, for clarinet, string trio and piano 
1. picture Die Rückkehr der Natur
2. picture Körper
3. picture Gefühle
4. picture Sprecher sein
5. picture Wir unter uns
Ivo Malec, Dahovi,  for tape / Piotr Kamler, Structures, short film
Olja Jelaska, Möbius strip*, for woodwinds and percussions 
Branimir Sakač, Svemirski pejzaž, electronics
Olga Neuwirth, locus...doublure...solus, for piano, sampler and chamber ensemble
 
* first performance – commission 32nd MBZ-HDS
 

Since it was founded in 2001, Cantus Ensemble has been continuously present in the programs of the Music Biennale Zagreb, so the fourth concert in the cycle of the current season will be a part of the 32nd edition of the festival. The concert perfromance - led by Berislav Šipuš, with Srebrenka Poljak on the piano, Viktor Čižić on the sampler, and Višeslav Laboš's electronics - will take place on the 17th April at Pogon Jedinstvo. It will showcase an attractive simbiosis of electroacoustic music by the Croatian composers Milko Kelemen, Ivo Malec, and Branimir Sakač, as well as the first-performance of Olja Jelaska's new composition, besides the works of prominent contemporary music composers Clemens Gadenstätter and Olga Neuwirth.

Sound designer and journalist Višeslav Laboš has included the electronic works of Milko Kelemen, Ivo Malec, and Branimir Sakač on the edition "Anthology of Electroacoustic Music in Croatia - In Search of New Sound: 1956-1984". As the editor of this publication, after years of research, he intended to present the first examples of domestic composers in the field of electroacoustic music.

Musik für Judith for electronically processed orchestral and electronic sounds by Milko Kelemen was conceived at the Siemens Electronic Studio in 1966 and premiered in Munich afterwards. Two short movements from the film Judith by director Willem ten Haaf were intended for standalone listening by Kelemen, based on the contrast of sound blocks and silence.

“Dahovi” (eng. “Breaths“) for tape recorder by Ivo Malec dates back to 1961 as a result of a successful collaboration of the composer with the director Piotr Kamler on the short film Structures. By making subtle changes to the film score, Malec created a separate work, highlighting in the commentary of his first original record from 1969: "The primary intention of this music is to change white noise (more in a poetic sense than an acoustic one)."

The Synthetic Music "Svemirski pejzaž“(eng. "Cosmic Landscape") by Branimir Sakač, recorded at Radio Television Zagreb in 1961, is the oldest preserved example of electroacoustic music made in Croatia and remained unpublished until the release of the Anthology. To this day, it remains unknown which electronic sounds, in addition to orchestral and concrete ones, Sakač used in the work.

"Möbius Strip," for woodwinds and percussion, is a new composition by Olja Jelaska, commissioned for the 32nd Music Biennale Zagreb. Based on the outlines of tripartition, the composition bears a name that, according to the composer, "represents the surface that is created from a rectangular strip that, due to a rotation of 180 degrees, has only one side and one boundary component." Additionally, she highlights how "the basic idea stems from the constant alternation of the principles of Creation and Decreation, and their mutual and inseparable connection."

Contemporary Austrian composer Clemens Gadenstätter explores the synthesis of perception, sensation, and emotion as a connection between listening, understanding, and composition in his works. His cycle Iconosonics (I/II/III) - which the composition Figure from 2009 is a part of - is based on musical figures and gestures as "images with unchanging meanings". The basis for this are the theory of figures and musical rhetoric from the Baroque, as well as acoustic images of program music from the 19th and 20th centuries. Furthermore, he includes codified pictorial sounds of newer film and applied music. The five-movement work embodies sound figures attributed to nature, sound figures related to the body, those related to the psyche, images of speech, and those that describe us as social beings.

Olga Neuwirth, one of the leading contemporary composers, a bellwether of audiovisual composition in the 1990s, wrote her composition locus...doublure...solus for the piano, sampler, and chamber ensemble in 2001. Through seven movements, the composer explores a range of sounds, and the relationships between the piano parts and the other instruments in the ensemble in an intriguing manner. "This work showcases her skill of creative organization of sounds. Her material is in a state of flux, so that the listener's ear is drawn into what can be an intriguingly disorienting experience." (Pierre Boulez)

Bojana Plećaš Kalebota

 

 
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Concert cycle Cantus Ansambl is supported by City of Zagreb and international activities by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.



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