Klangforum Wien at the Salzburg Festival

At this year’s Salzburg Festival, Klangforum Wien will present six concerts as part of the series “Time with Ustwolskaja” and “Time with Furrer”. Setting them in the context of an extended musical horizon and also covering the history of thought which informs the concert dramaturgy of the festival, key chamber music works by Galina Ustwolskaja and three of her symphonies will be juxtaposed with the Musical Exequies by Heinrich Schütz and the silent movie La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc by Carl Theodor Dreyer from the year 1928. 

The ensemble’s tribute to Beat Furrer, Klangforum Wien’s founder, will begin with Begehren, one of the composer’s best known works for music theatre. The opera, which sets texts by Cesare Pavese, Günter Eich, Ovid and Vergil to music, revolves around the ancient Orpheus myth, transferring it to the present day. Four other major works will be performed under the baton of the composer as part of this series, in which Klangforum Wien will join forces with renowned vocal ensembles such as Cantando Admont, The Tallis Scholars and the Neue Vokalsolisten Stuttgart. Including texts by Ingeborg Bachmann and a performance of the Missa pro defunctis by Tomás Luis de Victoria, these concerts will offer an impressive survey of the musical oeuvre of one of today’s most important composers.