Experience the captivating world of modern orchestral music with Klangforum Wien's series of unique events. From the dreamlike compositions of Unsuk Chin to the vivid expressions of Alex Paxton, these performances showcase the creative prowess of contemporary composers and performers. Held at prestigious venues like the Wiener Konzerthaus and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, each event promises an unforgettable auditory adventure. Join us as we delve into the intricacies of these imaginative soundscapes and the artists who bring them to life.

A Sonic Journey: Exploring the Boundaries of Modern Orchestral Music

Prepare to embark on an auditory voyage with Klangforum Wien's lineup of 2026 events, showcasing imaginative compositions and innovative performances. From Unsuk Chin's dreamlike orchestral soundscapes in 'Unlimited Time' to Alex Paxton's vibrant and lively 'How to Eat Your Sexuality,' each event promises an immersive experience. Discover how artists like Enno Poppe, Gerhard Stäbler, and Isabel Mundry redefine musical narratives, offering a fresh perspective on contemporary orchestral and choral music.

Exploring New Sonic Realms: A Journey through Klangforum Wien's 2026 Events

Klangforum Wien is set to captivate audiences with a series of groundbreaking events in 2026, showcasing the brilliance of contemporary orchestral and choral compositions. From 'Unlimited Time,' which delves into the imaginative power of Unsuk Chin's music, to 'Archipelagic Sounds,' unveiling diverse soundscapes, each event promises a unique auditory experience. Artisans like Enno Poppe, Gerhard Stäbler, and Alex Paxton offer compositions that challenge conventional norms, inviting listeners to explore new dimensions of sound. These events are not just concerts, but a celebration of innovation in music.

A Symphony of Innovation: Exploring Klangforum Wien's Cutting-Edge Events

In the realm of contemporary orchestral music, Klangforum Wien is orchestrating a series of events that defy conventional boundaries and challenge the listener's imagination. From the dream-like landscapes of Unsuk Chin to the archipelagic sounds envisioned by Luxa M. Schüttler, these events promise to take audiences on an unprecedented auditory journey. Set in the prestigious venues of the Wiener Konzerthaus and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, these performances feature a diverse lineup of talented artists and composers, each contributing unique creative works that push the limits of compositional imagination.

Unbounded Melodies: A Journey Through Klangforum Wien's Orchestral Innovations

IRCAM enables composers to push the boundaries of their compositional imagination to completely new horizons. Thus, Isabel Mundry positions the world of the mind and the world as a resonance space as coordinates for a comprehensive sound experience. By contrast, Márton Illés hones the force and energy of individual sounds to utmost sharpness. György Kurtág, entirely without digital-electronic means, translates the text’s poignancy into the implacability of the micro-detail. Precision that glows.

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Light Spectra

Wiener Konzerthaus

"A party that sounds like late Beethoven on speed", wrote the "Stuttgarter Zeitung" after the world premiere of Alex Paxton's How to Eat Your Sexuality. The three-part work by the successful British composer, whose music the New York Times described as the most joyous sound in ages, is never overly conceptual, but rather immediate, wild and colourful, is never cerebral, but very direct, wild and colorful.  

Alex Paxton: How to Eat Your Sexuality

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

"A sound party that sounds like Beethoven on speed later on," said the "Stuttgarter Zeitung" after the premiere of Alex Paxton's "How to eat your sexuality" in February 2025. Never overly intellectual, but rather completely direct, wild and colorful, the three-part work by the successful Brit comes across, whose music the "New York Times" not without reason described as "the most cheerful sound in a long time." 

New Vocal Soloists / Klangforum Wien / Vimbayi Kaziboni

A major third rings out from the loading hatch of a garbage truck – Gerhard Stäbler perceives it as Morse code of an acoustic journey. Endless loops, which imperceptibly alter our stream of consciousness, cause the acoustic landscape in Bernhard Lang’s piece to implode. A fragmentary nucleus, dissected by Laure M. Hiendl into minuscule particles, oscillates between a sonic still life and animated stasis, hinting at a third possibility. Instead of dogmatic assertions of absoluteness, Luxa M. Schüttler envisions an archipelagic diversity which, ultimately, is not bound to a single focal point. A concert that takes you into the infinite expanses of minuscule dimensions.

Archipelagic Sounds

To dream what, in all its improbability, defies comprehension: This freedom and imaginative power underpin Unsuk Chin’s music. Light and colour are the aggregate states of these sounds, which – in the process of engaging with one another – continually change their consistency, hinting at these dream-landscapes’ vast expanses. Just as Enno Poppe, with his transitions between rigorously structured design and axes that reach out towards unbounded time, conjures an unrestrained, almost dizzying sound experience in his listeners.

Unlimited Time

From the profound sense of wonder in awe of the unfathomable beauty of the rocky landscapes in Utah/North America, all the way up to the overarching panoply of the stars – thus one might imagine the energy field inhabited by Olivier Messiaen as he wrote this masterpiece of compositional architecture and sound in colourful splendour. From the depths of the canyons, through the stars, and into paradise.

Elbphilharmonie: From the Gorges to the Stars

Sternschluchten

A self-alienating desire: There are many interpretations of Franz Schubert’s “Schöne Müllerin”, which set texts by Wilhelm Müller to music. To begin with, Johannes Maria Staud approaches the cycle via the most subtle calibrations of sound in his instrumentation for ensemble. By adding new compositions to texts by the poet Emily Dickinson, he lends the “Fair Maid of the Mill” a voice of her own, giving space to her subjective experience of these fateful entanglements.

Fremdes Begehren

Gottfried von Einem based the title of his opera Der Prozess on the novel of the same name by Franz Kafka, which premiered in 1953. Confronted with a diffuse accusation by an absurd court, the protagonist Josef K. stumbles hopelessly through a world which has now become inscrutable to him. Von Einem's music conveys the horror inherent in the text with pounding rhythms and repetitive structures, while at the same time making use of elements of jazz and twelve-tone music. Under the direction of Walter Kobéra and Stefan Herheim, students of the Klangforum Wien master's programme PPCM (Performance Practice in Contemporary Music) are now performing the version by Tobias Leppert as a co-production with the Neue Oper Wien for the MusikTheater an der Wien.

Der Prozess

Vienna Chamber Opera

Razing boundaries to the ground, making them disappear; but also honing of forgotten edges: With “Tower of Babel”, Klangforum Wien continues its project of devising a multi-part structure which, in defiance of the tectonic tremors caused by geopolitical conflicts from the Baltics to the Silk Road, makes a fascinatingly diverse composers' scene visible. These positions – strong and radical – manifest themselves outside a streamlined cultural industry. There’s a lot at stake.

Geschliffene Grenzen

Badajoz : JONDE and members of Klangforum Wien

Lopez de Ayala Theater

CNDM Madrid: JONDE und Mitglieder des Klangforum Wien

National Music Auditorium

The compositions by Pierluigi Billone invariably explore the rich sound potential of instruments and everyday objects.

In a long-standing artistic collaboration with Klangforum Wien, Billone has been creating expansive works of music for over 30 years, always probing the limits of the audible between sound, voice, and speech. In his pursuit, the body serves as the nexus of musical experience. At the laureate concert of the 36th Erste Bank Composition Award, the ensemble performs the world premiere of his latest piece ME (Studie für Ensemble) on 6 November 2025 at Wien Modern festival. Lead by Emilio Pomárico, the programme also includes the performance of Anna Arkushyna’s Murmuration for large ensemble (2014) and Helmut Lachenmann's ...Zwei Gefühle... Musik mit Leonardo (1991/92).‍

Erste Bank Composition Award: Pierluigi Billone

The Asian premiere of the concert installation 11,000 Strings by Georg Friedrich Haas takes the Ensemble to Hangzhou. The Basketball Hall of the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music will become a space for an immersive sound experience. 50 pianos and Klangforum Wien unleash a microtonal universe that spans finely spun motifs and thunderous roars like a force of nature.

HCMF Hangzhou: 11.000 Saiten

Zhejiang Conservatory of Music

HCMF Hangzhou: Francesco Filidei und Georg Friedrich Haas Konzert Portrait

King of the Waltz, a pop star of his times, a universal artist – Johann Strauss II has inspired many. From Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner to Richard Strauss, all were fascinated by his wealth of ingenuity and the soaring ease of his imagination. Wolfgang Mitterer, a virtuoso of the art of recharging, reinterpretation, and deconstruction, explores the ambiguity inherent in this much celebrated music.

TIMF Tongyeong: tritsch tratsch

Tongyeong Concert Hall

The naked human body – lost to the world, but manifesting itself through the voice, in song and in the utterance of words: In search of the primordial logos, Francesca Verunelli questions the naked voice, la nuda voce. Klangforum Wien, too, represents a body: James Dillon examines this highly virtuoso and equally fragile “ensemble body” in all its ritual dynamics. Martin Smolka abandons all traces of corporeality, instead creating an image of angels in feathery-winged vehicles. It’s all about the primeval foundation of sound.

Nackte Stimme

With The Tower of Babel, Klangforum Wien, together with the Wiener Konzerthaus and with the support of AFF Projects, launched a new project in 2023 which, with two performances in Vienna and Berlin so far, explores the new in the music of the former Soviet territories in all its complexity - distinctive, different and highly advanced. As part of the third performance at the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2025, Klangforum Wien will premiere works by Anna Korsun, Koka Nikoladze and Alexander Khubeev, and complete the program with a new composition by Francesca Verunelli.

Donaueschinger Musiktage 2025: The Tower of Babel III

Donauhallen Donaueschingen

With Aura, Hanna Eimermacher creates a concert-filling sound-space choreography into which she also incorporates her own voice, both live and in the studio. Over the course of the evening, the 19 musicians of Klangforum Wien, the composer and the two moving conductors form an oversized ellipse to create a "sound embrace" of the audience, which is positioned in the middle of the concert.

Donaueschinger Musiktage 2025: Aura I

The highly anticipated North American premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas' monumental concert installation 11,000 Strings brings the ensemble to the city of the composer’s tenure at Columbia University. For six performances, the Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory in New York will be transformed into an immersive sonic experience. 50 pianos and Klangforum Wien will envelop listeners in a variety of sonic environments, from chillingly tender melodic motifs to the thunderous roar of a looming weather storm. This unforgettable experience showcases Haas’s focus on the human dimension in his experimentalism while creating a new way of listening.

11,000 Strings at the Park Avenue Armory, New York

Park Avenue Armory

Composed between 1985 and 1989, Cuban-born Jorge E. López’ Blue Cliffs is characterized by archaic sounds and dark timbres. American-trained and sensitive to Eastern spirituality, he composed a large part of his work immersed in the nature of the Methow Valley, Washington State. Under the baton of Tim Anderson, Klangforum Wien brings this impressive work to the stage of transart festival 2025 and – by the limited instrumentation of 13 musicians – emphasizes each individual voice and thus enables dynamic and tonal contrasts.

transart Festival: Blue Cliffs

Ex-Masten, Bolzano

"A reinvention of music theatre" – thus Klangforum Wien’s first concertante-performative meta-opera, an energetically charged foray through the operatic literature of the past 100 years, was hailed enthusiastically. Starting with Zemlinsky, via Sciarrino and Saunders, all the way to Xenakis, the spectrum covers nothing less than love in all its potentialities and impossibilities. Together with the Needcompany, the musicians present themselves as a lively collective of performers, wholeheartedly and powerfully on stage. Italian premiere.

transart Festival: Amopera

There are many interpretations of Franz Schubert's “Schöne Müllerin”, which set texts by Wilhelm Müller to music. For this concert evening, Johannes Maria Staud brings the lyrical themes of nature and love into the present. By adding new compositions to seven texts by the poet Emily Dickinson, he reveals connections between her thoughts and Schubert's work, and lends the “Fair Maid of the Mill” a voice of her own, giving space to her subjective experience of these fateful entanglements.

Dickinson, who published only ten of her 1,789 poems during her lifetime, explored themes such as nature, love and societal questions in her experimental poetry, always striving for possibilities of female self-determination.

Klangspuren Schwaz: Die Schöne Müllerin/These Fevered Days

House of Music, Innsbruck

Contributing to the homage à Pierre Boulez, the Klangforum Wien Orchestra commemorates the 100th birthday of the composer and conductor by performing works by Maurice Ravel, Pierre Boulez and Edgard Varèse. Featuring soprano Sarah Aristidou, the concert at the Haus für Mozart is lead by Sylvain Cambreling.

Salzburger Festspiele – Guest Orchestras/À Pierre: Klangforum Wien Orchestra

Haus für Mozart, Salzburg

This new production of one of the most fascinating contemporary works of music theater celebrates its premiere at this year's edition of the Salzburg Festival. Based on Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, Claus H. Henneberg and Peter Eötvös contributed the libretto for the opera in three sequences. The Klangforum Wien Orchestra performs under the direction of Maxime Pascal and Alphonse Cemin.

Salzburger Festspiele – Tri Sestri

Felsenreitschule

In his libretto based on Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Salvatore Sciarrino offers a fresh perspective on monstrous events. Vimbayi Kaziboni, Conductor in Residence, leads Klangforum Wien and Cantando Admont at this concert performance at the Kollegienkirche, Salzburg.

Salzburger Festspiele – Ouverture Spirituelle · Fatum – Macbeth

Kollegienkirche

Together with librettist Tom Holloway, Czech composer Miroslaw Srnka places a real-life criminal case during the Second World War at the center of his opera Voice Killer, which he wrote as a commissioned work for the MusikTheater an der Wien. His protagonist, a young soldier at a US army base in Australia, is obsessively searching for the voice of his deceased mother among women crossing his path - ultimately, this search turns him into a serial killer. Under the musical direction of Finnegan Downie Dear, Klangforum Wien will premiere the work at the Theater an der Wien.

Voice Killer

Theater an der Wien, Vienna

The motto "Stories that matter" sets the tone for the second edition of the Wiener Festwochen’s Academy Second Modernism. A public discourse event examines the possibility of a global, equitable music culture and how new ways of storytelling from a diverse perspective can succeed. The two concerts with Klangforum Wien are featuring 10 internationally groundbreaking female composers whose artistry shapes the global, second, feminist modernsim.

Wiener Festwochen – Academy Second Modernism: No More Excuses II

ORF RadioKulturhaus

Wiener Festwochen - Academy Second Modernism: No More Excuses I

“Ground-breaking implosions of the musical language of their time” – while being dismissed in their day at the dawn of the 20th century, the compositions of Schoenberg and Webern nowadays are understood as important milestones of music history, which also have a lasting influence on contemporary composers such as Enno Poppe and Beat Furrer.

With this concert under the baton of Katharina Wincor, Klangforum Wien returns to the wellspring of much contemporary music, the Second Viennese School, and will prove once again that it’s able to “reinvigorate the thrill of a concert with contemporary music”, as The New York Times once wrote.

Black holes from the Romantic era

Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ

After the semi-finals of the second edition of the International Conducting Competition Rotterdam in June 2024, the six designated winners Luis Castillo-Briceño, Yukuang Jin, Jakub Przybycień, Rodrigo Sámano Albarrán, Miguel Sepúlveda and Sam Weller undergo a one-year mentoring programme that will culminate in the final rounds between 1 and 13 June, 2025 in De Doelen.

During these days, the finalists will demonstrate their skills in five different rounds and conduct works from a wide range of genres: from classical to contemporary music and operas to large symphonic works. On June 4, 2025, they will be at the helm of Klangforum Wien conducting works by Beat Furrer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Enno Poppe, and Mathilde Wantenaar

ICCR Rotterdam: Final rounds 2025

De Doelen

The next stop of Georg Friedrich Haas' monumental concert installation takes Klangforum Wien to Hanover. Festival director Ingo Metzmacher will be at the helm of the musical direction. Once again, 50 pianos combine to form a single instrument with a gigantic sound that reverberates like a storm from the depths of the universe.

11,000 Strings

DHC Halle, Hanover

For Lisa Streich, the sky above us represents a constant in relation to the brittle realities of life. With Himmel, she paints a plethora of tonal colours with spectral chords, which allow the fluctuation between rupture and continuity to become palpable. In Andělské schody (Angel Steps), Martin Smolka's childhood memories of a path through the landscape popularly known as "angel steps" are echoed in his precise art of orchestration as a microtonal journey with a plurality of compositional ideas.

Beijing Modern Music Festival

CCOM Opera & Concert Hall, Beijing

The Symposion project takes up the theme of intoxication culture, going back to antiquity. The ancient social practice (cf. Plato’s Symposion) inspired an evening with music of our time, perceived in the slowly changing conditions of collective, relaxed inebriation...

Agrigento 2025 – La Cultura Dell’ Ascolto – Symposion

Teatro dell'Efebo, Agrigento

In a process of mutual encounter and connection, the musicians of Klangforum Wien will intervene musically at the city's many characteristic locations, thereby creating a city map of sounds that involves the entire urban population.

Agrigento 2025 – La Cultura Dell’ Ascolto – Urban Interaction

Klangforum Wien will perform several works by composers, who were selected as part of the Call for Scores New Music - New Horizons. As part of "Agrigento, Italian Capital of Culture 2025", Klangforum Wien, together with the Fondazione Agrigento 2025, initiated the Open Call, inviting submissions that explore the connection between sound, architecture and the identity of the Mediterranean.

Agrigento 2025 – Concerto

Theatre Luigi Pirandello

Absolute music. Boulez with a homage to Stravinsky, Manoury with a homage to Boulez and Lim with her work dedicated to a Persian Sufi master – these reverences are just the cause, but not the point of origin, the foundation, on which these three works are resting. This is all about music. Nothing outside music diverts the attention. Fixed structures contain glowing instrumental sounds – an inquiry into musical language and what it is capable of; the soul of sound without programme.

Explosion

Multi-faceted works by Carola Bauckholt, Francesco Filidei and Martin Smolka form the programme of this concert evening in Graz. Together with ensemble members of Klangforum Wien, students of the master's programme “Performance Practice in Contemporary Music” (PPCM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz demonstrate their skills and perform Bauckholt's Pacific Time, Filidei's Ballata No. 7 and Smolka's ANDĚLSKÉ SCHODY - Angel Steps. At the helm of the concert is Claire Levacher.

PPCM Semester Concert

KUG - MUMUTH - György-Ligeti-Hall

The 200th anniversary of the King of the Waltz: a pop star of his time, a universal artist – Johann Strauss II has inspired many. From Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner to Richard Strauss, all were fascinated by his wealth of ingenuity and the soaring ease of his imagination. Wolfgang Mitterer, a virtuoso of the art of recharging, reinterpretation, and deconstruction, explores the ambiguity inherent in this much celebrated music. From the well-known Kaiserwalzer to the Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka, he reimagines Strauss’s timeless hits in a remix that meets the unbridled enthusiasm and passion of Klangforum Wien.

Tokyo Harusai Spring Festival: tritsch tratsch

Tokyo Bunka Kaikan

With Luciano Berio's song cycle Folk Songs, a tribute to the mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, and two characteristic and groundbreaking compositions from Pierre Boulez's oeuvre, the festival debut at the Tokyo Spring Festival marks the 100th anniversary of these two landmark composers. In addition, Philippe Manoury has developed a deep relationship with Japanese musical life. His Passacaille pour Tokyo is a reimagination of musical form in the spirit of Boulez.

Tokyo Harusai Spring Festival: Boulez & Berio 100

"A reinvention of music theatre" – thus Klangforum Wien’s first concertante-performative meta-opera, an energetically charged foray through the operatic literature of the past 100 years, was hailed enthusiastically. Starting with Zemlinsky, via Sciarrino and Saunders, all the way to Xenakis, the spectrum covers nothing less than love in all its potentialities and impossibilities. Together with the Needcompany, the musicians present themselves as a lively collective of performers, wholeheartedly and powerfully on stage.

Amopera

Daegu Opera House

Hong Kong Arts Festival: tritsch tratsch

Hong Kong Cultural Center

Hong Kong Arts Festival: Amopera

Nothing is ever safe from him. Frequently, Alex Paxton has been referred to as “system crasher”. A multi-stylist and improvising jazz trombonist, he knows of no discrepancy between entertainment, highly complex work-structures, and breathtaking virtuosity. Elements taken from music for video games, classical chamber music and free jazz are melded in his musical smelting furnace to create a blazing and highly energetic musical language. A full evening’s worth of a truly staggering journey.

Crash

As part of the ninth edition of the impuls festival in Graz, new works by emerging composers will once again be premiered this year by Klangforum Wien.

After composers from 48 nations and five continents submitted their pieces to the impuls Composition Competition 2022/2023, a jury of musicians and composers (Paul Beckett, Franck Bedrossian, Clara Iannotta, Sarah Nemtsov and Anders Nyqvist) selected five winners in May 2023, who were subsequently commissioned to write a composition. These new pieces for ensemble can now be heard for the first time in Graz.

Impuls. 9th festival for contemporary music

Helmut List Halle

Presenting creative arrangements for chamber ensembles by Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler and Alexander Zemlinsky at the renowned Wigmore Hall in London, Klangforum Wien celebrates these musical pioneers of the city of Vienna, who opposed the prevailing conservatism with their new ideas in music in the early 1900s. Under the baton of its Conductor-in-Residence Vimbayi Kaziboni, the ensemble is joined by mezzo-soprano Barbara Kozelj.

Wigmore Hall, London

Alex Paxton is often described as “system crasher” – nothing is ever safe from him. A multi-stylist and improvising jazz trombonist, he knows of no discrepancy between entertainment, highly complex work-structures, and breathtaking virtuosity. Elements taken from music for video games, classical chamber music and free jazz are melded in his musical smelting furnace to create a blazing and highly energetic musical language. His new work How to Eat your Sexuality guarantees a full evening’s worth of a truly staggering journey. World premiere at the opening concert of the ECLAT Festival Stuttgart.

ECLAT: Opening Concert

Theaterhaus Stuttgart

King of the Waltz, a pop star of his times, a universal artist – Johann Strauss II has inspired many. From Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner to Richard Strauss, all were fascinated by his wealth of ingenuity and the soaring ease of his imagination. Wolfgang Mitterer, a virtuoso of the art of recharging, reinterpretation, and deconstruction, explores the ambiguity inherent in this much celebrated music. A world premiere in the context of the Johann Strauss anniversary year 2025.

Tritsch tratsch

A radical listening experience that emerges from the void. Starting with a double or triple piano, the three composers sharpen and challenge the sense of hearing from the very first moment of evolving sound. Between echo and silence, Nono suspends a primordial rhythmic cell of music by the indigenous peoples of Brazil. On the threshold of the inaudible, Andre moves in search of the most intense presence of mystical experience. Haas, in turn, follows a never-ending melody into the depths of a vastly unfolding space.

Riss

Nina Šenk, laureate of the Erste Bank Composition Award 2024, is considered a key representative of Slovenia's up-and-coming international music scene. In her works, the 1982 born composer expands the possibilities of different soundscapes, questions the traditional structures of sound formations and creates a variety of harmonic timbres.

Following the world premiere of her opera Canvas as part of the Johann Joseph Fux Competition for Opera Composition 2023, Klangforum Wien is now collaborating with Nina Šenk again and will premiere her award winning piece November Night (2024) at Wien Modern 2024 on 21 November 2024 as part of the Erste Bank Composition Award, which is being presented for the 35th time this year.

Erste Bank Composition Award: Nina Šenk

“And I turned around.” As the consequence of a single fatal movement, Orpheus loses everything and is thrown back on what had seemingly already been overcome: The sense of forlornness between Him and Her, their mutual unavailability, and the desperate desire which will never be fulfilled. With Begehren, Beat Furrer has created one of the most significant works of contemporary music theatre, which Klangforum Wien presents in a concert version at the core of the ensemble’s “FURRER 70” project. The performance is part of festival Wien Modern 2024.

Singen, Sehnen

With Furrer 70, Klangforum Wien is creating a legacy in the artist’s lifetime: Beat Furrer – composer, conductor and founder of the ensemble – has selected 18 key works from his oeuvre, collaborating with Klangforum Wien and conducting the ensemble for a series of seminal new recordings. An exclusive media box set with 6 CDs, 3 videos and 2 books offers unparalleled access to Furrer's music and artistry on the occasion of his (upcoming) 70th birthday.

Furrer 70 – Anniversary Box Presentation

The Tower of Babel is a programme dedicated to recent works by composers from the region of the former Soviet Union. First performed at the Wiener Konzerthaus and Radialsystem Berlin in 2023, Klangforum Wien returns to Berlin with novel discoveries, putting new compositions from Central Asia into the spotlight.

This edition of the programme maps the new musical landscapes of today's post-Soviet societies, highlighting artistically uncompromising voices from Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Lithuania, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine with due matter-of-factness.

VOICES Festival: The Tower of Babel

St. Elisabeth Church, Berlin

Together with the VOICES Festival Berlin and director Philipp Grigorian, Klangforum Wien creates immersive listening experiences with contemporary music. The "Nachspiel" concert creates spaces for an intimate, intensive encounter between audience and artists. Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the radical experience of New Music and to leave the distance between listener and performer behind.

VOICES Festival: Nachspiel

Kühlhaus, Berlin

The outHEAR New Music Week is an international symposium with a master class for composition in Larissa, Greece. Ensemble members of Klangforum Wien and students of its PPCM master's programme at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz collaborate with the participating composers on their new works. The fourth edition will take place from 2-10 November 2024.

outHEAR New Music Week

Municipal Conservatory of Larissa, Greece

All energies are spent. Clara Iannotta canvasses the empty chest from which the heart has stealthily withdrawn, whilst George Lewis contemplates the insoluble predicament of humankind’s double nature as both mental and physical beings. In this inhospitable terrain, where all seems lost to the world, Brendan Champeaux, Shiqi Geng and Yiran Zhao stake out a territory of new sound architectures: three world premieres by a new generation of composers.

Strange bird

With his multilayered, poetic work – full of consistent and radical austerity and yet provocative humour – the composer Hermann Markus Preßl continues to influence the following generation of musicians, especially those of the Graz music scene, even 30 years after his death. Like few others, Preßl managed to put death at the center of his work addressing it with such lightness and directness while never slipping into the pathetic. By including mystical concepts such as the "holy nothing", Preßl’s work offers a multifaceted projection surface.

musikprotokoll 2024: "Das Heilige Nichts" oder Insel der Unendlichkeit

Cultural Center at the Minorites 

Beat Furrer's Begehren is considered one of the most significant works of contemporary music theater of our time. The conductor and composer reworks the Orpheus myth, condensing the ancient sources of Ovid and Virgil with texts by Cesare Pavese, Günter Eich and Hermann Broch, into ten haunting soundscapes. Starting from the tragic moment, when Orpheus looks back at his beloved Eurydice, Furrer uses a new musico-dramatic narrative style to explore the relationship drama of two archetypal figures: "Him" and "Her", their mutual unavailability, and the desperate desire which will never be fulfilled.

Dortmund Zeitinsel 2024 - Beat Furrer: Begehren

Dortmund Concert Hall

With Beat Furrer's extensive vocal cycle Akusmata, Klangforum Wien and the vocal ensemble Cantando Admont are premiering a composition specially created for the Konzerthaus Dortmund. Furrer, who is regarded as one of the most important composers of our time, works with literary texts by Pythagoras for this demanding cycle and creates completely new, complex soundscapes as a result.

Dortmund Zeitinsel 2024 - Sound Cosmos Beat Furrer

At this year's transart festival, Klangforum Wien reimagines the possibilities of Polish-American composer Lucia Długoszewski’s soundscapes in contemporary dance together with choreographers Weronika Pelczyńska from Warsaw and Vienna-based Elizabeth Ward as well as their dancers. The ensemble’s award-winning recordings, released as a double album titled LuciaDługoszewski - Abyss and Caress (label: col legno), have sparked this exciting collaboration, which includes the world premiere presented at the ImPulsTanz Festival, Vienna, in August 2024.

Transart Festival: Dances for Lucia Długoszewski

Walterhaus Theater, Bolzano

It all started with a dream: 50 pianos as one instrument. Georg Friedrich Haas has created a unique sound experience that resounds like a natural wind from the depths of the universe. With 11.000 Saiten, Georg Friedrich Haas explores a microtonal space for 50 pianists on just as many pianos and an ensemble.

Düsseldorf Festival - 11.000 Saiten

Messe Düsseldorf

It all started with a dream: 50 pianos as one instrument. Georg Friedrich Haas has created a unique sound experience that resounds like a natural wind from the depths of the universe. With 11.000 Saiten, Georg Friedrich Haas explores a microtonal space for 50 pianists on just as many pianos and an ensemble.

Premiered at the Bolzano Festival Bozen (August 2023) and performed for the first time in its original version in the Great Hall of the Wiener Konzerthaus during the Wien Modern Festival, this unique concert installation is now coming to Germany for the first time.

Düsseldorf Festival - 11.000 Saiten II

Particolare is a new curated contemporary art salon and will take place for the first time from 11-15 September 2024 at Kursalon Hübner in Vienna. The music programme is curated in collaboration with Klangforum Wien. 

Particolare – Contemporary Art Salon

Kursalon Hübner, Vienna

With Begehren, Beat Furrer has created one of the most significant works of contemporary music theatre. The founder and long-time companion of Klangforum Wien, who is celebrating his 70th birthday this year, reworks the Orpheus myth, condensing the ancient sources of Ovid and Virgil with texts by Cesare Pavese, Günter Eich and Hermann Broch into ten haunting soundscapes. Starting from the single fatal movement, when Orpheus looks back at his beloved Eurydice, Furrer explores the relationship drama of two archetypal figures by means of a new musico-dramatic narrative style: "Him" and "Her", their mutual unavailability, and the desperate desire which will never be fulfilled. Premiered twenty years ago at the opening celebrations of Graz as European Capital of Culture, Begehren has since been performed widely. Klangforum Wien is presenting the work at the core of its "Furrer 70" project and is now performing it for the first time in Switzerland under the direction of Beat Furrer himself.

Lucerne Festival – Begehren

Lucerne Theater, Lucerne

At this year's ImPulsTanz Festival Vienna, choreographers Weronika Pelczyńska from Warsaw and Vienna-based Elizabeth Ward reimagine the possibilities of Polish-American composer Lucia Długoszewski’s soundscapes in contemporary dance. The world premiere will be presented at the Odeon, Vienna, together with their dancers and musicians of Klangforum Wien. The ensemble’s award-winning recordings, released as a double album titled Lucia Długoszewski - Abyss and Caress (col legno), have sparked this exciting collaboration.

Lucia Długoszewski studied with John Cage and Edgar Varèse before forging her own path. Her music is closely intertwined with dance. She collaborated with Erick Hawkins – the first male dancer for Martha Graham – and his dance company for over 40 years. The keen-to-experiment artist, a child of Polish immigrants, was also an inventor of various instruments. Długoszewski’s distinctive compositions are based on her sensitivity for choreography, body and stage performance.

ImPulsTanz: Dances for Lucia Długoszewski

Odeon, Vienna

 ImPulsTanz: Dances for Lucia Długoszewski

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Part of the performance takes place in complete darkness.
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