Last year’s Wien Modern had its Sternstunden – Cerha’s
complete Spiegel, rehearsed exhaustively on a 9am-9pm schedule by Cornelius
Meister and the RSO Wien – but lost focus around a week in and ultimately
suffered the ignominy of being a far less interesting festival than an event
with this length, funding and prestige should be. Possible reasons were
discussed at the time in one of the traditional Café Heumarkt panel discussions
titled ‘Wie modern ist Wien Modern?’, which concluded that the festival is
modern in the sense of modernist but not particularly contemporary. This is A
Good Thing according to Lothar Knessl – the only Wien Modern co-founder to
still involve himself, and who at 86 shows no signs of quitting – because the
problem for composers looking to establish a profile is getting repeat
performances of their works, not premieres. The logic of thoughtful consideration
given to a body of work rather than continually chasing after the thrill of the
new is understandable enough, as is the argument that the pressure to be compositionally
prolific – akin to the ‘publish or perish’ maxim drilled into untenured US
academics – shuts out slow burners and late bloomers, but in practice this is a
weak excuse for programming lots of music by composers who have been ubiquitous
for years and are, more importantly, Knessl’s favourites (only around a third
of whom, incidentally, are still alive). Now if you are under 35 the only
prospect of getting your work performed at Wien Modern is at a fringe event
like the three Alte Schmiede dates, but that I haven’t been able to get a seat
at these concerts up to an hour before the scheduled start is as clear an
indication as any that the festival’s public wants to hear more from younger composers
yet to make a name for themselves.
A reduction in scale is another thing to puzzle over, what
with a 5% subsidy increase and no Vienna Philharmonic on the programme this
year (saving a handy quarter of a million), and the festival has, it seems,
given up on ambitious operatic projects, which in an Olga Neuwirth year is a
enormous missed opportunity. The Neuwirth composer focus is at least more focused than the Cerha Schwerpunkt last year, and the two female conductors involved is a nice touch. Finally, one bit of sad
news is that the opening concert will be overshadowed by the premiere of a Penderecki double concerto over at the Musikverein; I and doubtless many others would gladly
go to both concerts and the decision to ditch Wien Modern for a house which traditionally programmes as little new music as it can get away with was not
made at all lightly. At best this is thoughtless, though chances are good it is
petty; the BRSO after all is playing a different programme the previous night that wouldn’t clash so obviously. The Wien Modern concert is at least almost
fully sold out, even if Penderecki followed by a tactical Eroica – Angyan has
pill-sweetening down to a fine art – guarantees that not much will be written
about it.
So now for what’s on: