Salzburg (OTS) – With the 1st edition of the new interdisciplinary ORA Early Music Festival from March 21st to 23rd, 2024, the Mozarteum University is celebrating a very special premiere. Over three days, early music, contemporary musical language and improvisation will combine in numerous concerts and sound performances to create a unique sound experience. The name of the festival says it all: it stands for the now, the moment and moment that cannot be repeated.
“In a synergistic bridge, ORA connects old and new music – here original sound meets future music from five centuries, improvisation, premieres and musical spatial installations”
says festival co-initiator Dorothee Oberlinger (recorder), who designed ORA together with the renowned teachers Vittorio Ghielmi (viola da gamba), Florian Birsak (harpsichord) and Simone Fontanelli (composition and conducting).
The festival kicks off on Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday on March 21st in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum Foundation – with music by the master himself, paired with contemporary compositions that refer to works by Johann Sebastian Bach. On the same evening there will be a concert by the Mozarteum Wind Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Andreas Hofmeir and Simone Fontanelli, which was conceived for the first time in collaboration with the Department of Early Music and the Institute for New Music. It is all about Johann Sebastian Bach’s organ works in wind philharmonic arrangements. The concert will open with a premiere of a work for classical and historical instruments by the renowned Ukrainian-Russian composer Vladimir Tarnopolski, who is currently living in exile in Germany due to his dissident stance. Dorothee Oberlinger and Simone Fontanelle conducted an interview with him, which will be shown during the break between the two concerts.
On Friday, March 22nd, the already traditional and popular Baroque Night of the Department of Early Music is on the program, which this year is all about “stile moderno”. In five concerts, revolutionary and groundbreaking works of early music at the crossroads of epochs and contemporary compositions for instruments with the original sound will compete. In keeping with the Passion season, “Membra Jesu nostri”, a cycle of seven Easter cantatas by Dietrich Buxtehude under the direction of Vittorio Ghielmi and Jörn Andresen, will be heard, the highlight of German cantata compositions of the 17th century.
On Saturday evening (March 23rd), teachers and students from almost all classes at the Mozarteum University (classical and ancient instruments, folk music, singing, drama and dance) will present a performance of the legendary “In c” by Terry Riley, staged by director Ludger Engels, in the university foyer. the forefather of minimal music. Riley’s ostinato music meets works by Georg Philipp Telemann in the spirit of the “barbaric beauty” of folk music from Eastern Europe that he so valued. Cymbalom virtuoso Marcel Comendant and violinist Stano Paluch will improvise breathtakingly over them.
“The preview of the Mozarteum University’s new festival format invites the audience on a journey through time through the centuries. Early music reinvents itself, encounters contemporary music and unusual concepts. New ways are being discovered here to celebrate the music of the future from five centuries. ORA is more than an insider tip! ORA is present, is Mozarteum, is original sound”
says Rector Elisabeth Gutjahr enthusiastically.
The ORA Early Music Festival sees itself as a prelude to establishing a larger original sound festival format, in which in the future, in addition to performative and interdisciplinary aspects, the historical venues and the musical tradition of the baroque city of Salzburg will be given greater attention.
ORA Early Music Festival
21st-23rd March 2024
Program and information:
moz.ac.at/de/ora
Artistic planning team:
Dorothee Oberlinger, Head of the Department for Wind and Percussion Instruments and Deputy Head of the Institute for New Music
Simone Fontanelli, Head of the Institute for New Music
Vittorio Ghielmi, Head of Department for Early Music
Questions & Contact:
sandra.steindl@moz.ac.at
+43 676 88122 317