Piano music and digital images: 3 x 90 – Arvo Pärt, Terry Riley, Kurt Schwertsik – three composers who have left their musical mark on the history of music in the second half of the 20th century. Three composers who are celebrating their 90th birthdays this year and whose works continue to shape the music of our time. Ars Electronica congratulates them with a special concert.
Admission: valid museum ticket
Registration recommended at center@ars.electronica.art or +43.732.7272.0
Kurt Schwertsik, one of Austria’s most frequently performed contemporary composers, who turned to the zeitgeist of serial New Music in the 1950s, incorporated tonality into his music in the 1960s, and perfected a very personal style often characterized by humor and whimsy, composed works for a wide variety of ensembles as well as for the theater and opera stage. As an outstanding instrumentalist and through his many years of teaching, he has also had a significant influence on the Austrian music scene.
The American composer Terry Riley, who laid the foundations for minimal music with his micro-polyphonic, repetitive patterns and became one of the most popular representatives of this influential musical genre of the 20th century. African and Asian influences and early experiments with electronic sounds quickly became a major inspiration for the experimental pop music of the 1960s and 1970s.
And finally, Arvo Pärt, the influential Estonian composer who, like no other, combines spirituality and avant-garde to create the unmistakable music of our time. In his uncompromising reduction to the essentials of sound and musical structures, in which religious leitmotifs from the West and East are repeatedly found, he has created a timeless symbiosis of tradition and modernity and an unmistakable musical language.
As a conductor and pianist, Dennis Russell Davies has enjoyed decades of friendship with all three composers, who have written works for him and many of which he has conducted in their world premieres. Together with Maki Namekawa, one of the most internationally renowned interpreters of contemporary piano music, he will take us on this musical journey through time from the 1950s to the present day – accompanied by the impressive digital imagery of Deep Space 8K.
Piano: Maki Namekawa und Dennis Russell Davies
Visuals: Cori O‘Lan