ensemble on_line in the echoraum

ensemble on_line: Ivana Pristasova, violin; Petra Ackerman, viola; Krassimir Sterev, accordion; Thomas Wally, Violin, Roland Schueler, cello, on Sunday, May 4, in the concert venue echoraum.

Whether a concert takes place in a tight space no larger than a California McMansion walk-in closet, or the spacious Great Hall of the Vienna Konzerthaus, and whether the style is dominated by electronics and noise or by the most exquisite string sonorities, there’s one aspect that never changes. Viennese audiences are consistently intent, concentrated, and focused. One rarely hears shuffling, coughing, or commentary, and no one arrives late. This observation was further solidified by four concerts I’ve heard thus far this week, in the space of three evenings, all in vastly contrasting venues.

Wolfgang Rihm wrote a series of works, several of which are for strings and accordion, that he calls Fetzen (translated as ‘fragment’). On Sunday evening, the ensemble on_line undertook a scintillating rendition of six of the Fetzen (No. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)---five for string quartet and accordion, and one for viola and accordion. No. 6 was especially striking, with the two violins filtered through metal practice mutes, with a tinny perpetual motion gestures....and viola and cello waiting patiently until the end, when they enter with completely foreign material---a chorale fragment functioning as a coda.

Two works for solo piano were programmed as well, with splendid performances by Mathilde Hoursiangou. Spiel(t)räume, by Simeon Pironkoff (also a well-respected conductor), in two contrasting parts, manipulates the way that memory works by investigating the relationships between materials that have become familiar to the listener through repetition, and material that is new. The composer writes that the gaps that develop in the play of fluctuations between repetition and memory might well be more significant than the actual aspects of repetition and memory. Polyrhythms of layers, frequently defined by dynamics and register characterized the second section of this work.

Alexander Stankovski’s tour de force, Frescobaldi da lontano, a series of twenty variations based upon Girolamo Frescobaldis Capriccio cromatico con ligature al contrario (1626), employs an array of techniques (overlay, filtering, transposition, and anagram) that also capitalize on the Fibonacci sequence (intrinsic to the Frescobaldi work). A few of the variations are mere phrases – like a truncated gesture, often in a jazz idiom that distinctly contrasts with the other material. In fact, four of the twenty variations are completely unrelated to the Frescobaldi. The only variation performed inside the piano (well, mostly inside), elicits a bouquet of consonances by means of stopped string harmonics, plucked strings, and normal key attacks...but takes a brief detour into more dissonant harmonic combinations, leading to the phenomenon of beats, before coming to a sudden end.

Biographies of the composers and further program notes can be found here.

Last night I attended a performance of the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1, followed by the last half of a program given by Klangforum Wien. Tonight, Mahler’s Third Symphony. Accounts of both will follow in the next couple of posts.