Soprano covers Salzburg world premiere at 72 hours’ notice
mainHats off to the German soprano Mojca Erdmann who, on Saturday, gave a triumphant premiere at the Mozarteum of Beat Furrer’s new piece, spazio immergente.
Mojca had less than three days to learn the score after Golda Schulz called in sick.
The 15-minute work is a set of variations on a fragment of Mozart melody for soprano and percussion.
Great. But on the other hand, with a strong stage presence and some flair, you come quite far on short notice since in Furrer’s work, the pitches are not that important, because wrong notes don’t exist in his idiom.
Furrer: pretentious [redacted]…… Sonic art, and where bordering on expressionist music, bombastic emptiness.
For instance, this is an opera based upon the writings of a psychiatric patient:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgFnB0-bgi8
Furrer is also fascinated by the futurists, who were – as we know – complete amateurs who adulated physical violence and were very sympathetic of fascism. Violence and destruction have always been a core ideal of modernism.
Thank you for posting that clip.
My opinion about the music shifted as the clip progressed, from seeing it as pretentious drivel, to intriguing modernism, to lovely and involving music.
I hope I get the opportunity to hear it live in the States someday.
(I still think the beginning of the clip comes across as pretentious, but not the music.)
My only previous exposure to his music was hearing FAMA in NYC two years ago. I liked it.