Skip to main content

Six Commissions

Collegium Novum Zürich, Switzerland

On the 30th anniversary of the Collegium Novum Zurich, Edu Haubensak, Laure M. Hiendl, Helga Arias, Arturo Corrales, Eleni Ralli and Lisa Streich compose new works that will be premiered at various concert venues in Zurich. These composition commissions are sponsored by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. For the Ensemble Collegium Novum, the anniversary is a time for a comprehensive presentation of many aspects of the ensemble's past, present, and future, and of the music that means everything to its members, not least because the musicians have now taken artistic dictation into their own hands.

Edu Haubensak composes the work Doppelstimmung for 18 instruments in scordatura (premiere): He writes a work "to the body" of the Collegium Novum Zürich, in which he uses all the instruments doubled in the ensemble and has them each play in different tunings, including the two grand pianos, which will be tuned differently.

In the world premiere by Lisa Streich, the piano is on stage as a double appearance. Streich's own development for several years has been the motorized grand piano, which is becoming increasingly independent and will be observed in the latest Opus primarily as a video installation. An additional, conventionally played instrument leads our acoustic expectations ad absurdum and allows the music to develop a unique dramaturgy.

Laure M. Hiendl's new work Seht meine Wunden und an meinen Beinen, die Narben meiner Wunden (denn wir sind lange gewandert) for large ensemble and electronics (UA) deals with musical forms of spatial thinking in concert format. The formal means stem from a way of thinking that is influenced by the techniques of digital composition and that seeks to transfer these structures to instrumental-acoustic composition and instrumentation. In the approximately 50-minute work, Laure M. Hiendl concretely applies the technique of sampling, instead of audio files, to score excerpts.

Helga Aria's new work for CLEX and string quartet (premiere) expands the sound world of the clarinet quintet with electronics for CLEX – an electronic contrabass clarinet co-developed by Ernesto Molinari – and string quartet.

The entire programme will be presented as a chamber music evening, without a conductor, and in addition to Octandre by Edgar Varèse, it will also be combined with a work by Rebecca Saunders and a new composition by the Greek-Swiss composer and music researcher Eleni Ralli. Furthermore, Arturo Corrales' new work for audience ensemble (premiere) will be performed: For the first time, Collegium Novum Zürich invites its audience and curious amateur musicians to immerse themselves in the world of contemporary music and participate in a world premiere. The Swiss composer Arturo Corrales, originally from El Salvador, writes a new work, adapted to the level of the musicians

Further information:
cnz.ch

Dates

September 17, 2022
Open church St. Jakob, Zurich

October 8, 2022
Tonhalle Zurich

December 1, 2022
Tonhalle Zurich

March 11, 2023
Museum of Design, Zurich

May 21, 2023
Helferei Grossmünster, Zurich