Klangwerkstatt Berlin

In the page's words:

From November 8 to 17, 2024, the 34th edition of Klangwerkstatt Berlin - Festival for New Music in Kreuzberg's Kunstquartier Bethanien presents 20 concerts, performances, family concerts, children's and youth ensembles and lunchtime music with snacks under the title Zukunft .

Outstanding Berlin, national and international ensembles and artists of all generations will be performing numerous premieres and German premieres. The cooperation project with the Ukrainian concert platform Kyiv Contemporary Music Days will be represented by soloists Theo Nabicht & Nazarii Stets, , which will be complemented by a concert performance by Ensemble Trigger & Antje Vowinckel on the opening evening.

"But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has a right to exist, then there must also be something that can be called a sense of possibility," says the protagonist Ulrich from Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities. This view of the future also fascinated the Italian composer Luigi Nono. On the occasion of his 100th birthday, we look back at him, his perspectives and his music, and also explore his view of the future.

The quiet motto Nono 100 is reflected in the program concept of all participants in many different ways. Be it the exploration of new sound universes with ensemble mosaik & Christian Vogel (clarinet), with the young harp-percussion duo Interconnections, with Ensemble Reflexion K or with the ensemble hand werk from Cologne.

Two evening concerts are dedicated to Nono's late work, which is still relevant in its openness and transparency, its fragility and simultaneous unconditionality. With the Berliner Lautsprecherorchester, the Sonar Quartet and the soloists Susanne Zapf (violin) and Erik Drescher (flute) are the ideal interpreters. In a literary work created especially for the festival, writer Florian Neuner draws on Nono's thinking spaces and working methods.

The concerts for and with children and young people are an equally important part of Klangwerkstatt Berlin. It is important to us to promote, strengthen and enable joint artistic activity at eye level, across all age groups and regardless of educational level. With over 50 members of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg music school's children's choirs and the LUX:NM ensemble as well as speakers, the performance of Gordon Kampe's Sechse kommen durch die ganze Welt will be a very special event.

Above all, however, the aim is to encourage an expanded perspective on contemporary music in the spirit of Luigi Nono. Real spaces of possibility unfold in the sense of utopian hope for the fine, fragile and new in the consciousness of the present and open our attention as listeners in order to make us sensitive to the latent potential of the future.

Other ensembles in the program: georg katzer ensemble Berlin, Freie Jugendorchesterschule Berlin, progress - das festivalensemble, Ensemble JungeMusik Berlin, Kammermusikklasse Gerhard Scherer & Feelharmonie Rheinsberg