The breath that means the world: At Wien Modern, Mark Andre's spiritual opus magnum rwḥ 1-4 can be experienced for the first time in Austria on November 3 - in St. Stephen's Cathedral by the composer's request. Roland Kluttig will conduct the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, and the two choirs Wiener Singakademie and Wiener Chormädchen.
The silence at the beginning of the concert becomes a kind of leitmotif: some sounds in this feature-length composition live on the edge of disappearance - the fanning of air with a sheet of music, the sound of a switched-off organ flowing into nothingness, the whispering, breathing and huffing of the human voice.
The audience experiences this breathing, sounding space in four chapters: In the first part, instruments and electronics are distributed around the room. The second part is sung by a choir; the third, shortest part is purely instrumental. In the fourth part, with choirs and orchestral groups distributed in the room, the scene expands to a long shot.
The large, expansive instrumentation and grand form on the one hand, the fragility, cautiousness, inwardness and spirituality on the other, do not form a contradiction: almost at the limit of the audible, where the air is just enough to live, an amazing, huge, delicate sound organism moves. With rwḥ 1-4, Andre's music reaches an intensity that is unique.
For more information, see the website of Wien Modern.
