CLOSE UP Music near and new | 2025—26

Vienna is known for its remarkable linguistic diversity, with the city speaking Farsi, Pashto, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Turkish, Arabic and many more languages. This rich tapestry is further enriched by the expressive variety found in social media and a younger generation that communicates through images, signs, and gestures – from “everything gucci” to “wyld,” and from “token” and “trigger” to “cringe.” Selected works explore the intersection of speaking, singing, movement, gesture and composition. Among them, Kurt Schwitters’ legendary language piece Ursonate transforms nonsensical syllables into a formal structure in Michael Mautner’s ensemble adaptation. Otto M. Zykan’s Krüppelsprache, based on a text by Wolfgang Bauer, delves into the desperate struggle to express thoughts through language. Meanwhile, Inszene 1 by Helmut Heißenbüttel and Otto M. Zykan treats language in its broadest sense – speaking and singing require breathing and the coordinated movement of mouth, tongue, body and hands. The five performers’ physical actions become the foundation for the concert’s interactive segment. In collaboration with Wien Modern, Austrian Composers, and the REIHE Zykan+ ensemble, this concert highlights the dynamic tension between language, music, and movement.  A commissioned composition on the theme of “Multilingualism in Vienna” invites fresh artistic perspectives on the city’s linguistic richness, with the new works presented during this event. In collaboration with wien modern

Feet play an important role – not only in classic film clips of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Even legends need teachers – the tap dance icon took her first steps with John Bubbles, while Bill “Bojangles” Robinson served as a major stylistic influence. We will all learn a few steps too! (Please choose shoes with good-sounding soles). All kinds of combinations will be heard: “Pom Pom Redux” – a duo for piano and tap dance composed by Alexander Lackner – is featured alongside Dana Suesse’s “Jazz Nocturne” for solo piano, celebrating the renowned Gershwin contemporary. Also included are two movements from Igor Stravinsky’s 1924 Sonata, dedicated to the influential patron Winaretta Singer-Polignac. Mitra Kotte and Sabine Hasicka perform and dance to standards from Gershwin’s “American Songbook” as well as “Black Diamond” – a ragtime piece by Grace Bolen.

Everyday gestures, everyday sounds – condensed into a composition! Six hands create music on an unexpected instrument – a table. This is the essence of Thierry De Mey’s “Musique de Table”. A bottle and a glass become instruments on the table as harpist Veronica Klavžar, known for her vocal and theatrical flair, joins percussionist Hannes Schöggl in performing Georges Aperghis’ “Retrouvailles”. “Intersections”, a work by Hannes Schöggl and Veronika Klavžar, fuses contemporary music with movement in an interdisciplinary concert performance featuring three performers. Here, it’s not just the instrument that resonates – the body itself becomes a sounding presence. This experimental composition blurs the boundaries between music and dance, challenging conventional ideas of harp performance and opening new perspectives on where music ends and movement begins – and how much do they have in common? Everyday human emotions such as tenderness, loneliness, dependency, fascination, enthusiasm, jealousy, envy, community, unity and equality come to the fore in the individual scenes. Hannes Schöggl has set Christian Morgenstern’s “Fisches Nachtgesang” to music for three mouths: a delicate piece of mouth percussion presented as an interactive animation. The audience is invited to join in – clicking, smacking, kissing and performing tongue acrobatics. Our programme brings everything around us to life through sound – everything becomes a percussion instrument. What was once dismissed as unruly children’s play is now reimagined: we ourselves, along with our environment, become a sound performance. Providing a lyrical counterpoint is the harp – an instrument long associated with femininity and embraced by many female composers. A movement from Germaine Tailleferre’s Sonata serves as a point of departure, reinterpreted on the electric harp. In this transformation, the essence and atmosphere of the original shine through in new ways, revealing unexpected layers.

Childhood is a special topic in Japan – how children celebrate and play, their rights and responsibilities, how daily routines are organised, the rules in schools, methods of teaching instruments, the rituals in music lessons and how music is notated — all of this is shared through the music itself. Japanese music has a special affinity for the marimba: Keiko Abe composed Reflections on Japanese Children's Songs II for marimba duo. This modern 20th-century instrument blends beautifully with the traditional bamboo flute, shakuhachi. Together, marimba and shakuhachi perform a composition by their master, Hosan Yamamoto. Dieter Strehly spent a year studying the shakuhachi – a traditional bamboo flute – in Japan, while Gaby Zechmeister has mastered the koto, an arched-board zither. The harmony between koto and shakuhachi is truly magical, and we’ll show you how this music is notated. In Japan, the koto is respectfully called O-Koto, and performances traditionally begin with the performer bowing to the audience. The Austrian premiere features a duo by Japanese composer Dai Fujikura titled Kodama – a heartfelt tribute to tree spirits and ghosts!

Everything you wouldn’t expect from brass band music: young musicians, a teenage composer, film scores for the wizarding world of Harry Potter and the fantastical realm of The Lord of the Rings. The young symphonic wind orchestra, founded in 1994 and based at the Vienna University of Technology, consists of students, graduates from Viennese universities, and musicians from diverse professional and age backgrounds Symphonic wind music is seldom heard in concert life, yet it remains a compelling genre for both performers and audiences alike. The original compositions featured in this program include Mother Earth by David Maslanka, Night Sky by conductor Andreas Simbeni, and DOOMED by the young composer Emily Louise Beauchamp. Film clips accompany Johan de Meij's Symphony No. 1 'Lord of the Rings', featuring the first movement, Gandalf, as well as selections from the Harry Potter Suite. The orchestra also ventures into jazz, with Artie Shaw's Clarinet Concerto taking us back to the swing era of the 20th century, a period on which Shaw had a profound influence.