PHACE — AKUSMATA
4 May, 2025 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Programm
Beat Furrer
Akusmata for 8 voices und 8 instruments (30’) (2019/20)
Sarah Nemtsov
WAVES for vocal ensemble and instruments (30‘) (2024/25)
ein Comissioned by PHACE, in cooperation with Osterfestival Tirol, supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
Beat Furrer’s Akusmata is inspired by those enigmatic sayings and wisdoms that are attributed to Pythagoras and appear like an inhomogeneous set of rules of a fantastic society: some are clearly understandable, others are reminiscent of riddles by da Vinci and some have a strangely grotesque quality to them. With a newly expanded part of the series, Furrer connects with Pythagorean mysticism and not only symbolically deconstructs the relationships, but also breaks down the harmonic spectrum. The density of voices and instruments together with the constant transformation and mutability of the vocal sound create a new reality, a new space in which music can resonate and exist on its own. A mysterious world that only exists in the ear.
Widely protruding, finely branched sound structures, studded with countless signs, metaphors, phrases, symbols and influences from every conceivable direction and music can be found in the works of Sarah Nemtsov and yet the deep roots in the European musical tradition cannot be overheard. Her new work WAVES is as enigmatic as Furrer’s Akusmata and delves into the flowing alternating currents between individual and collective consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves” from 1931. Six voices, with each other, next to each other and against each other. Moving in space – sometimes individually, sometimes as a group – embedded in an expanded instrumental-electronic sound space, searching for the way in which multiple selves and multiple perspectives can weave together a pluralistic truth.