Olga Neuwirth: Marsyas

  
Marsyas is a figure from Greek mythology. As the master of Aulos, he was the opponent of Apollo, who played the lyra. When the latter ordered that singers had to accompany themselves, Marsyas’ fate was doomed. Neuwirth not only uses Marsyas as a synonym for aspects isolated from the culture of our times – the passionate, impetuous and emotional aspects of art – but at the same time she structures her work in accordance with the huge Marsyas sculpture by the Indian artist Anish Kapoor: the organic, rolling forms, spiralling coils and vast chalice openings, transferred to Neuwirth’s own, effervescent language of sound. “Neuwirth exhausts the claviature to its extremes … tonally free tendrils of sound in stirred-up confusion alternate with a contemplative flow of regularly pulsating images of sound – a multi-faceted piece of strong expressivity.” (Westfälischer Anzeiger)