Olga Neuwirth signs publishing contract with B&H
(November 2001)
Olga Neuwirth signs publishing contract with Boosey & HawkesWe are pleased to announce that the Austrian-born composer Olga Neuwirth has signed a new exclusive publishing contract with Boosey & Hawkes. All future works by Neuwirth will be published by Boosey & Hawkes while her earlier oeuvre remains with BMG Ricordi (Munich).
Olga Neuwirth, born in Graz in 1968, has established a strong reputation through the 1990s as one of the leading young European composers, attracting performances by the most eminent new music ensembles and international orchestras. Her music combines contemporary music techniques with the influences of cinema and the latest technological developments. Her creative processes most resemble those of film-makers, exploring sharp cuts across the musical flow, rapid successions of contrasted ideas, and superimpositions and montages to create multiple images. In the spirit of composers such as Eisler and Nono, Neuwirth is an engaged social artist, and in her works often objectively questions the acceptance of everyday values, explores the pain of modern life, and struggles against the seeming futility of existence. To accompany these philosophical debates, Neuwirth often injects a vein of dark humour.
Neuwirth’s first Boosey & Hawkes work is the piano concerto locus...doublure...solus, available in alternative versions either with ensemble or orchestra. The ensemble version was premiered on 8 September at the Klangspuren festival in Schwaz by Thomas Larcher and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Pierre-André Valade, and a second performance takes place at Wien Modern on 5 November with the Ensemble Opera Nova conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. The orchestral version is to receive first performances by the Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra on 8 February in Antwerp and 9 February in Brussels, as a highlight of Neuwirth’s current residency with the orchestra. A second new work is "ecstaloop" for soprano, speaker and ensemble, commissioned by the Basel European Music Month and due to be premiered on 24 October in Lörrach by Ensemble 14 conducted by Joachim Krause.
Olga Neuwirth studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (1985-86) and with Erich Urbanner at the Vienna Academy of Music and Performing Arts (1987-93), developing interests in electroacoustics and writing a thesis on the use of music in the Alain Resnais film L’amour à mort. Particular influences were her meetings with Adriana Hölszky, Tristan Murail and Luigi Nono. In 1993-94 she studied with Murail in Paris and forged links with IRCAM. In 1996 she worked in Berlin on a DAAD scholarship and, though widely travelled including a sojourn in Venice, now views Berlin as the principal home for her composing activities.
A major breakthrough for Neuwirth came in 1998 with two concerts devoted to her music at the Salzburg Festival within the ‘Next Generation’ series. She went on in 1999 to receive the Siemens Förderpreis, the Hindemith Prize, and the premiere of her first opera at the Vienna Festival was awarded the Krenek Prize. In 2000 Pierre Boulez and the London Symphony Orchestra toured her orchestral work Clinamen/Nodus around the world and she was appointed Composer in Residence with the Flanders Philharmonic Orchestra.
Neuwirth’s future compositional projects include a bassoon concerto commissioned by the Ensemble InterContemporain for premiere at the Festival Présences in Paris with Pascal Gallois as soloist on 31 January. September 2002 brings a new work for flute, piano and electronics for the Lucerne Festival, as part of a composer residency. Further ahead are plans for new works for the Ensemble Modern, the opera houses in Stuttgart and Vienna, and the Salzburg Festival.
For further information on Neuwirth and her music visit her website at www.olganeuwirth.com
> Further information on Work: locus...doublure...solus
Photo © Charlotte Oswald
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