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Opening Ceremony of Wiener Festwochen 2010 - Eurovision Young Musicians 2010 Final / 12.05.2010
Rathausplatz Friday, 14 May, 9.20 p.m.
Opening Ceremony of Wiener Festwochen 2010 - Eurovision Young Musicians 2010 Final
Rathausplatz
Friday, 14 May, 9.20 p.m.
The inauguration of Wiener Festwochen 2010 will be dedicated to the final of the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition, one of the most important international classical music competitions. After 2006 and 2008, the atmospheric backdrop of the magnificently illuminated Vienna City Hall and an audience of tens of thousands will already for the third time serve as framework for the performances of the seven European finalists, from whose number the winner will be chosen in the course of this opening ceremony of Wiener Festwochen. The best young musician of 2010 will be voted by an international jury.
ORCHESTRA / ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna
CONDUCTOR / Cornelius Meister
MODERATOR / Christoph Wagner-Trenkwitz
PARTICIPANTS / Finalists of the Eurovision Young Musicians Competition, Arnold Schoenberg Choir (Director: Erwin Ortner), Georg Breinschmid BREIN'S CAFÉ & special guest Stian Carstensen (acc), Wiener Kinderchor der Musik- und Singschule Wien (Director: Christiane Fischer)
ABOUT THE WIENER FESTWOCHEN:
This year’s Wiener Festwochen music programme is dedicated to the Viennese composer Alban Berg, as 2010 marks both his 125th birthday and the 75th anniversary of Berg’s death. From then until today, his musical language and aesthetics have lost none of their immediate impact. Alban Berg is a symbolic figure for the music of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Eternally searching for new ways of musical expression, he – together with his teacher Arnold Schoenberg and fellow disciple Anton Webern – founded the Second Viennese School, the most important movement in composition after the turn of the 19th century and the key precursor of post-1945 music.
The central works of Alban Berg’s oeuvre are his two operas Wozzeck and Lulu. Due to their compositional perfection and close ties to the seminal literary works that inspired them, these operas are considered outstanding testimonials and innovations of 20th-century music drama.
To complement the opera performances, a series of concerts will showcase the composer’s instrumental and vocal works. Already his first published composition, the Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (1908), approaches atonality. Berg’s dodecaphonic period was ushered in by his Chamber Concerto (1923–25). With a performance of his Lyric Suite, Op. 5 (1913), one of Berg’s most important compositions is included in the concert programme. In addition to works by Alban Berg, compositions of his precursors and contemporaries as well as of artists inspired by Berg will be performed by outstanding musicians.