QuARDITTIade

Donaueschinger Musiktage 2010

For many years now the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation has honored how the Donaueschinger Musiktage festival always meets its special claim of being the linchpin of contemporary music in Europe every year afresh. After supporting the "Ensembliade" in 2008 – where three of the most important contemporary ensembles, the Ensemble Modern, the Ensemble intercontemporain and the Klangforum Wien, presented compositions from different interpretational perspectives – support in 2009 went to "The Meandering Orchestra", the focal point of last year’s Donaueschinger Musiktage. The orchestra – obviously the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg – presented itself in the closing concert as a "classical" concert formation in direct confrontation between the podium and the audience. Using the two large scale projects of the composers Manos Tsangaris and Mathias Spahlinger as flexible instruments it totally recast the relationship between the performer and the audience – to the extent of individualization of each orchestra member. This was tied into debates from politically turbulent times in which the institution itself was questioned in socio-political terms and ultimately underwent renewal. After ensemble and symphony orchestra, they are now looking to string quartet instrumentation in 2010. 

After ensemble and symphony orchestra attention is now turning for 2010 to string quartet, that "royal" orchestration of chamber music, under the working title QuARDITTIade. Three generations of string quartet of different quartet traditions will be invited: the Arditti Quartet, Quatuor Diotima from France and the JACK Quartet from the USA. A total of nine works for string quartet were commissioned and these will be performed for the first time in Donaueschingen. One exciting highlight is sure to be the interpretational comparison provided by James Dillon’s new work for string quartet that is to be played by all three string quartets. 

October 15th – 17th 2010
Donaueschingen

Further Information:
www.swr2.de/donaueschingen