Carolin Widmann
Photo: Lennard Ruehle

 

Composition Commission issued to Enno Poppe

Internationale Beethovenfeste Bonn, Germany


No composer past or present can avoid Ludwig van Beethoven. The pioneering spirit both in Beethoven’s aesthetics of perception and his composition structure remain a challenge to this very day. The Beethoven festival Beethovenfest Bonn has inspired key composers of the present day to explore Ludwig van Beethoven. A cycle of already premiered works by Salvatore Sciarrino (2015), Hugues Dufourt (2016), Vladimir Tarnopolski (2017) and Bernhard Lang (2018) will be completed in 2019 with an Enno Poppe premiere. Each of the previous premieres were juxtaposed with a Beethoven reference work. This means that since 2015 a new exemplary piece of work representing one genre has been presented to the public in a series of premieres. This gives rise to a unique canon of works presenting a 21st century snapshot of the status of today’s musical creativity.

For Beethovenfest 2019 Enno Poppe has been commissioned to write a new work relating to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61. The NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra featuring Carolin Widmann (violin) conducted by Alan Gilbert have been invited to perform this premiere. A repeat performance is planned in the Beethoven festival year 2020. As part of the Bonn festivities to mark Beethoven’s 250th birthday all commissioned pieces will be performed within a short timeframe. Beethovenfest Bonn would like to inspire its audience to a critical and constructive examination of Ludwig van Beethoven, with the question as to the composer’s importance today ever in their minds. This question will be particularly relevant in the anniversary year and the canon of works arising from this series should provide convincing answers here.

Enno Poppe already wrote successful compositions in his youth. Later on, he studied composition and conducting at Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin), amongst others under Friedrich Goldmann, Gösta Neuwirth and Carl August Bünte. Further studies took him to the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe. Since 1998 he has conducted Berlin’s ensemble mosaic, a specialist in the performance of New Music. From 2002 to 2004 he held a teaching post at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler”, the Berlin Academy of Music. Among others, he has received composition commissions for the Salzburg Festival, Berliner Festwochen, Ensemble intercontemporain, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Ensemble Modern, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble musikFabrik, the WDR, SWR for the Donaueschingen Music Festival and the Schwetzingen Festival as well as the BR. Since 2008 Enno Poppe has been a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts (Akademie der Künste) and since 2009 member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste).


September 24, 2019
Saal New York/New York Hall, World Conference Center Bonn, Germany


Further Information:
beethovenfest.de