Concrete Utopia – 1st Biennale for New Music in the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region

German State Philharmonic Orchestra Rhineland-Palatinate, Ludwigshafen, Germany

Art and culture make an important contribution to the social development and identity of the Rhine-Neckar region. Musicians from the area have now implemented the idea of a biennial for New Music, the first edition of which will take place in Mannheim in February 2021.

A thematic point of orientation is to create a link to socially relevant questions. Always at the center of content planning will be a “child” of the Rhine-Neckar region from the fields of philosophy, literature or science. The selected or commissioned works will approach this extra-musical world of thought with tonal means.

The first edition looks to the philosopher Ernst Bloch, born in Ludwigshafen in 1885. For Bloch, the root of the new and utopian always lay in the renewal of perception. In this sense, “music as utopia” begins in hearing itself, in the new hearing of the old as well as in the presentiment of the still unheard. The fact that the utopian concept of the future is not necessarily dependent on that materially shaped concept of progress and growth makes Ernst Bloch himself a visionary figure and the focus of the 2021 Biennale for New Music in the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region.

The composition commission issued to Robin Hoffmann, Lisa Streich, Jan Kopp, Stefan Pohlit und Sidney Corbett are funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further Information:
staatsphilharmonie.de