Vienna – 2013

Benjamin Lang, born in 1976, studied composition (with Adriana Hölszky, Johannes Schöllhorn and Michael Edwards), music theory and conducting in Rostock, Salzburg, Hannover, Lugano, Bremen and Edinburgh. He taught composition and music theory at the Universities of Music in Hannover, Bremen, Rostock, Osnabrück, Lüneburg, Zurich and Berlin. Since 2018, he is a professor at the University of Music and Drama Rostock.

Benjamin Lang draws a lot of inspiration for his music from the experience of archaeological excavations and sights as well as of natural phenomenon in general, which are all reflected within musical and formal structures of his compositions. In reviews his music has been described as archaic and unorthodox.

Lang’s music has been premiered and performed in concerts and festivals in Germany, Austria, the U.S., Bolivia, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium.

His compositions are published at the Verlag Neue Musik Berlin.

Gunnar Berg, 1909 – 1989, was a Swiss-born Danish composer. A leading exponent of serialism in Denmark, he is considered to have written the first Danish serial piece, his “Cosmogonie” for two pianos, in 1952.

Berg was born to Danish and Swedish parents in Switzerland. He studied with Herman David Koppel from 1938 to 1943, and moved to Paris in 1948, where he became associated with Honegger and Messiaen. In 1952 he married the pianist Béatrice Duffour, who would later record much of his piano music. In the same year he became the first Dane to attend the summer courses at Darmstadt.

Arriving in Paris in 1948 he became part of the international modernist movement in post-War Europe by joining the circle around Olivier Messiaen. Here, Berg had inspiring encounters with key figures such as John Cage, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Serial organization began to make its mark already in the newcomer’s “Pièce” for trumpet, violin and piano from 1949, and henceforth Berg uncompromisingly yet in his very own fashion would remain faithful to the complex expressive mode of musical modernism, from now on always composing within the theoretical and aesthetic framework of serialism.

The centennial of Gunnar Berg’s birth was celebrated with concerts, radio programmes, CD-releases, writings, printed scores, and exhibitions in Denmark, Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria, USA, Ukraine and China. These activities have caused a significant change in the understanding of and respect for his artistic oeuvre – being far from a cold speculative, mathematic game.

The beginnings of Berger’s musical activity are related to the field of piano playing, to which he was intensely devoted primarily as a performer and later as a composer. His composing profile was incisively developed in the 1960s, during which Berger moved from the specific world of piano literature to searching for a personal attitude through the important expression of music of the 20th century (Suite in the Old Style for strings, percussion and keyboards) by moving to the position of dealing with avant-garde orchestral sounds and electronic media. The orchestral work Transformácie (Transformation) uses an extremely large apparatus of instruments to create sonorous effects – a procedure that is associated with the so-called Polish School and which not by chance coincides with the development of electronic sound manipulation and its artistic use. The eight years younger composition Memento po smrti Miroslava Filipa (Memento After the Death of Miroslav Filip), was handled with the same apparatus. Sound mass is more subordinated to intervallic thinking (the whole piece could be characterized as a study of chromatic procedures) and the principle of contraposition of instrumental groups is here replaced by instrumentation facing the integration of disparate sounds into a whole.

The second focus of Berger’s music is in chamber music, which in quantity prevails over his orchestral works. His chamber works are characteristic of the author’s thinking – the focus is on motivic shape, pursuing the logic of its development, the creation of large formal areas, in which motivic work is given time to be implemented. This concept goes hand in hand with a focus on a contemplative understanding of music and art in general, which is probably most represented in the composition De Profundis. Philosophizing poetic lyrics by T. Różewicz are congenially associated with the composer’s skepticism and in this conjunction there is no first or second plan. Voice, instruments and text are equally involved in the evocation of personal consciousness identified with the conscience of mankind. Berger belongs to those artists-philosophers who cannot imagine their profession without a sense of responsibility for the “uttered word”, for his contribution to the state of the social mind. Creativity, and thus art, is inherently given to a person, and importantly, where the axis of the sacrum – profanum is directed. If in the composition De Profundis we can find the vision of man as the killer and the victim, the angel and the devil at the same time, then we could allocate its position as the author’s principled basis for reflections of the civilization in which we live.

In the second half of the ’80s and ’90s Berger’s harmonic language contained also the simpler elements in a spirit of acceptance of expressive qualities of “traditional” consonants, and the integrity of his artistic stance remains unaffected. The vulgar requirement of “clarity” of the art, promoted under socialism and growing pragmatism in the relationship between artist and market-oriented society (i.e. art as a commodity) – these are the topics that interested Berger in numerous essays, studies and lectures written for the last twenty years. The composer entered by these lectures into a broad dialogue not only with like-minded artists but also with scientists, educators, philosophers, and in the context of equalization of values and uniformity “of society of advertising” he is becoming one of the lone specialists.

Romanian composer of mostly orchestral, chamber, choral, and vocal works that have been performed in Europe.

Prof. Vlad initially studied music theory with Filaret Barbu and oboe with Pavel Tornea at the Music High School in Bucharest from 1958–64. He then studied with Tudor Ciortea, Dan Constantinescu, Octavian L. Cosma, Victor Giuleanu, Myriam Marbe, Aurel Stroe, Zeno Vancea, and Anatol Vieru at the Universitatea Națională de Muzică București, where he graduated in 1971. He also attended seminars in composition with Virgilio Mortari at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome in 1971–72. He later earned his DMus under the supervision of Gheorghe Oprea at the Universitatea Națională de Muzică București in 2004.

Among his honours are a prize in oboe at the Festival of Young Performers of Romania (1964), the Special Prize from the Universitatea Națională de Muzică București (1971), a Second-Class Medal for Distinction in Culture (1983), the Premiul George Enescu from the Academia Română in Bucharest (1985), First Prize from the Uniunea Compozitorilor și Muzicologilor din România at the festival National Song of Romania in Bucharest (1987), six prizes from the Uniunea Compozitorilor și Muzicologilor din România in Bucharest (1990, 1995, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2009), and the Medal of Honour from the Universitatea Națională de Muzică București (2011). He was named an officer of the Ordinul Meritul Cultural by the government of Romania (2004).

He is also active in other positions. He researched folk music from Romania at the Universitatea Națională de Muzică București from 1971–77 and at the Institutul de Etnografie și Folclor Constantin Brăiloiu in Bucharest from 1977–80. In addition, he served as an editor for the publisher Editura Muzicală in Bucharest from 1980–84 and as its manager from 1984–92, then served as director of the department of music of the Ministry of Culture and National Patrimony in Bucharest in 1992–93. He has served as vice-president of the Romanian Community of Electronic and Computer Assisted Music in Bucharest since 2004, as vice-president of the Uniunea Compozitorilor și Muzicologilor din România since 2006 and as a member of the board of directors of the Alianța Națională a Uniunilor de Creatori din România since 2006. He served as a member of the board of directors of the Institutul Cultural Român in Bucharest from 2009–13 and has served as president of the section in Romania of ISCM since 2013.

He has taught as a professor of score reading at the Universitatea Națională de Muzică București since 1993, where he has served in the senate since 2004.

Evgeny Stankovych is one of the central figures of contemporary Ukrainian music. A prolific composer, he has, since 1966, authored 6 symphonies, an opera (When the Fern Blooms), 5 ballets, a large number of works in the oratorical, vocal chamber and instrumental chamber genres, as well as incidental music to 6 music theatre plays and over 100 films.

Born on 19th September 1942 in the city of Svaliava, Yevhen Stankovytch studied music in the music institute of Uzhgorod. Stankovych began his university studies at Lviv Conservatory and following his first year tranferred to the Kyiv Conservatory where he studied under Borys Lyatoshynsky, and later under Myroslav Skoryk.

Beginning with his first compositions, Stankovych declared himself as a composer of dramatic temperament, not adverse to emotional risk. The composer’s elaborate polyphonic textures and meditative lyricism are reminiscent of the strict instrumental style of Baroque music, while the full-bodied affects with the obvious post-romantic colouring give the music warmth and expressiveness. His music is remarkable in many aspects, showing his emotional freedom, consummate technical mastery and flexibility of form.

Yevhen Stankovych is the recipient of several major awards. His Chamber Symphony № 3 was selected by UNESCO’s World Tribune as one of 10 best works of 1985. He has been recognised with several awards in Ukraine, including the country’s highest award for artistic creativity, the Taras Shevchenko State Award.

The composer’s works have been performed in Canada, the U.S.A., Germany, France, Switzerland, Finland, Spain, China, the Filipines and Yugoslavia, in addition to performances in former U.S.S.R. and in countries of Eastern Europe. In January 1992, he was the senior juror at Canada’s First Contemporary Music Competition held in Winnipeg and has been featured at contemporary music festivals in Germany and Poland. In 1996, he was composer-in-residence in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland. His works have been recorded on Melodiya, Analekta, ASV and Naxos labels.

Yevhen Stankovych is chair of the Faculty of Composition at the Kyiv Conservatory and former Chairman of the Composer’s Union of Ukraine.

The Austrian composer, Dieter Kaufmann, was born in Vienna and grew up in Carinthia. In Vienna and Paris he studied music, German philology, art history, violoncello, composition (with Karl Schiske, Gottfried von Einem, Olivier Messiaen and René Leibowitz) and electro-acoustic music (with Pierre Schaeffer and François Bayle at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales of the French Radio).

From 1970, Dieter Kaufmann has been teaching electro-acoustic music at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Vienna. He is currently head of two master-classes, one for composition (since 1990) and the other for electro-acoustic composition (since 1997). He was head of the department for composition, conducting and sound engineering studies from 2000 to 2002. Kaufmann was president of the Austrian ISCM section from 1983 to 1988, and president of the Society for Electro-acoustic Music in Austria (GEM) from 1988 to 1990. From 2001 to 2003 he was president of the Austrian Composers Union and in 2001 he became president of “Austro Mechana”, the Austrian Copyright Society administering the mechanical rights of authors.

In 1975, together with his wife, actress Gunda König, Dieter Kaufmann founded the K&K Experimentalstudio. This Musical-Theatre-Ensemble has made numerous tours throughout Europe, North and Latin America, Egypt and Taiwan.

Dieter Kaufmann wrote works in several fields of music: chamber, symphonic, and vocal music, musical theatre (four operas and many multi-media works), piano and organ works, works for wind orchestra, electro-acoustic, live electronic and computer music, as well as works in applied art. He had been awarded numerous national and international prizes, like Förderungspreis der Stadt Wien (1967), Förderungspreis des Landes Kärnten (1974), Kompositionspreis des Musikprotokolls beim Steirischen Herbst (1975), Magisterium für elektroakustische Musik in Bourges, France (1988), Ernst-Krenek-Preis of the City of Vienna (1990), Prize of the City of Vienna for Music (1991), Würdigungspreis des Landes Kärnten (1992) and Würdigungspreis des Bundes (1996).

Dušan Bavdek. born in 1971, is an Associate Professor of composition and music theory as well as a Vice Dean for quality and international affairs at the Academy of Music of the University of Ljubljana.

His works have been performed as a part of subscription cycles of Slovenian orchestras and choirs and at concerts in Europe, America, Asia in Australia. He has led many compositional workshops, lectured at various academies of music in Europe and USA and acted as a jury member of competitions in composition in different European countries.

Beside his artistic work, he was Head of Department of Composition and Music Theory at the Ljubljana Academy of Music, President of the National Matura Commission for Music and is still active as the Artistic Leader of International Activities of the Society of Slovene Composers.

The Korean-Austrian conductor Chungki Min is since March 2011 a faculty member of the Mozarteum University Salzburg. He took over the artistic directorship for the Austrian-Korean Philharmonic Orchestra in March 2016. Alongside teaching in Salzburg at the University of Mozarteum, he keeps conducting many concerts in Korea and Europe.

Recently, Chungki Min had a big musical Successes in Korea with a sensational new production of the opera L’Elisir d’Amore at the grand theatre of the Sejong Centre and followed an immediate reinvitation for the next season. Also got many fabulous critics after his Début with Daegu Symphony Orchestra and the Korean Symphony Orchestra and followed reinvitations from the both of them for next season too.

He also worked out with following ensembles: Münchner Philharmoniker, Brucknerorchester Linz, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Orchester der Tiroler Festspiele, Gävle symfoniorkester, PKF-Prague Philharmonia, Filharmonie Bohuslava Martinù Zlin, Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM Mexico City, Deutsche Kammerakadmie Neuss am Rhein, ÖENM-Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik, Melos-Ethos Ensemble, and also Bucheon Philharmonic Orchestra, Incheon Philharmonic Orchestra in South Korea.

Born in South Korea, he began piano at the age of 5. After winning the Grand-Prix form the Korean minister of Education in the young musician’s competition at the age of 12, he began to study music theory and composition. Later, he studied composition and conducting at Seoul Arts Highschool and Seoul National University.

At the age of 20, he began to work as a musical assistant for the opera productions Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi fan tutte, Zauberflöte, Faust and La Boheme at Opera houses of Seoul Arts Center and KBS hall in Seoul.

In November 1996, he made his Debut in the grand concert hall of Seoul Arts Center with the 2nd Symphony of G. Mahler. In January 2001, he made his big successful Opera-debut in Seoul Arts Center with a new production of W.A. Mozart’s Magic Flute of which all 32 performances were sold out.

He conducted regularly in numerous festivals in South Korea and premiered over 60 contemporary compositions.

Chungki Min was the chief conductor of Bucheon Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and of Seoul Euharmonic Chamber Orchestra in South Korea.

In 2002, he moved to Austria and studied conducting further at the Mozarteum University Salzburg under Dennis Russell Davies. In April 2007 he finished the master degree with Top honour and awarded from International Foundation Mozarteum the Bernhard Paumgartner Medaille.

The pinnacle during this studying period was two Orchestra concerts:

First, in Dezember 2005 Le Sacre du Printemps from I. Strawinsky as the replacement for his teacher Dennis Russell Davies, in following March 2006 Ein Heldenleben from R. Strauss as the replacement for Peter Schneider. Both concerts gathered best critics.

Not only from those two concerts but also through the Opera Zauberflöte in June 2008 and the concert “Von Engeln und Dämonen“ in March 2014, he was well-known to the Mozarteum University as the one who jumped up onto the podium at the last moment of endangered performances and made them up to highly successed ones. He actively participated in the master classes of Peter Gülke, Neil Thompson, and MyungWhun Chung. He also assisted for Edo de Waart, Dennis Russell Davies, and Gustav Kuhn.

In May 2007, he has founded his own ensemble MozArt Sinfonietta Salzburg and has performed numerous concerts with the repertories from Baroque to very contemporary music.

As an ambassador of tonal sensuality Elena Denisova ranks as one of the finest and most charismatic violinists of her generation. Known for her great musical maturity, individual style of interpretation and supreme virtuosity, her performances have won critical acclaim from press and public alike.

Denisova was born in Moscow and, as a young child, was fascinated by Jascha Heifetz’s expressive playing and versatility of tone; she loved listening to his records over and over in her childhood home. Her parents supported this highly sensitive talent, and she recorded her first LP, Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No.2, while still a pupil at the music school of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Highly influential among her teachers were two of David Oistrach’s most renowned students, Valery Klimov and later Oleg Kagan at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, which ranks as the foremost institution for Russia’s most talented musicians. She graduated with distinction.

She has won many violin competitions and initially was active as a soloist and chamber musician in the former USSR – for example as soloist of the Moscow State Philharmonic and first violinist of the Moscow National Quartet. In 1990, she extended her concert performances to Western Europe, and found a second home in Austria. Elena Denisova has been an Austrian citizen since 1992.

In Austria she founded the Österreichische Gustav Mahler Vereinigung, the Gustav Mahler Ensemble and the Classic Etcetera Musikvereinigung. She is also the artistic director of the Carinthian-based Woerthersee Classics Festival, which she founded in 2002 and which has already gained a strong international reputation.

Sergej Kopčák was laureate and finalist of prestigeous world vocal competitions. Since 80-ties performs on the most significant world opera stages, especially Covent Garden in London and Metropolitan Opera in New York, where has long-term engagement.

Kopčák´s outstanding scenic creations are ranked Ch. Gounod´s and also A. Boito´s Mefistofeles, Gremin in Eugen Onegin from P. I. Čajkovskij and M. P. Mussorgskij´s Boris Godunov. His concertant repertoire comprises in addition of classical opuses also of compositions of the 20th century. He premiered and recorded many compositions of slovak authors (many of them with personal dedication).

He was associate professor at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and he conducts master classes in Piešťany (Slovakia).

Born in October 1990 in Gothenburg, Sweden and living in Copenhagen, Denmark, Oscar Micaelsson is soon to make his debut from the Master program in piano at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. With previous tutelage of Professor Niklas Sivelöv, he is currently studying with Søren Rastogi and Deborah Wood.

Besides playing classical and contemporary piano music, Oscar Micaelsson is also active in the fields of jazz and improvisation, he is an organist, and he is a composer. In his writings about music he has concentrated on aspects of jazz, contemporary music and the classical tradition.

A versatile, dedicated musician Oscar Micaelsson is already an experienced performer at home and abroad. He has performed in Sweden, Austria, Iceland, Denmark and Germany, as a soloist or in chamber music or as soloist in piano concertos. In the Royal Academy celebrations of Franz Liszt in 2011 he made his mark in a recital, whereas in 2012 the John Cage concerto for prepared piano and chamber orchestra at the annual Academy festival of New Music under the direction of maestro Jean Thorel, going on to celebrate his own birthday by giving a free open-air concert in the town hall square of Copenhagen, playing and conducting Mozart’s ’Jeunehomme’ concerto and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

In 2012, he performed at The Tivoli Concert hall, Copenhagen, Works for piano by Conlon Nancarrow and Stravinsky and again in 2013 at the Tivoli Beethoven Festival performing Beethoven.

Oscar Micaelsson has been invited to several prominent modern music festivals in Denmark, he has received several dedications and he has performed and worked together with living composers, creating and spreading the music of our time. In 2011, a collaboration with Finland in ‘Young Nordic Music festival’ and ‘PULSAR’ – festival of Contemporary Music, Denmark, in the years 2009-2012 performing duo piano, chamber music and works for solo.

In 2013, Oscar was participating in the first Danish performance in original seating of Steve Reich: Music for 18 musicians. With the modern music ensemble EKKOZONE. The performance was a part of the ‘Roskilde Festival’ – Festival for world, popular and rock music in Denmark as a special invitation in this case for performing alternative music.

In June 14 2013 Oscar performed Danish composer Gunnar Berg’s piano concerto “Frise” for piano and chamber orchestra in the prestigious Konzert Haus in Vienna, Austria in the festival  ’100 Jahre Österreichischer Komponistenbund’ with European Contemporary Composers Orchestra (ECCO) under the direction of Maestro Chungki Min.

In 2014 Oscar was awarded the ‘Léonie Sonnings music scholarship for young artists’

The Korean-German flutist Ahran Kim plays the flute in the orchestra of the Philharmonie Salzburg. She is known for her strong musical commitment and her beautiful flute sound. She is one of the most interesting and sought-after musician personalities of her generation and has been an orchestral member of the Philharmonie Salzburg since 2014.

Ahran Kim has performed with various orchestras including the City of Birmingham Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the HR Symphony Orchestra and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, and under conductors such as Oliver Knussen, Andrew Litton, Thierry Fischer, Jacques van Steen, Myung-Whun Chung, Edward Gardner, Andris Nelson and Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

Outside of her orchestral activity, Ahran Kim regularly devotes herself to the chamber music and music of the 21. Century. She was Artist in Residence at the Dartington International Summer School where she also gave masterclasses.