Olga Neuwirth | |
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| Born | (1968-08-04)4 August 1968 (age 57) Graz, Austria |
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| Parent | Harald Neuwirth |
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Olga Neuwirth (Austrian German:[ˈɔlɡaˈnɔʏvɪrt]; born 4 August 1968) is an Austrian contemporary classical composer, visual artist and author. She is famed especially for her operas and music theater works, many of which have treated sociopolitical themes. She has emphasized an open-ended, interdisciplinary approach in her work, collaborating frequently withElfriede Jelinek, exploitinglive electronics, and incorporating video. In her operaLost Highway, she adapted David Lynch'ssurrealist film with the same name. She has also written music for historic and contemporary films.Luigi Nono has inspired her both musically and politically.
Neuwirth was born in Graz, the daughter of Griseldis Neuwirth and pianistHarald Neuwirth. She is the niece ofGösta Neuwirth and the sister of sculptor Flora Neuwirth.[1][2] As a child at the age of seven, Neuwirth began lessons on the trumpet but was forced to abandon her original plans to study trumpet after an accident that left her with a jaw injury.[3]
As a high school student, Neuwirth took part in composition workshops withHans Werner Henze andGerd Kühr.[2] At the age of 16, she met writerElfriede Jelinek, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the two artists have since enjoyed an artistically "fruitful collaboration".[4][5] The then-17-year-old composer named her first commissioned compositionDie gelbe Kuh tanzt Ragtime. The work was composed for the opening of thesteirischer herbst festival in 1985.[6]
In 1985/86, she studied music and art at theSan Francisco Conservatory of Music withElinor Armer. She also studied painting and film at theSan Francisco Art College.[7] She continued her studies at theUniversity of Music and Performing Arts Vienna[7] underErich Urbanner while studying at the Institute for Composition and Electroacoustics. Her master's thesis was written on thefilm score of Alain Resnais'sL'Amour à mort.
In 1993/94 she studied withTristan Murail and worked atIRCAM, producing such works as "...?risonanze!..." forviola d'amore. She received significant inspiration in this period fromAdriana Hölszky (Nicht beirren lassen! Weitermachen!)[5] and Luigi Nono, who had similarly radical politics, and who she said was a strong influence in her life.[8][9]
Neuwirth has served as a professor at theUniversity of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna since 2021.[10] She is a member of theBavarian Academy of Fine Arts,[11] theAcademy of Arts (Berlin)[12] and theRoyal Swedish Academy of Music.[13]
Neuwirth has long reflected on the everyday life of professional composers, especially women composers, who are marginalized within contemporary art circles. She has conveyed her thoughts on this issue in a number of texts. She frequently expresses herself on political issues more broadly, calling for vigilance in the face of social and political changes (for example, with a speech in front of the Vienna State Opera at a mass protest held on 19 September 2000, entitled "I will not be yodeled out of existence").[14]
Neuwirth has created several full-length music theatre works, including the video operaLost Highway (2003), based on David Lynch's film;Bählamms Fest (1993/1997), drawing on the work of Leonora Carrington;The Outcast, referencing Herman Melville; andAmerican Lulu, her free adaptation of Alban Berg'sLulu. She collaborated withElfriede Jelinek on the opera "Bählamms Fest."
Neuwirth's opera ofDavid Lynch's filmLost Highway incorporates both live and pre-recorded audio and visual feeds, alongside other electronics. Its premiere took place in Graz in 2003, performed by theKlangforum Wien with the electronics realized at theInstitut für Elektronische Musik (IEM). The American premiere of the opera took place atOberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and featured further performances atColumbia University'sMiller Theatre in New York City, produced by Oberlin Conservatory and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. The surround-sound recording released by Kairos was awarded theDiapason d'Or. The UK premiere took place at theYoung Vic in London in April 2008, in a co-production with theEnglish National Opera, directed byDiane Paulus and conducted byBaldur Brönnimann.
Neuwirth's operaOrlando, based on the novel byVirginia Woolf, is the first full-length opera composed by a woman and commissioned by theVienna State Opera to be performed in Vienna. The world premiere took place on 8 December 2019.[15][16] It was later selected as the world premiere of the year in an international critics' poll conducted by the trade journalOpernwelt.
She also has numerouschamber music works released on theKairos label.
Neuwirth's original compositional style is characterized by the use of diverse compositional techniques and hybrid sound materials, with a constant questioning of artistic and sociopolitical norms. She refers to an "art in-between."[17] Stefan Drees remarked:[18]
The catastrophic, the plunge into unfamiliar regions with all the attendant consequences, is therefore a fundamental mood of her compositions, winding like a red thread through her works.
Usually assigned to the category ofcontemporary classical music, her works since the late 1980s have sought to transcend the genre restrictions imposed by the music business. She has drawn from a range of sources for inspiration, including "art, architecture, literature and music, intellectual history, psychology, natural science, and everyday reality".[4] Her aim has been to create works that are both distinctive and multidimensional. For example, inLe Encantadas o le avventure nel mare delle meraviglie (2014), Neuwirth has been described as creating a "fictional adventure novel through multiple spatial sound effects", drawing onHerman Melville's novellaThe Encantadas (1894) and Luigi Nono's sound world, especially that of his 1984Prometeo.[19] The starting point of this composition is an acoustical survey (Neuwirth: "preservation of acoustic heritage"[19]) of the Chiesa San Lorenzo inVenice.
In the 1990s, Neuwirth began crossing genre boundaries between theatrical drama, opera, radio drama, performance art and video. She has expressed interest in a broad spectrum of stimuli and possibilities of expression. This has been reflected in the titles of her works, for example inThe Outcast, a musicstallation-theater with video.[20]
Neuwirth often set herself the goal of breaking up established forms of concert presentation in order to arrive at a "fluid form".[17] For example, during the breaks in her two "portrait concerts" at the 1998 Salzburg Festival, the sound of wind-up toy instruments on a reinforced metal plate was transmitted into the concert hall's auditorium by means of several loudspeakers, with visuals projected live onto a screen, creating an immersive listening experience. In addition, "prompt texts" for the audience’s behavior, written byJelinek, were inserted into the work.
Neuwirth's works have expanded from the concert hall into public spaces, for example inTalking Houses (1996), a sound installation for shops along the main square of Deutschlandsberg, Austria (created jointly with Hans Hoffer), and in the sound installation...le temps désechanté ... ou dialogue aux enfers (2005) at the Place Igor Stravinsky in Paris (near theStravinsky Fountain). For this latter work, commissioned in 2005 byIRCAM Paris, a motion-capture camera was used to allow electroacoustic sounds to interact with the streams of people moving through the square. As the number of passers-by rose, a musical transformation was set in motion. However, the Paris police ultimately ordered the sound installation to be shut down.
Neuwirth frequently collaborates with artists working in other disciplines or mediums, such as architectPeter Zumthor (Bregenz 2017),[21] the New York architects ofAsymptote Architecture (ZKM 2017), and the computer music and audio/acoustics research artist Markus Noisternig. She worked with video artist Tal Rosner to create the interactive installationDisenchanted Island[20] atCentre Pompidou in Paris (2016).
She is interested in the relationship between music and visual art and has continually expanded the scope of her activities by writing texts and film scripts, producing short films, and organizing performances and photo series. In 2007, she participated in thedocumenta 12 contemporary art exhibition, for which she produced a sound/film installation.[22] She recently[when?] collaborated with French installation, video, and conceptual artistDominique Gonzales-Foerster on the multimedia installation...ce qui arrive.…[23]
Olga Neuwirth has also composed a number of film scores, including music for the silent filmsSymphonie diagonale (1924),Maudite soit la Guerre (1914) andCity Without Jews (1924), as well as soundtracks to films by Kurt Mayer and Josef Dabernig. The composer also wrote music for the feature filmsDas Vaterspiel by directorMichael Glawogger, which was screened at the Berlinale film festival in 2009, andIch seh, Ich seh by directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, which premiered in 2014 at theVenice International Film Festival.
Neuwirth has received commissions from international institutions includingCarnegie Hall, theLucerne Festival, the Salzburg Festival, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, theVienna State Opera and many others. She was composer in residence at the Salzburg Festival in 1999, the Koninklijk Filharmonisch Orkest van Vlaanderen in Antwerp in 2000, the Lucerne Festival in both 2002 and 2016, the Festival d'Automne in 2011, and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Wiener Konzerthaus in 2019.
Her works have been performed by the conductorsPierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Daniel Harding, Matthias Pintscher, Valerij Gergjev,Susanna Mälkki,François-Xavier Roth and Alan Gilbert, among others. Leading orchestras and ensembles have included Neuwirth's compositions in their programs, including the Vienna Philharmonic, theBerliner Philharmoniker, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin,the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, theNDR Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra,Ensemble Intercontemporain, theEnsemble Modern, the ICE Ensemble, the Talea Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, the London Sinfonietta,Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Phace Ensemble and theArditti Quartet.
Numerous soloists, includingHakan Hardenberger,Antoine Tamestit,Thomas Larcher,Jochen Kowalski, Robyn Schulkowsky, Marino Formenti,Claire Chase andAndrew Watts have participated in performances of Neuwirth's works.
Most of Neuwirth's works have been published by Ricordi[7] andBoosey & Hawkes:[38]
