Share Through the Air

In cooperation with the Glasbena matica Ljubljana, the final concert will be dedicated to the art of Lieder-singing. Music from the Romantic era will be transformed by contemporary Slovenian and foreign composers in a surprising way. Drawing from the idioms of emotional expression that were once heard in salons, they will create new forms of modern musical language with a wider reach. The vocal poetry will be performed in the Knights’ Hall by the mezzo-soprano Barbara Jernejčič Fürst, who confidently navigates her way through a great variety of contemporary musical expressions. The evening of novelties will be further enlivened by Airborne extended, an all-female ensemble that makes use of unusual combinations of instruments, and which has been performing contemporary music on harp, harpsichord and related keyboard instruments, as well as flutes of all kinds, since 2013. The ensemble tours the globe and inspires contemporary artists, as part of the Austrian NASOM programme. The concert will open with Elena Gabbrielli on the flute, Caroline Mayrhofer on the exotic paetzold flute, Tina Žerdin on the harp, and Sonja Leipold on the harpsichord, with the first Slovenian performance of Share through the air by Uroš Rojko, whose synaesthetic inspiration often flows through the airier sound spectrum of wind instruments. The ensemble performed the composition in Vienna in 2021.

Eleni Ralli’s composition, 1/1,2,4,6,12 for harp and crystal glasses, will evoke the primal sounds of ancient Greek rituals by blending the elemental sonorities of “off-key” harp strings and the ethereal harmonies of the glasses. The space for critical dialogue on the development cycles of old and new aesthetics will be expanded with a new work by the youngest artist in the concert, the composition student Žiga Čopi, whose musical phrase is fed by the slight frictions of harmonies and dissonances in the layering of the choral musical phrase. Tomaž Svete’s modernist pen, imbued with operatic drama, will add an expressive note to the concert, while Aleksandra Bajde’s more moderate compositional approach will provide a more rational counterbalance. Her new work A Room draws inspiration from avant-garde views, and questions the boundaries between the musical, performing and visual arts. The German composer Clemens Nachtmann, who was taught composition by Beato Furrer, will deliver, in his usual style, very deep meaning through unusually simple music. The concert’s focus on the mysticism of sound will continue with the concise precision expressed in the premiere of Ena shavba, by the spectralist composer Urška Pompe, for whom silence is also a guiding principle. Tomaž Bajželj will conclude the synesthetic charge with musical movements of nature in the composition Pianissimo at Sea.