Mahler in Ljubljana

“Walking on the edge” could be said to be Ensemble Dissonance’s motto, since its members know that there can be no progress without deviation from the norms. Their programmes are inventive and bold and link different musical periods, styles and genres. At this year’s festival they will once again join forces with leading artists with whom they have already worked on previous occasions: conductor Jonathan Stockhammer (for the fourth year in a row), equally devoted to classical and contemporary music and a constant shifter of boundaries; soprano Nika Gorič, a regular guest soloist at the Ljubljana Opera House and the Slovene National Theatre in Maribor; and baritone Jaka Mihelač, a soloist with the Berlin State Opera. The programme will begin with Gustav Mahler’s Nicht zu schnell, the first movement of the composer’s abandoned piano quartet arranged for chamber orchestra by Klemen Hvala. Mahler composed this sombre youthful work towards the end of his first year at the conservatoire in Vienna, drawing inspiration from the works of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. It will be followed by The Book of Bodies by the expressively powerful Slovene composer Vito Žuraj, settings of five poems by Aleš Šteger that take the form of monologues for soprano accompanied by twelve solo strings, creating a uniform mass of sound through a series of different textures and gestures. The concert will end with Mahler’s series of contrasting songs Des Knaben Wunderhorn in an arrangement for soprano, baritone and chamber ensemble by Klaus Simon.