26th to 29th March 2009

"The soul must dismount from its steed."

A Weekend with the Composer Klaus Huber:
A Master of Modernity Discovers Arabia’s Music

Brian Ferneyhough, one of the many prominent students of the Swiss composer Klaus Huber, writes about his venerated teacher:
"Each of his works (is) a highly individual answer to a clear, focused, technically exact and sophisticated array of circumstances. At the same time, each work is also a precise and ever-recurring deliberation of the relationship between contemporary musical languages and the real, imperfect world in which they are embedded."
Ferneyhough continues to speak about the "deep, natural introversion of expression" and the "incomparable control of musical time." Huber’s art is "humanistic with a dual meaning: on the one hand, loyalty to traditional concepts of technical ability, and on the other hand, persistent demands that are made on music as the last visionary mediator of high ethical aspirations."
Huber’s Christian beliefs "move him to turn to what he sees as the dual utopian message of music: to inspire the listener to concrete social reflection and to embody a hopeful vision of ‘life on the right path.’ … It is to be hoped that Huber’s unique combination of fragility of expression and insistent strictness of execution” will continue to move those “who are prepared to experience this music with the comprehensive mentality with which it was written."
Klaus Huber began to concentrate on Arabic music at the beginning of the 1990s. Huber wrote: "The Gulf War, which I rightly feared would have devastating repercussions on the consciousness of primarily the younger generation – extensive remilitarization of their thinking and feeling – almost triggered a rupture of my creativity. I had the strong need to turn to a culture that, in the eyes of the new world order, had clearly become an epitome of evil."
The composer began a comprehensive course of study focusing on Arabic music, which led him to realize that it had had "a pivotal influence on Western musical development, and could arguably have made that development possible."
Subsequently, Huber developed touch points for both cultures – possibilities to meet and to meet again. Two of the pieces that arose he composed based on texts by contemporary Iranian and Palestinian authors. They will be performed on the weekend.
In addition, traditional Arabic music and newer works of young, Western-educated composers from Egypt and Jordan will appear on the program. The University Mozarteum’s symphony orchestra and the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg will perform the final concerts of the Biennale 2009.