KARL AMADEUS HARTMANN – CENTER

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the first concert of ensemble hartmann21 for the year 2020 has to be postponed again. The event will now take place on September 22, 2020. We hope for a soon and healthy reunion with you!

The concerts of the ensemble hartmann21 will take place on the following dates in 2020
July 29 (postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic)
September 22 (postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic)
October 14

We look forward to your visit!

With the violinist Ingolf Turban, one of the most outstanding and exciting musicians encounters the work of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, exposes himself to it, reflects, traces references and – as an interpreter – lets the listener participate in his individual world of experience. In a singularly composed program, Turban creates a kaleidoscope of different perspectives and modes of perception, allowing one to experience Hartmann’s musically progressive Second suite for violin solo in a new way.
In National Socialist Germany, Hartmann rigorously refused to be appropriated by the totalitarian regime and retreated into “inner emigration”, while at the same time he tried to speak all the more eloquently abroad and was also perceived as a symbol of a “different Germany” – which set culture and humanism against barbarism. He consciously understood his composition as a “Gegenaktion” [“counteraction”]. In each of his works, Hartmann sought international solidarity with allies in spirit, be it through the use of texts and melodies of forbidden artists or with the help of Jewish songs. Especially the use of the Jewish “Eliyahu hanavi” in all compositions of the years 1933 to 1945 became Hartmann’s lament for the extermination of the Jewish people, but also stood for the persecution of all opponents of the regime. The first traces of Jewish melismas can be found in his early work as early as 1927 and lead to the first expressions in Hartmann’s Second suite for solo violin.
“After Bach and Reger, it is probably only Hartmann who succeeded in giving the violin such an unusually complex polyphony. This is all the more astonishing when one considers that Hartmann, as a trombone student of only 22 years of age at the time, was able to fathom the possibilities of the violin so brilliantly to the limits of what was possible,” said Ingolf Turban in an interview in 2013 (Festschrift for the international “Karl Amadeus Hartmann Year 2013”).
It is therefore only logical that our concert will cover a wide range from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita No. 2 to Béla Bartók’s Melodia and Paul Hindemith’s Sonata for solo violin op. 31, No. 2. Paul Hindemith, too, still needs to be comprehended far more pluralistically and celebrated for his occasionally even humorous variety of colours.

An event of the © Karl Amadeus Hartmann-Gesellschaft e. V., sponsored by Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst, Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München und Bezirk Oberbayern.

With our programme we would like to begin by drawing a bow to the beginnings of the musica viva founded in 1945 by Karl Amadeus Hartmann. With solo works by Pierre Boulez and György Ligeti, two compositions by Hartmann’s closest companions and most incisive figures in 20th century music history form a programmatic bracket around Hartmann’s early First suite for piano. In 1945 the then twenty-year-old Boulez composed his Douze Notations: twelve pieces in twelve bars of twelve notes. More than thirty years later, it was precisely these miniatures that were to serve him as the germ cell for his epoch-making orchestral work of the same name. Aphoristic brevity, unmistakably expressionistic sound intensity and a rigorous serial approach to compositional technique are the defining characteristics that make this work the aesthetic manifesto of the young Pierre Boulez.
Before György Ligeti fled Hungary to the West in 1956 for political and artistic reasons, he composed a whole series of early works in succession to Béla Bartók; among them is the solo sonata for cello, written between 1948 and 1953. Although her two movements still reveal Bartók’s folkloristically influenced “folk tone”, the committee of the Communist Union of Composers considered the work “too modern” and banned its performance.
After Pierre Boulez, Philippe Manoury is probably the figurehead of the French avant-garde par excellence. In recent years, the question of the various forms of musical interaction has increasingly moved into the focus of his work and his writings on music theory. This moment also characterizes his work Ultima, in which new possibilities of playing together among “free” individuals are tested: “This voluntary independence in the behavior of the three instruments was suggested to me by the heterogeneity of their respective natures,” says the composer in the preface to his score.
Finally, our ensemble hartmann21 will adress itself to a new work by the 29-year-old Mexican composer Carlos G. Hernández, who will also enrich our subsequent round of discussions. Similar to Philippe Manoury, in his work 5(233n, Hernández deals with the theme of communication or isolation between individuals in the age of digital media and transfers this to the interaction of the instrumental voices.

An event of the © Karl Amadeus Hartmann-Gesellschaft e. V., sponsored by Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst, Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München, LfA Förderbank Bayern and Bezirk Oberbayern.

Constantly striving to set new impulses in the examination of Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s œuvre and – in keeping with his spirit – to promote young composers, we were able to offer the Karl Amadeus Hartmann Composition Prize for the first time this year. In order to achieve a higher programmatic density, not only instrumental and temporal, but above all content-related conditions were attached to the call for proposals. Thus the composition to be premiered enters into a stringent connection of the greatest possible coherence with the framework of the evening. We are very pleased to introduce you to the new prize winner Jingyu Jang and to premiere the awarded work “Omega”.
Besides him, the second composer of the evening – José María Sánchez-Verdú, one of the most renowned composers of our days – will also be present and enrich our composer’s discussion. “Born in the extreme south of Spain (Al-Andaluz), the history, literature, mysticism and music of this territory fascinate me. The Mediterranean (Mare nostrum) as a space of encounters, movements, searches, exchanges, cultures and religions, but also of catastrophes, war and death” says the composer. The Mediterranean Sea represents for him the connection of the European with the Arab-Moorish world. Sánchez-Verdú seeks and finds a correspondence between Arabic poetry, calligraphy and architecture in his own musical aesthetics: ornamentation embedded in strict structure. “There are very filigree patterns that are developed in a geometric way through a surface, so that they can no longer be traced. You can only see the figure as a whole.”
Although only completed in 1945/46, Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s second string quartet still recalls the horrors of the Nazi era and the war. It is no coincidence that the motif of the slow introduction of the first movement is reminiscent of the Jewish Eliyahu hanavi quotation, presented as the instrumental extreme of a lament initially led by the violoncello to the soprano. This form closes with an allusion to the whole tone sequence in Alban Berg’s violin concerto with the characteristic, latently resonant Bach chorale text “Es ist genug” [“It is enough”]. But what follows, described by the composer as “extremely lively and very energetic”, is the groundbreaking feat of a new beginning!

An event of the © Karl Amadeus Hartmann-Gesellschaft e. V., sponsoreed by Bayerische Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst, Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München, LfA Förderbank Bayern and Bezirk Oberbayern.

In 1955 Karl Amadeus Hartmann wrote to the young Luigi Nono in his compositional album:
„Dein Stück soll virtuos, effektvoll, kühn, avantgardistisch, heutig, seherisch sein.“ [“Your piede should be virtuosic, effective, bold, avant-garde, contemporary, visionary.”] In the most beautiful way, our first concert of this year should make it clear that this not-so-silent demand (and also challenge) – which consciously frees itself from any musical style, focuses on content and unmistakably inspires a substantial opening – is timelessly valid. On the one hand, we can look forward to two works by the composers Philipp Mayer (*1995) and Hans-Henning Ginzel (*1988), which have been newly commissioned by us hot off the press.

On the other hand, Gloria Coates’ (*1938) “Night Music” and “Sonata for Piano No. 2”, as well as Georges Aperghis’ (*1945) “Rasch” invite us on a renewed journey of discovery through the rich œuvre of these two capital composers. Gloria Coates, who celebrated her 80th birthday last year, achieved an international breakthrough with the premiere of her “Music on Open Strings” (Symphony No. 1) at Warsaw Autumn 1978. It should become the most discussed work of the festival. In a music world dominated by men for a long time, she made her debut two years later with exactly this piece – as the first female composer with an orchestral work – in the musica viva concert series founded by Hartmann. Just how much Gloria Coates assimilates Hartmann’s demand is also revealed by her contribution to Renate Ulm’s (ed.) book “Eine Sprache der Gegenwart – musica viva 1945-1995”, in which she not only explicitly refers to Hartmann’s much discussed essay “Warum ist Neue Musik so schwer zu hören?” [Why is New Music so difficult to listen to?”] (1957), but also continues it – „reflektiert und in die Zukunft gedacht“ [“reflectively and with thought into the future” – in her own way.

The ensemble hartmann21 takes you into new worlds this time as well: By combining works for solo, duo and trio instrumentation, you may expect the most diverse tonal values through saxophone, viola, piano and gongs. The concert concludes with a discussion with Gloria Coates and the two composers of the works to be premiered: Philipp Mayer and Hans-Henning Ginzel.

An event of the © Karl Amadeus Hartmann-Gesellschaft e. V., sponsored by Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst, Kulturreferat der Landeshauptstadt München, LfA Förderbank Bayern and Bezirk Oberbayern.

In 2019 the Karl Amadeus Hartmann Composition Prize will be awarded for the first time!

NMZ (January 23, 2019): “The Karl Amadeus Hartmann Society announces for the first time in 2019 the Karl Amadeus Hartmann Composition Prize for String Trio (violin, viola, violoncello) to promote young composers. The Society is committed to the mission and intention of Karl Amadeus Hartmann to promote young, highly talented composers and to introduce them to the humanistic and socio-political dimensions of his works.

Members of the jury:
Isabel Mundry
Composer – Professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München

Clemens Schuldt (permanent member)
Conductor – Chief conductor of the Münchner Kammerorchester

Ingolf Turban
Violinist – Professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München

Hans-Hennig Ginzel (permanent member)
Composer, cellist – Musical director of the ensemble hartmann21

Andreas Hérm Baumgartner (Chair of the jury, permanent member)
Artistic Director, conductor – Managing Director of the Karl Amadeus Hartmann-Gesellschaft / Hartmann-Center