Olga Neuwirth

Olga Neuwirth (; 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 with Elfriede Jelinek, exploiting live electronics, and incorporating video. In her opera Lost Highway, she adapted David Lynch's surrealist film with the same name. She has also written music for historic and contemporary films. Luigi Nono inspired her both musically and politically.

Biography

Youth

Neuwirth was born in Graz, the daughter of Griseldis Neuwirth and pianist Harald Neuwirth. She is the niece of Gösta Neuwirth and the sister of sculptor Flora Neuwirth. 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.

Studies and formative experiences

As a high school student, Neuwirth took part in composition workshops with Hans Werner Henze and Gerd Kühr. The then-17-year-old composer named her first commissioned composition Die gelbe Kuh tanzt Ragtime. The work was composed for the opening of the steirischer herbst festival in 1985.

In 1985/86, she studied music and art at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with Elinor Armer. She also studied painting and film at the San Francisco Art College.

Adulthood and advocacy

Neuwirth has served as a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna since 2021. She is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, the Academy of Arts (Berlin) and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

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").

Music

Neuwirth has created several full-length music theatre works, including the video opera Lost Highway (2003), based on David Lynch's film; Bählamms Fest (1993/1997), drawing on the work of Leonora Carrington; The Outcast, referencing Herman Melville; and American Lulu, her free adaptation of Alban Berg's Lulu. She collaborated with Elfriede Jelinek on the opera Bählamms Fest.

Neuwirth's opera of David Lynch's film Lost Highway incorporates both live and pre-recorded audio and visual feeds, alongside other electronics. Its premiere took place in Graz in 2003, performed by the Klangforum Wien with the electronics realized at the Institut für Elektronische Musik (IEM). The American premiere of the opera took place at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and featured further performances at Columbia University's Miller Theatre in New York City, produced by Oberlin Conservatory and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. The surround-sound recording released by Kairos was awarded the Diapason d'Or. The UK premiere took place at the Young Vic in London in April 2008, in a co-production with the English National Opera, directed by Diane Paulus and conducted by Baldur Brönnimann.

Neuwirth's opera Orlando, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, is the first full-length opera composed by a woman and commissioned by the Vienna State Opera to be performed in Vienna. The world premiere took place on 8 December 2019. It was later selected as the world premiere of the year in an international critics' poll conducted by the trade journal Opernwelt.

She also has numerous chamber music works released on the Kairos label.

Style

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". Stefan Drees remarked:

Openness

Usually assigned to the category of contemporary 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". The starting point of this composition is an acoustical survey (Neuwirth: "preservation of acoustic heritage"

Innovative means

Neuwirth often set herself the goal of breaking up established forms of concert presentation in order to arrive at a "fluid form". the New York architects of Asymptote 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 installation Disenchanted Island She recently collaborated with French installation, video, and conceptual artist Dominique Gonzales-Foerster on the multimedia installation ...ce qui arrive.…

Film scores

Olga Neuwirth has also composed a number of film scores, including music for the silent films Symphonie diagonale (1924), Maudite soit la Guerre (1914) and City Without Jews (1924), as well as soundtracks to films by Kurt Mayer and Josef Dabernig. The composer also wrote music for the feature films Das Vaterspiel by director Michael Glawogger, which was screened at the Berlinale film festival in 2009, and Ich seh, Ich seh by directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, which premiered in 2014 at the Venice International Film Festival.

Reception

Commissions and music residencies

Neuwirth has received commissions from international institutions including Carnegie Hall, the Lucerne Festival, the Salzburg Festival, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Vienna 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.

Performing relationships

Her works have been performed by the conductors Pierre 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, the Berliner 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, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Ensemble Modern, the ICE Ensemble, the Talea Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Phace Ensemble and the Arditti Quartet.

Numerous soloists, including Hakan Hardenberger, Antoine Tamestit, Thomas Larcher, Jochen Kowalski, Robyn Schulkowsky, Marino Formenti, Claire Chase and Andrew Watts have participated in performances of Neuwirth's works.

Awards

1997: Erste-Bank-Kompositionspreis
1999: Hindemith Prize, Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize
2000: Ernst-Krenek-Preis for the opera Bählamms Fest
2008: (Heidelberg Prize for Female Artists)
2009: South Bank Show Award for Lost Highway
2010: Großer Österreichischer Staatspreis
2010:
2011: Nominated for the Österreichischer Filmpreis (film score to Das Vaterspiel)
2014: Nominated for the Österreichischer Filmpreis (film score to Ich seh Ich seh)
2017: Deutscher Musikautorenpreis (category "Komposition Orchester")
2019: Prize of the Christoph and Stephan Kaske Foundation
2019: Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst
2020: Robert Schumann Prize for Poetry and Music
2021: Wolf Prize in Arts Laureate in Music 2021
2021: Opus Klassik: composer of the year
2022: Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for her opera Orlando
2022: Ernst von Siemens Music Prize

Selected works

Most of Neuwirth's works have been published by Ricordi

Orchestra

Clinamen / Nodus (1999)
anaptyxis (2000)
Masaot/Clocks without Hands (2013)
Keyframes for a Hippogriff − Musical Calligrams in memoriam Hester Diamond (2019) for orchestra, countertenor and boys´ choir

Mixed ensemble

Elfi und Andi (1997) for speaker, e-guitar, double bass, bass clarinet, saxophone and two playback-CDs (voice from tape: Marianne Hoppe). With texts by Elfriede Jelinek
The Long Rain A video opera with surround-screens (1999/2000) for 4 soloists, 4 ensemble groups, live-electronic, after a story by Ray Bradbury
Construction in space (2000) for 4 soloists, 4 ensemble groups and live-electronic
Hommage à Klaus Nomi (2009) Chamber orchestra version
Ishmaela's White World (2012)
Eleanor (2014/2015) for a female blues singer, drum-kit-player, ensemble and samples
Aello – ballet mécanomorphe (2016/2017) for flute, 2 trumpets, strings, synthesizer and typewriter

Chamber music

Akroate Hadal (1995) for string quartet
Ondate II (1998) for two bass clarinets
Hommage à Klaus Nomi (1998) for countertenor and small ensemble
voluta / sospeso (1999) for basset horn, clarinet, violin, violoncello, percussion and piano
...ad auras... in memoriam H. (1999)
settori (1999) for string quartet
Zwei Räthsel von W.A.M. (1999) Text: W. A. Mozart, Leopold Mozart; for coloratura soprano, alto, viola, cello, cymbals, tape, and live electronics
... ce qui arrive ... (with a interactive live video by Dominique Gonzales-Foerster) (2003/2004) for 2 groups, samples and live-electronic after Paul Auster
In Nacht und Eis (2006) for bassoon, cello with ringmodulator
Kloing! (2007) for computer-aided CEUS-piano and interactive live video
Hommage à Klaus Nomi (2009) for chamber orchestra
in the realms of the unreal (2009) for string quartet
Quasare / Pulsare II (2017) for violin, cello and piano
CoronAtion Cycle (2020) CoronAtion IV/Version I, a 9-hours-long live sound installation for Robyn Schulkowsky and Joey Baron

Solo works

Marsyas (2003–2004, revised 2006) for piano
Trurl-Tichy-Tinkle (2016) for piano

References

</references>

External links

List of works at Klassika.info
Biography, work descriptions and detailed information at boosey.com