Photo: Lukas Beck

Munich Chamber Orchestra / Alexander Liebreich / Hilliard Ensemble

The Munich Chamber Orchestra, whose conceptual blend of contemporary and classical music has brought the orchestra many prizes and awards, come together with the Hilliard Ensemble to perform a new work co-commissioned from the Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür. Touring under the direction of conductor Alexander Liebreich, the programme will also feature music by Gesualdo and Stravinsky.

Tüür is one of the most remarkable composers of his generation. His music is being heard more and more frequently not only throughout Europe but also in North America, Australia and Japan. His oeuvre comprises orchestral, concert and chamber music, oratorios, film scores and incidental music.

"My work as a composer is entirely concerned with the relation between emotional and intellectual energy and the ways in which they can be channelled, accumulated, liquidated and re-accumulated. My pieces are abstract dramas in sound, with characters and an extremely dynamic chain of events; they unfold in a space that is constantly shifting, expanding and contracting, not so much like a mosaic, but rather in the manner of a block of sculpture. I am very interested in a combination of opposites - tonality versus atonality, regular repetitive rhythms versus irregular complex rhythms, tranquil meditativeness versus explosive theatricality - and especially in the way they gradually change from one to another. But to talk of the expressiveness of music is always to tread on undulating and unsteady ground, for people understand the meaning of music in very different ways."
Erkki-Sven Tüür