Donaueschingen 2024: Deep sounds, plastic sounds
A rich harvest this year at the Donaueschingen Music Days from October 17 to 20. A variety of approaches, hardly a trend. But that's all right.
With a gentle gesture, the conductor invites us to play and gently waves us off. It is a loving atmosphere that is created, ritualistic, full of memories, although it is hard to tell what. You can hear beats on slate, individual strings being struck, all quietly. Suddenly, a few simple favorite songs are sung by refugees who have landed in Donaueschingen and are now taking part in Shared Sounds the Frenchwoman Séverine Ballon. Participation, as the title suggests. And there it is again, the dilemma of socially engaged music. The sound space created is not so significant as to say anything more than participation. What do the participants take away? Does it integrate them? Can they express themselves? Or is it more about being together? Lots of questions that don't disavow the intention, and then enthusiastic applause.
Listening into the darkness
It's not the first time that an event like this, in which outsiders, non-professionals and amateurs take part, has been held on a Friday afternoon, just before the festival gets underway. So much so that it's all too easy to forget with all the impressions. How did we take it with us into the following days? Some of it was still noticeable in the orchestral work Age the Frenchwoman Pascale Criton. The soprano soloist Juliet Fraser asked about her situation in the world, about the world itself, to fragile, floating sounds. The piece asked without wanting to give an answer. This resonated again and again: a listening into the darkness of the earth with Carola Bauckholts Double bass piece My Light Lives in the Darkplayed by Florentin Ginot in the twilight castle park.
The most far-reaching piece, now admittedly already beyond concrete questions, in a spiritual realm of mourning, was the piano piece ... blessed is ... from Mark Andre into the instability of existence. With the help of electronics from the SWR experimental studio, Pierre-Laurent Aimard plumbed the depths of the instrument. It was a highlight of this year's festival.
The aesthetic drill
Such intensity is seldom encountered elsewhere, although the archaic orchestral work Unforeseen dusk: bones into wings from Chaya Czernowin or somewhat more strikingly in Franck Bedrossians Rimbaud setting Feu sur moi - unusual for this composer, who did not quite achieve the oppressive urgency of other pieces here. And if there is one thing in common, it is that technology - live electronics, playback, loudspeakers - played a central role almost everywhere. The "natural" sound was the exception. Which has an impact on the aesthetics. In the case of the Paris-based Italian Claudia Jane Scroccaro one simply experienced a wide-ranging and engaging spatial composition (On the Edge for vocal soloists, choir and electronics). In four new orchestral works, however, the electronic addition achieved a completely new sound.
George Lewis presented in The Reincarnation of Blind Tom a live soloist (the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell) alongside the orchestra and an AI-controlled piano - a striking mixture, interesting in detail, but hardly in interaction. As Simon Steen-Andersen however in grosso when the amplified keyboard percussion quartet Yarn/Wire was combined with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, you could hardly hear a "natural" sound any more, but something industrially plasticized. Individual sounds, such as drilling machines, were integrated. As with this composer, it was noticeable - almost exemplary - that he pushed back the conceptual, which was still so en vogue a few years ago, in favor of sonority. So you listened to the drill and hardly thought about what it was doing here. A similar aestheticization also took place with the Chilean Francisco Alvarado takes place. In REW - PLAY - FFWD he picks up on the good old music cassette and its rewinding noises - in a funny way.
Poppy, enjoyable and technically tricky
And finally, there was the hyper-rapid Ding, Dong, Darlingin which Sara Glojnarić their queerness - which immediately faded into the background with these highly virtuosic, ludicrous sequences. Like the aforementioned pieces, this was extremely entertaining, poppy in effect, hardly real, as if plasticized, but certainly vivid, pleasingly cheeky and perhaps a little salacious within this framework. In any case, Glojnarić was awarded the SWR Symphony Orchestra Prize for this work. (Video final concert)
It's been a long time since there was so much fun in Donaueschingenand one inevitably wonders about the future of this music: whether it could be successfully transferred to the concert hall. Perhaps a younger audience is waiting there for this kind of sound. This is where the other dilemma arises. The technical demands on the electronics seem to me to be so high that they can rarely be met. The studio equipment is probably still simply too expensive ... We'll see.
Unpoppy drumset
As a PS, the whole thing is now reversed: starting from an element of pop music, the standardized drum set, the Enno Poppe designed a completely different, non-poppy, but very diverse music. Strike (why this title?) requires ten drum sets and correspondingly ten outstanding drummers (here the Percussion Orchestra Cologne). Anyone who thought it was about to start had to wait a long time. It was hardly ever loud, groovy only to a certain extent, you could rather hear the nuances. Wasn't the second beat of all ten a little imprecise, one wondered right at the beginning, to which the further course provided the answer: of course not, but precisely off the mark. Poppe repeatedly built wide-ranging developments on such details, sometimes almost a little didactic because they were enlightening, but nevertheless with an immense wealth of invention over almost an hour.
From the archive
Some earlier reports on the Donaueschingen Music Days
Thomas Meyer: Losses and outbursts - Donaueschingen Music Days 2023
Thomas Meyer: Happiness and melancholy - Donaueschingen Music Days 2019
Torsten Möller: Complexities, digital and primitive - Donaueschinger Musiktage 2018
Torsten Möller: Context instead of text - Donaueschinger Musiktage 2017
Torsten Möller: Plural positions - Donaueschingen Music Days 2016
