A FILM MUSIC WAR REQUIEM

Olga Neuwirth’s War Requiem takes as its starting point not poetry or sacred texts, but a silent film – a prophetic anti-war parable made in France just one month before the outbreak of the Great War. Performed to the backdrop of the film, Neuwirth’s score, she says, ‘brushes against the grain’ in the spirit of the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus. In two shorter works, Goethe and Gertrude Stein serve as jumping-off points for a composer who regularly questions shared cultural memories.

Olga Neuwirth  Five daily miniatures
Olga Neuwirth  ...morphologische Fragmente...  
Olga Neuwirth  Maudite soit la guerre

Gerry Cornelius conductor
Andrew Watts countertenor
Sound Intermedia sound projection