Viktring Music Forum

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New logo of the Musikforum Viktring

The Musikforum Viktring (in its early years Musikforum Ossiacher See ) is an annual summer music festival in the former Viktring Abbey near Klagenfurt . The festival's focus is on jazz and new music , with numerous premieres taking place every year. Nevertheless, the program also includes “classical” concerts. An essential element of the music forum are the 10 or so summer courses that attract around 200 young international musicians to Viktring every year. The final concerts of these courses form an important part of the festival program, which includes around 20 concerts.

Since 1995, the Gustav Mahler Composition Prize of the City of Klagenfurt, currently endowed with € 5000 (2020), has been awarded as part of the Musikforum Viktring . The city of Klagenfurt and the state of Carinthia are also the main sponsors of the festival, which can, however, be financed to around 60% by means of contributions from the course participants.

history

Beginnings under Friedrich Gulda

The music forum goes back to the initiative of Friedrich Guldas . In the 1960s, this “enfant terrible of the classical music scene” was looking for ways to break out of the traditional music business. His solution, in keeping with the zeitgeist, was a festival characterized by improvisation and openness. The community of Ossiach , specifically the Ossiach Abbey and its surroundings, served as the venue for the event . The festival, now known as the International Music Forum Ossiacher See , took place for the first time in 1968. The local population should be encouraged to visit by events such as a Carinthian afternoon , but at the same time be encouraged to new listening experiences by artists like Fatty George . The music forum experienced its first high point at its third edition in 1971: Gulda had succeeded in bringing Pink Floyd to Ossiach for her first concert in Austria. Other major artists that year included Tangerine Dream , Weather Report and Dollar Brand . Thus, the tranquil community quickly became a meeting place for the then frowned upon "alternative culture". Local media criticized the “ hippie invasion ” and drug consumption by concert-goers. As a result of the hustle and bustle of 1971, Gulda was no longer wanted in Ossiach. The festival there was reoriented and continues to this day under the name Carinthischer Sommer .

Gulda was looking for a new venue for “his” festival and found it in Viktring Abbey . The Republic of Austria bought the vacant building of the Cistercian monastery, which was closed in 1786, but had not yet found a use for it. Gulda was able to hold its (now called Internationales Musikforum Viktring ) festival there in 1972 with a much smaller program. The program for 1973 included performances by u. a. Dollar Brand , Karlhanns Berger , Ornette Coleman , Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden are more ambitious again. Gulda herself caused a scandal on the opening night of the festival. A performance of the first part of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was announced . Instead, Gulda appeared on stage , almost naked, accompanied by Paul and Limpe Fuchs . The trio formed the avant-garde band Anima and began a sweeping musical improvisation . Only when the majority of the visitors left the hall indignantly late at night did Gulda play the music by Bach as promised.

Then as now, the performing artists held instrumental classes and workshops in addition to the concerts. In addition, Gulda tried to open the festival to topics beyond music, there were lectures and discussions on social, legal and other topics. This fifth edition of the music forum was to remain the last for some time. Aside from the high artistic demands, the festival, with its haphazard openness completely committed to the hippie zeitgeist, was constantly accompanied by organizational problems that led to dissatisfaction among the participants and ultimately prevented a further edition in 1974.

Resumption of the festival

Inner courtyard of Viktring Abbey, a venue for open-air concerts

From 1977 onwards, a grammar school with a focus on music, today's Bundesrealgymnasium Klagenfurt-Viktring , was housed in the Viktring Abbey . Werner Überbacher , himself a teacher at the school and, like the headmaster Rudolf Scherzer, is involved in the Carinthian cultural scene, took up Friedrich Gulda's festival idea again. This New Music Forum Viktring took place for the first time in 1987. The new music forum was better organized than its predecessor and established itself to over the years "to offer one of the highest quality and interessantesten festival, Austria in the summer has" Already in 1988 became the music forum for a decree of Louis Jung under the auspices of the Council of Europe as European Youth Music Forum held. According to information provided by the organizers, the Musikforum organized “around 1000 concerts, lectures, dance and theater performances with around 120,000 visitors, 400 courses and workshops with over 5000 participants from almost all European countries, the USA, Australia, Japan, Korea and many Exhibitions by visual artists. " Artists such as Wolfgang Puschnig , Bertl Mütter , Emil Krištof , Primus Sitter , Dieter Kaufmann , Michael Martin Kofler or Helena Łazarska are regular musicians or teachers in Viktring. A regular audience highlight is the final evening of Ali Gaggl's jazz singing course in the open air in the courtyard of the monastery.

In 2007, Abdullah Ibrahim , who had performed as Dollar Brand at Gulda's Musikforum in 1973 , returned to Viktring for a concert. The Vienna Art Orchestra played its last concert at the 2010 Musikforum. The festivals in 2010 and 2011 and thus the 25th anniversary of the Musikforum were marked by the 150th birthday and 100th anniversary of the death of Gustav Mahler , under whose name the city of Klagenfurt has been awarding its composition prize as part of the Musikforum since 1995. The festivals from 2012 to 2016 each had a continent as their artistic focus. At the 2013 Music Forum, which had the motto Asia meets Europe meets Asia , new works by Ai Weiwei were presented at a vernissage . The artist himself had not received an exit permit and was connected via the Internet. The series in the 30th anniversary year of the Music Forum concluded with Australia and Oceania. 45 years after Friedrich Gulda's scandalous performance, his son, the pianist Paul Gulda , played Bach again at the 2018 Musikforum.

After Rudolf Scherzer had handed over his long-term chairmanship of the music forum to Werner Überbacher, he has been organizing the festival since 2010 together with the cultural manager Manfred Paul Westphal . In 2017, the two announced that they would give up the organization of the festival. Paul Gulda had agreed to take over the successor, but then had to decline the offer for health reasons. The new chairman of the Musikforum is Reinhard Lebersorger , the management was transferred to Jutta Mitteregger and Arno Steinwidder took over the artistic direction in 2019 . For the 2020 season, the artistic direction is in the hands of a three-person board of trustees consisting of Christoph Johannes Eggner , Johannes Berauer and Jakob Gruchmann . Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria , all courses and large parts of the rest of the program this season had to be canceled. Three concerts and the awarding of the Gustav Mahler Composition Prize were postponed to autumn.

Gustav Mahler Composition Prize

The Gustav Mahler Composition Prize of the City of Klagenfurt was founded in 1995 with the participation of Christoph Cech and has been awarded since then within the framework of the music forum. Gustav Mahler owned a villa on the nearby Wörthersee , which also included a “composing house” hidden in the forest, which is now accessible as a museum in the summer months.

In keeping with the spirit of the music forum, there are few formal regulations for the submitted works, even a combination of composition and improvised sections is possible. Since the works will also be premiered in the context of the music forum, the cast and an approximate duration of the performance are given. As a rule, three of the submitted works are awarded, and additional recognition prizes are awarded on a case-by-case basis. The amount of the prize money can vary from year to year, currently (2020) it amounts to a total of 5000 €. The prize was not awarded in 2010, 2011, 2014, 2018 and 2019. In 2016/17 the task for the composers was to compose one act of an oratorio each. 3 pieces were selected from the submitted compositions and each was awarded € 3,000. For 2020 the award is again advertised.

Award winners

year 1st Prize 2nd prize 3rd prize
2016/17 Katharina Klement Krzysztof Knittel Otto WankeAustriaAustria
PolandPoland
Czech RepublicCzech Republic 		Not forgiven Not forgiven
2015 Julian Gamisch AustriaAustria Adrian Laugsch GermanyGermany Wolfgang Bretl AustriaAustria
2013 Bernhard Geigl GermanyGermany Michael Wahlmüller GermanyGermany Roozbeh Nafisi IranIran
2012 Denovaire merchant AustriaAustria Irene Kepl AustriaAustria Julian Gamisch AustriaAustria
2009 Stefan Lienenkämper GermanyGermany Martin Sadowski GermanyGermany Nejc Kuhar SloveniaSlovenia
2008 Leopold Hurt GermanyGermany Clemens Nachtmann GermanyGermany Manuela Kerer ItalyItaly
2007 Christoph Gruber AustriaAustria Hernán Dario Palmieri ArgentinaArgentina Michael Publig AustriaAustria
2006 Matthias Kranebitter AustriaAustria Bjorn Berkhout United StatesUnited States Judith Unterpertinger AustriaAustria
2005 Georg Furxer AustriaAustria Laurenz Philipp Ennser AustriaAustria Christoph Stock AustriaAustria
2004 Hong Seung Ki Korea SouthSouth Korea Andrea Csollány GermanyGermany Andrea Dalla Fontana ItalyItaly
2003 Stefan Lienenkämper GermanyGermany Peter Kleindienst GermanyGermany Michael Radanovics AustriaAustria
2002 Constance Cooper United StatesUnited States Benedikt Burghardt GermanyGermany Denis Bosse FranceFrance
2001 Sven Klammer GermanyGermany Andrea Cera ItalyItaly Cyriak hunter AustriaAustria
2000 Johannes Berauer AustriaAustria Satoshi Ohmae JapanJapan Not forgiven
1999 (regular) Matthias Schlothfeldt GermanyGermany Georg Klein GermanyGermany Uljas Voitto Pulkkis FinlandFinland
1999 (jazz) Alexander Eberhard AustriaAustria Andrea Cera ItalyItaly Monika Defiance AustriaAustria
1998 Tobias Giessen GermanyGermany Bojana Šaljić Podešva SloveniaSlovenia Alexander Shychetynsky UkraineUkraine
1997 Fabio Nieder ItalyItaly Valentin Marti SwitzerlandSwitzerland Luca Macchi ItalyItaly
1996 Eva Barath GermanyGermany John Palmer United KingdomUnited Kingdom Knut Müller GermanyGermany
1995 Volkmar Klien AustriaAustria Christian Mühlbacher AustriaAustria Orestis Toufektsis AustriaAustria

literature

  • Irene Suchy: Friedrich Gulda: I-Theater . Styria, Graz 2010, ISBN 978-3-222-13290-2 .
  • Ilse Schneider: Nationwide format. Music forum Viktring / Klagenfurt . In: Austrian music magazine . 63, issue 10. Hollitzer, Vienna October 2008, p. 64-65 .
  • Claus-Henning Bachmann: The International Music Forum Viktring: Idea and Reality . In: Austrian music magazine . 28, issue 9. Hollitzer, Vienna September 1973, p. 412-413 .
  • Franz Endler, Friedrich Gulda, Siegmar Bergelt, Henry Pleasents a. a .: Ossiach had to be invented. The musicians improvise the uprising. A report on the first and second International Music Forum Ossiachersee . Ed .: Verein Internationales Musikforum Ossiachersee. Self-published by the Lilly Bergelt Foundation, Ossiach 1971 ( fete-soleil.at [PDF]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Musical early start on a solid foundation. In: kleinezeitung.at. Retrieved March 5, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Ilse Schneider: Nationwide format. Music forum Viktring / Klagenfurt . In: Austrian music magazine . 63, issue 10. Hollitzer, Vienna October 2008, p. 64-65 .
  3. ↑ Irene Suchy: Ossiach, Viktring and the whole world. In: kulturchannel.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  4. ↑ 1971: Pink Floyd live at Ossiach Abbey. In: ossiachersee.cc. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  5. ^ A b Claus-Henning Bachmann: The International Music Forum Viktring: Idea and Reality . In: Austrian music magazine . 28, issue 9. Hollitzer, Vienna September 1973, p. 412-413 .
  6. ↑ Musikforum: History. In: musikforum.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  7. ↑ 30 years of the Viktring Music Forum. In: ktn.gv.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  8. ↑ One of the greats of jazz in Viktring. In: ktnv1.orf.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Vienna Art Orchestra is history. In: kleinezeitung.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  10. ↑ 25 years of the Musikforum. In: tv.orf.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  11. ^ Explosive twittering from Beijing. In: derstandard.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Musikforum Viktring: For the 30th anniversary at the other end of the world. In: tt.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Paul Gulda: "I often heard my father roar". In: kleinezeitung.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Last curtain for the Viktring Music Forum. In: kleinezeitung.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  15. ^ "Happy New Ears": New era in the music forum. In: kaernten.orf.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Musikforum Viktring: Mahler Composition Prize takes place. In: kleinezeitung.at. April 28, 2020, accessed May 28, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Gustav Mahler Prize. In: kaernten.orf.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  18. ↑ a b Gustav Mahler Composition Prize awarded in Klagenfurt. In: kleinezeitung.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .
  19. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Prize winners 2015-1995. In: musikforum.at. Retrieved March 4, 2020 .