Commissions to Georges Aperghis & Salvatore Sciarrino

Klangforum Wien celebrated its fortieth anniversary in June 2025. The first chapter of WEGZEICHEN (commissions to Liza Lim and James Dillon, with world premieres in 2025 and 2026) heralds a new decade aimed at significantly expanding the ensemble’s aesthetic scope.

Liza Lim and James Dillon, two composers with no previous close connection to the ensemble, have made the first move, allowing them to cast a distanced yet curious eye on the ensemble’s unique characteristics. In the second chapter, however, which involves commissions for Salvatore Sciarrino and Georges Aperghis, identity is once again reexamined from the highly intimate insider perspective of both composers, who can be counted among the ensemble’s closest compositional companions.

Salvatore Sciarrino has stated himself that he is not in the least interested in his own age, but he is very much interested in the ensemble’s performance power—which has evolved and grown steadily over four decades—in the sense of an unmistakable virtuosity, which he intends to place at the center of his new work. George Aperghis—against the backdrop of his groundbreaking work Situations for the ensemble—will pursue a similar approach, thereby adding his own distinctive touches to the guiding principle of the second chapter of WEGZEICHEN: the sharpening of the ensemble’s identity from an insider’s perspective, one nourished by a decades-long artistic partnership.

The commissions to Georges Aperghis and Salvatore Sciarrino for the Klangforum Wien are made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further information:
klangforum.at

Dates

May 10, 2027
Teatro Massimo, Palermo (world premiere: Salvatore Sciarrino)

2029
Donaueschingen (world premiere: Georges Aperghis)