Commissions to Isabel Mundry & Vito Žuraj

Beethoven as a Citizen and Visionary: It is often overlooked that Beethoven not only elevated the genres of the symphony, string quartet, and piano sonata to an entirely new level, but also drove important and systematic developments in the field of the duo sonata for piano and violin or cello throughout all phases of his creative work. This makes it all the more surprising that, over the past 100 years—a period marked by a willingness to experiment—there have been hardly any major, multi-work endeavors undertaken with a similar spirit of discovery to seek out new, contemporary approaches for a duo featuring a string instrument and piano.

The Duo Franziska/Florian Hölscher (violin and piano) aims to explore new avenues of dialogue for the two instruments—both sonically and structurally—through two commissions awarded to Isabel Mundry and Vito Žuraj.

Florian Hölscher has a longstanding collaboration with Isabel Mundry. Her ability to think in terms of chamber music while focusing on the gestural, rhythmic, and sonic communication between the instrumentalists has been proven time and again. Vito Žuraj is working in parallel on a violin concerto and plans to conceive the two works through a productive process of dialogue: different solutions will emerge for different contexts. Ideas that are discarded for one work could be applied in the other, and so on. Žuraj plans to explore the violin and related instruments across a wide variety of traditions and to learn from these traditions.

The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation is making the commissions to Isabel Mundry and Vito Žuraj for the Duo Franziska/Florian Hölscher possible.

Further Information:
franziskahoelscher.com

Dates

January 21, 2027
Ultraschall Festival, Heimathafen Neukölln, Berlin

March 30, 2027
Beethovenfest, Beethovenhaus, Bonn

October 30, 2027
Philharmonie Essen