Commissions to Márton Illés & Simon Steen-Andersen

Two commissions, two personalities, two compositional styles and aesthetics, two approaches to new works for Ensemble Modern and its partners. What both have in common is that they have a long history with the ensemble, but it has been years or even decades since they last worked together. It’s high time that changed.

Ensemble Modern first met Márton Illés at the 1st International Composition Seminar in 2004. The following years brought a lot of collaboration. The impetus for the concrete planning of a new project was the world premiere of Illés’ work Forajzok at the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2021, which intensified the exchange and fleshed out the joint perspective. It quickly became clear that the focus should not be on a ‘normal’ ensemble piece, but rather on a ‘chamber music stage work’ (Illés) in a combination of Ensemble Modern, the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the SWR Experimentalstudio. The young Freiburg poet Felix Reinhuber is on board to create the lyrics, whereby the composer ‘wants to embed a reduced amount of text with lyrical density and quality organically into the overall texture, in order to create a sound conglomerate in which both the abstract semantic level and the intrinsic sound of the words are given equal emphasis in the music.’

Simon Steen-Andersen attended the 3rd International Composition Seminar in 2007. The centrepiece of the collaboration was subsequently written in 2015 Run Time Error @ Opel feat. Ensemble Modern, which premiered at the festival cresc… Biennale for New Music Frankfurt Rhein Main, which has since been presented at numerous guest performances. For 2020, Steen-Andersen curated an evening of the series Happy New Ears, in which he presented young composers from Poland. Now a new composition is being created for Ensemble Modern.

The commissions to Márton Illés and Simon Steen-Andersen are made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further information:
ensemble-modern.com

Dates

May 2026
Alte Oper, Frankfurt

August 2026
Philharmonie, Berlin

September 2026
Maillon, Strasbourg