XIV International Contemporary Music Festival Moscow Forum “Russia-Germany: Beyond the Barbed Music”

2014, Rakhmaninov hall of the Moscow conservatory, Concert Hall of the Composer’s Hause

Тhe theme of the festival – “beyond the barbed music” – carries multifold connotations: they include the two countries’ totalitarian past, the dramatic personal destinies of many 20th century musicians and composers who professed the principles of avant-garde art and, last but not least, the uncompromisingly complex, “barbed” musical language of contemporary musical compositions, compelling the listeners to “renounce their habits (following the imperative of Helmut Lachenmann).
The famous Ensemble Modern performed within the walls of the Moscow Conservatory. It had already been a guest of the “Moscow Forum” festival – “Music of Russia and Germany: Retrospective and Perspective” (1995), the first crossroads musical project in the recent history of our countries.
The guest of the festival was Helmut Lachenmann, a patriarch of contemporary German music, the creator of a new aesthetics, whose influence was, in all likelihood, not avoided by any of the contemporary schools of composition. His compositions were performed on all the evenings of the festival.

Guests of the Festival: Helmut Lachenmann, Ensemble Modern
Partners: Ernst von Siemens Musikstifftung, Goethe-Institut in Moscow