music austria – music information centre austria

1995

On 'Lonicera Caprifolium':

Olga Neuwirth develops sound events with harsh (film) cuts and surprising turns. Gestures of movement change repeatedly, unfold, collapse and tip over in a perhaps would-be opposite. From this movement of lingering sounds emerges an instrumental clatter, the "spatialization" of which seems to take on the function of instrumentation. An audio-taped solo brings the movement to a standstill with a sinus chord. However, latest from now on the contradictions in this music begin to upend each other: it is a frantic standstill from which a cautious gesture of movement develops, which burns up its energy in a field of implosions. The intertwined sounds lose their contours, short audio-tape sounds emerge from the amorphous field,; and the underlying rigid harmonics of the field of sounds only leave space for suffocated movement, before an electrically-generated fan opens from the single f note. In the newly-defined sound space, quick, ornamental flowery phrases find their place and likewise, as a reminiscence of the sound characters from the first phase of the piece, sound blocks appear, shifting away from each other. However, the ornaments were once the driving force and the chords gave impetus to the movement, and now seem to be exhausted from the usuriousness and drive, sapped from the bone-crushing embrace of the wildly rampant Lonicera Caprifolium. And again there is a paradoxical state of movement, a moving stiffness, in the sound of the work. In the trills and brittle harmonies of the tenor saxophone, the bass clarinet and two prepared violoncellos, the fugaciousness of those producing sounds and the artificially constructed sound spaces meet. Olga Neuwirth tells of the sound of nervous energy potential in 'Lonicera Caprifolium' which appears when wild usuriousness and delicate embracing, gruffness and tenderness do not confront each other, but find themselves in each other.

Zeitfluß - Program booklet of the Salzburg Festspiele (Christian Scheib)

21. June 1999

[...] The 30 year-old Austrian composer is one of the most startling of her generation, writes, not only, but especially here, her music is lively, stirring, fun and full of allusions ... Olga Neuwirth's piece, with its musical dramaturgy, perhaps with the connection of different tonal ranges, offers insights which are worth pursuing. Most of all it is conceived with sparkling imagination and makes for a thrilling, and enjoyable evening. [...]

Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Peter Hagmann)

2003

[...] Olga Neuwirth is a composer who unites scenes, sound and video elements most intensively and inspirationally. Film as a means of expression brings Neuwirth's music theatre quasi into a further dimension, the third or also the fourth: the filmed images are inserted as an additional layer and are inseparably merged with the unit of the composition. [...]

Neue Musikzeitung (Gerhard Rohde)

3. November 2003

[...] From the start, the composer's uncompromisingly tart sound had an exciting and unsettling effect, which in obstreperous ramifications hurls sound realities at the listener's ears directly without fear and romanticism, sentimentalism, psychology and ingratiation. [...]

Süddeutsche Zeitung (Reinhard J. Brembeck)

2004

Her work is not simple, easily explainable or simply structured. On the contrary: the works of Olga Neuwirth bubble incessantly, there is an underlying uncertainty which constantly pulls the ground from under the feet of the listener. [...]

Falter (Stefan Drees)