Complexities Come Alive at O/Modernt Summer Festival

The O/Modernt summer festival's opening concert, "Passions: Between Heaven and Earth," presented a program that defied easy categorization, weaving together works by Bach, Janáček, Britten, Ligeti, Kurtág, Schönberg, and Strauss. While lacking a simple narrative arc, the artistic director Hugo Ticciati's concept of connecting the "head, heart, and stomach", intellect, emotion, and physical presence, proved surprisingly effective.

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The complex becomes alive in O/Modernt's summer festival.

The concert flowed organically, with pieces commenting on each other across centuries. György Kurtág's arrangements of Bach served as crucial bridges between the Baroque and modern eras, allowing the centuries to merge seamlessly. The music often consisted of concentrated fragments and aphorisms, characteristic of Kurtág's style.

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Invent the Past; Revise the Future

Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard was a standout performer, bringing a direct link to the musical tradition explored in the program. His authoritative playing made the complex pieces accessible and alive. In Ligeti's "Musica ricercata," Aimard captured the tension between the earthly and the transcendent through the interplay of a persistent left-hand pulse and a soaring right-hand melody.

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head, heart, and stomach – intellect, feeling, and physical presence

Ticciati also delivered a nuanced performance of Janáček's violin sonata, described by the composer as the sound of "steel against steel" in a tormented mind. The concert, held at Drottning Silvias Konsertsal in Stockholm, showcased O/Modernt's commitment to unexpected encounters between eras and artistic expressions, aiming to illuminate older music in new ways and challenge contemporary perspectives.

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steel against steel in a tormented head