ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester / Pia Palme

This year, the Wien Modern festival will be opened by the Danube. To be more precise: »With the Danube« is the title of a full-length composition and spatial installation. The artistic collective behind this evening – which comprises more than just people – includes composer Pia Palme (Vienna), artist Lisa Horvath (Graz/Vienna), soprano Juliet Fraser (London), and dance performers Elie Halonen and Satu Hakamäki (Turku, Helsinki) and Europe’s second-longest river (Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine).

Spatial installation in the Great Hall
In the Donau-Auen National Park, this collective explores sounds, movements and words that emerge from the landscape. Through a process of shared listening and responding, of mutual perception and consideration, a polyphony emerges in which, for once, humans do not assume they are at the centre of attention. To bring the experiences of nature – from Central Europe’s last great river floodplain landscape – into the cultural sphere, the collective initiates a sensitive interplay of orchestra, sounds from nature, voice, movement, video and spatial installation. In the cleared-out Great Hall, the RSO Vienna, conducted by Irene Delgado-Jiménez, invites you to the first of many explorations of diverse ecosystems as part of the 39th edition of the Wien Modern festival.

In the flow
»The Danube is a living, charismatic river landscape – a dynamic diversity with which we as humans engage and interact. It is more than a decoration, inspiration or a backdrop. The Danube swirls through our city, as part of our lives. It constantly reshapes its bed, pushes rocks over vast distances and, when it floods, sweeps away everything in its path. On the other hand, we humans are part of the fluvial ecosystem and its long history of formation. Carried by our sedimented history as living beings, we move with the river through different times and temporalities.« (Pia Palme, Lisa Horvath)