Polish compositions inspired by the works of Stanisław Lem will be premiered on 30 July 2021 at 8.00 pm at the Odeon Theatre in Vienna in the frame of the ImPulsTanz festival.
Lem’s work illuminates our time like a great headlight – his 100th birthday anniversary could not fall more congenially into the current present. Inspired by Lem’s late work Fiasco, written largely in Vienna, the Klangforum Wien and Agata Zubel premieres Poland’s strongest contemporary voices in an exclusive concert featuring compositions by Cezary Duchnowski, Mikołaj Laskowski, Aleksander Nowak (in the photo), Żaneta Rydzewska, Alessandro Baticci & Rafał Zalech. The ensemble will present new compositions created in the spirit of a “science of fiction”, meaning sounds that breathe Lem’s pioneering spirit.
Aleksander Nowak has collaborated with, among others, Olga Tokarczuk and Szczepan Twardoch, but this time he wrote the libretto himself. His monodrama Lo firgai. The Mask for soprano and chamber instrumental ensemble is based on the short story The Mask by Stanisław Lem. The work is sung in lojban – an artificial language invented in the second half of the twentieth century to enable communication between people and machines. The result is a one-part, several-episode composition, just over half an hour long.
The works by Mikołaj Laskowski, Aleksander Nowak and Żaneta Rydzewska were commissioned by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the programme pillar "Lem and thinking about the future".
More information: https://www.impulstanz.com/en/performances/2021/id1397/