OÖ KulturEXPO

What better way to start the anniversary year than with the Bruckner Orchester Linz’s New Year’s Concert at the Brucknerhaus under Markus Poschner. With works by Anton Bruckner and birthday dances by other jubilant composers such as Bedřich Smetana (200th birthday and 140th death anniversary), Leoš Janáček (170th birthday), Charles Ives (150th birthday and 70th death anniversary) and Arnold Schönberg (150th birthday), the „Super Cultural Year 2024“ was greeted in style. As part of the program, Bruckner’s „Locus iste“, a world hit of choral literature, was sung and performed: Bruckner unites.

To mark the anniversary year, Radio FRO’s 65+ department provided its listeners with exciting monthly reports on Anton Bruckner. The genius loci was illuminated from all perspectives: From the musical and literary, the satirical and anecdotal as well as the artistic. All programs can be found on CBA.

Talking and Bruckner bring people together: Whether in Kirchdorf, Wels, Schwanenstadt, Steyr, Windhaag or elsewhere – throughout the anniversary year, the Bruckner Salon was on the road throughout Upper Austria. Norbert Trawöger, the artistic director of the UOÖ KulturEXPO, held on-site salon discussions about Bruckner, his music, God, the world and our present day. The guests were experts, Bruckner connoisseurs and enthusiasts.

In February, a special and delicate performance practice of Bruckner’s works was the focus of the sound installation „Dark Matter“ by Lucas Norer. During the Nazi era, the Vienna Konzerthaus was completely darkened for so-called dark concerts and Bruckner’s music was promoted as a pseudo-religious, transcendent experience in the context of Nazi ideology. In reference to the premiere of the dark concerts 85 years ago, „Dark Matter“ transformed the Minoritenkirche in Wels into a space/sound setting. A reworking of Bruckner’s 7th Symphony was performed. The staging and sound aesthetics were reminiscent of LaMonte Young’s happenings of the 1960s. A reinterpretation of Bruckner’s music in the context of the dark concerts, which presented his music in a completely new way and freed it from its Nazi references.

From February to November, Peter Androsch’s sound installation „Klangwald“ was played in the Kürnberg forest. In a clearing away from the hustle and bustle, Bruckner’s symphonies were stretched out 666 times and embedded in the sounds of the surroundings. Visitors were invited to immerse themselves in the sound continuum and slow down. Impressions and thoughts about the installation could be recorded in a guest book.

„Close your eyes. Listen. Listen to yourself. Beautiful! Thank you!“

The traveling exhibition „For Theresia. Anton Bruckner:A HerStory“ toured Upper Austria from March to September and was dedicated to ten women who played a special role in Anton Bruckner’s life. Special highlights were the opening on the occasion of International Women’s Day at the Brucknerhaus Linz and the reprise in St. Mary’s Cathedral at the end of the exhibition. In the run-up to the exhibition, Linz artist Zoe Goldstein collected information for over a year to compile these biographies. The examination of old portraits and biographies made it possible to question the role of women in society then and now. The title of the project refers to Anton Bruckner’s mother Theresia Bruckner, who was an important female constant in his life.

As part of „Wagner cycles Bruckner“, composer and musician David Wagner collected audio donations of short motifs from the 9 Bruckner symphonies on video from residents of Bruckner streets, alleyways and squares throughout Upper Austria. Just like Anton Bruckner in his day, David Wagner also moved around the country completely unmotorized, namely by bicycle. Between April and July, 72 destinations were visited from Altheim to Wolfern. Over the summer, the collected footage was edited in the studio and two films were created. The first is a 9-minute compilation, which shows a representative cross-section of Bruckner’s symphonic oeuvre and in which a colorful mix of people from all over the province took part. Secondly, a video in which the journey, getting to know each other, any rehearsals and various „making of“ scenes were captured on video. The two videos were presented at the grand finale of the Bruckner Year 2024 at ALFA Laakirchen at the end of November 2024.

With „Bruckner on Tour_Plopp! Art vending machine“, artist Helene Huemer gave the vending machine, from which chewing gum, gumballs or even snacks are traditionally taken, a new purpose by filling it with Bruckner sculptures, medals, scrolls or even comics. The resulting ARTvendor then went on tour throughout Upper Austria and beyond and demanded to be filled again and again by creative people. In order to accomplish this, there was a hands-on table where all participants could model, stamp, draw and write poetry. For everyone else, it was simply a case of inserting a 2 euro coin, spinning it and, bang! a surprise, such as original works of art by regional and international artists or all participants, would roll out.

„The Fantastic“, the contribution of the Linz University of Art under the direction of Siegfried A. Fruhauf and Jutta Strohmaier, brought the work of Anton Bruckner closer to a young audience. Using analog, digital and performative interpretations, montages and transformations, pop-cultural forms and social media phenomena were reflected upon and relationships to them were established. This resulted in autonomous explorations of Bruckner’s work, which were presented in a performative screening at Moviemento as a warm-up event for the Crossing Europe Film Festival Linz.

The installation by artist Clemens Bauder combined organ playing and an ensemble of newly built playground equipment to create a collective musical instrument in public space. Different organ pipes were operated by swinging and seesawing together – a sound space unfolded on the organ playground that made Anton Bruckner audible and tangible in both an abstract and playful way. The SCHORGEL travelled throughout Upper Austria and beyond as part of the OÖ KulturEXPO. Based on the inspirational instrument, the organ, there were also different registers. Different instruments were used depending on the location and nature of the playground.

From 3 May to 27 October, around 45,000 visitors took the opportunity to explore the exhibition „HOW IT ALL BEGAN. BRUCKNER’S VISIONS“ to trace the footsteps that Anton Bruckner left behind at St Florian’s Monastery. Using original documents and numerous audio stations, the exhibition traced the paths Bruckner travelled in the monastery during his life. Three monumental pavilions in the courtyard of the monastery complemented the programme, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in Bruckner’s world with multimedia presentations.
On the Super Culture Family Sundays, the world of Anton Bruckner was also brought closer to young visitors to the exhibition in a playful and creative way.

For the art project „Brucknersticken“ by Cécile Belmont, people in different places and situations in Upper Austria and beyond were invited to each embroider a fragment of Anton Bruckner’s score of the unfinished 9th Symphony. During the Bruckner Year, Brucknersticken created connections between people and made Bruckner’s work accessible through collective action. The participatory project promoted community and individuality by uniting art and conversation in open, diverse gatherings. On November 30, the completed project was presented as part of the Bruckner Year Finale in Laakirchen. A special highlight was the interlude by cellist Annekatrin Flick, who brilliantly set the embroidered score to music.

In Compositional transfer inbodied ‘I ANTON’, the contemporary performance company SILK Fluegge explored Anton Bruckner’s compositions in a powerful and energetic way. To this end, they worked on a transfer method that could be used to bring musical structures from the time filled with sounds into the space filled with movement. This performance therefore did not merely dance to the music or its mood, but rather repeated its forms in the physical realm in order to be able to read Bruckner himself in the body. In this way, an attempt was even made to dance with Anton by means of the resulting movements.

The band NoFive made another spectacular contribution to the Bruckner Year. This musical fusion of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony and the White Stripes‘ iconic ‘Seven Nation Army’ riff unfolded as a powerful soundscape that oscillated between high and pop culture. A mighty wall of guitar amps amplified the 12-piece ensemble, which, after performances at ABC Ansfelden, Open Air Ottensheim, the Ars Electronica Opening at the Mariendom and FC Blau-Weiß-Stadion Linz, ended its tour with a brilliant finale at Schlachthof Wels.

Bruckner in the club scene? Of course! Together with the Linz collective Die Hydra, Transitheart Productions by Ilona Roth has devised Bruckner’s Beats, rearranging pieces by Bruckner with electronic remixes. At three events in the Filialkirche in Gmunden, in the Stadtpfarrkirche Urfahr St. Josef/Grüner Anker and in the Sonnenstein Loft in Linz, Anton Bruckner was made danceable and tangible with a mix of sound installation, performance, art happening and intervention.

With the ‘BRUC.KiNdER.SPIEL’ project, Nina Fountedakis followed in Anton Bruckner’s footsteps – initially in spatial terms. Three schools in Ansfelden, Linz and Vienna became venues where young people explored the musical language of the two-hundred-year-old Mr Bruckner. Pictures were painted, collages made and sounds transformed into words and poetry. The resulting works were presented in an exhibition at the Anton Bruckner Centrum Ansfelden.

On 7 July 2024, the coda from Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, also known as ‘The Romantic’, was performed as part of Joachim Eckl’s HEIM.ART® project ‘Melodic Currents’. Not as usual, however, but based on a score by the artist Michael Pisaro-Liu. He arranged the moving and stirring piece of music for the 90 brass players under the musical direction of Wolfgang Panholzer. Despite the rainy weather, they made the Danube between Neufelden and in front of the Brucknerhaus Linz resound with the sounds of Bruckner. The river and barrages became a listening space for around 40 minutes each.

At the age of 17, Anton Bruckner became a school assistant in Windhaag near Freistadt, enjoyed freedom, had many tasks and hardships. At his workplace in Windhaag, the old school, which was turned into a Bruckner learning and memorial site at the instigation of owner Irmgard Quass, the BRUCKNER17 exhibition and mediation room was officially opened on 1 September in the presence of Governor Thomas Stelzer.

With „BruQner – The Sound of Entanglement“, Anton Bruckner was transported into the realm of quantum physics. In the Mariendom, a second quantum revolution was launched as a musical spectacle on the occasion of the Ars Electronica Opening. Lasers, mirrors, polarizers, non-linear crystals – an experimental set-up from the high-tech laboratory. Entangled photons – the quanta of light – became conductors and directed Bruckner’s Perger Prelude in a way that no human being in the world could. Two resounding church organs played live and filled the spectacular sound space of the cathedral. BruQner presented a new view of our reality – a world premiere!

US artist Bill Fontana developed a sound sculpture as an artistic statement on the consequences of climate change. Fontana used sensors to make the vibrations of the bells of Notre Dame in Paris, which had fallen silent after the fire in 2019, audible, transmitted the sounds to the ice caves on the Dachstein and mirrored them as if in a duet with the live sounds of the melting glacier. This site-specific duet formed the basis for a ‘sound bridge’ that was transmitted to exhibition venues in Europe and beyond, supplemented by a video work that documents the melting of the Dachstein glacier in the same way. To mark the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner’s birth, the sound installation was broadcast live from the ice caves on the Dachstein to St Mary’s Cathedral in Linz as part of the Ars Electronica Festival.

The Parzival Cathedral in the Dachstein ice caves is a place that harbours an invaluable secret, as Anton Bruckner’s composition ‘Locus iste’ says: a secret that asks us humans how we want to live with nature in the future. In addition, the OÖ KulturEXPO Anton Bruckner 2024, in cooperation with the Goiserer Musiktage, commissioned a composition from young composers on this topic. The work was premiered as part of the European Capital of Culture 2024 at the Goiserer Musiktage at the Glasfügel in the ice caves.

On September 4, 2024, Anton Bruckner was celebrated with a 24-hour birthday party in every corner of the country. The composer was celebrated in style with festive concerts by the Bruckner Orchester Linz in St. Florian and the Cleveland Orchestra in Ansfelden as well as numerous projects throughout Upper Austria. You can find a detailed review of the entire day here.

The WhatsAB installation opened at the OÖ Kunstverein on September 5. The project by Rainer Zendron and Bernd Preinfalk, which began in fall 2023 and spring 2024 with recordings in public spaces at Bruckner-related locations, was continued at the OÖ Kunstverein as a continuous-repetitive media installation: 22 musicians were individually recorded by a film team as they performed their respective orchestral parts from an arrangement of Bruckner’s Andante in E minor from the 3 orchestral pieces (WAB 97). There were 22 music stands distributed throughout the exhibition space. On each of these desks was a screen plus a loudspeaker; the monitors showed the individual musicians, who were now reunited as a body of sound, interpreting Bruckner’s Andante. Conductor Sigurd Hennemann led the „virtual“ orchestra on a large screen. Visitors were able to move between the music stands at will.

Seven young composers and their works were the focus of the presentation concert on October 17, 2024 in the Mariendom. It was the finale of the composition workshop „Composing in HIMMLISCHER HÖHE“, a project to mark 100 years of St. Mary’s Cathedral and 200 years of Anton Bruckner. The composers Lara Bäucker, Jakob Böttcher, Emma Ebmeyer, Tina Geroldinger, Sarah Proske, Sara Stevanović and Anna Wielend found inspiration for their polyphonic vocal works based on biblical texts, which were premiered by Cantando Admont at a height of 68 meters – in the Türmerstube of St. Mary’s Cathedral. Before the concert, visitors were able to find out more about the project and get to know the young artists during an introduction. A review of the concert with information on the works and further  photos can be found here (in German)

Christine Hinterkörner alias CRYSTN HUNT AKRON resurrected Anton Bruckner using AI in her performance „Hallucination – Anton Bruckner’s Phantasmagoria“. Nowhere could this have worked better than in a church. On 24 October, the Parish Chruch Urfahr St. Josef/Grüner Anker became the venue for the new production of Anton Bruckner’s 1868 work „Erinnerung“ (Remembrance). CRYSTN HUNT AKRON and their partners, Chris Noelle and Ali Nikrang, breathed new life into the work using AI, live music, performance, visualization and light. The art made use of artificial intelligence: it generated a piece that represented a kind of memory of „memory“ and was rearranged and remixed. In this project, the entire space of the church was visually and acoustically incorporated and auratically transformed. The result was a musical-visual journey from classical to avant-garde to experimental.