SOPHIA GOIDINGER-KOCH and BARBARA RICCABONA stand on the violin and violoncello away from sweet prejudices and give this passion expression and fire with a contemporary repertoire. The duo thinks of concerts as a whole, creates transitions between the individual parts of the program and conveys contemporary music to the audience. This is how conversations arise between many elements of a concert. This can also be experienced at a concert by the duo at the impuls Festival in Graz in July, as Sylvia Wendrock found out in an interview.
Working performatively as an instrumentalist is, on the one hand, self-evident, because playing alone is a performance, but it means more: Is the staging of the works based on the attempt to depict an entirety of what is taking place, the instrument, for example, independently of of its sound function in terms of its content, its form?
Barbara Riccabona: The development is towards taking oneself further into the performance of a work presentation, which takes place anyway. We like to add acting scenes to explore the border areas between acting and instrumental art. The combination of both creates a new character of concerts, beautiful arches can be built and pro-activating stories can be told.
Are these performative elements specified in the scores?
Barbara Riccabona: With François Sarhan it is very clearly defined and musically notated completely. So you read it like a piece of music you want, but it goes way beyond that, you can move freely with the material and create a spontaneous impression. This makes it both an acting and a musical challenge.
“It’s very exciting to break down expectations.”
Can you find the repertoire or are you specifically looking for works that correspond to this idea? How are agreements made about what should be part of the repertoire?
Sophia Goidinger-Koch: strings&noise it’s been around for seven years, Barbara has been playing with me for two years. I’ve always had this idea that every new work should have an extra-musical element or a performative part. This expansion of conventional gaming is important to me and should also be the identity of this duo. We want to show that stringed instruments are not only beautiful and want to be. And what we can do as a string player on a stage. It’s very exciting to break down expectations.
Was that the founding idea of strings&noise?
Sophia Goidinger-Koch: The title deliberately refers to a 30-second piece by Peter Ablinger for violin and cello: “Two Strings and Noise”. In the image of a cross, the stringed instruments play a sound as a horizontal line, which at some point is crossed by a click with all frequencies in the vertical line. Originally with Maiken Beer as a founding colleague, we gave shape to this title in 2015 and found ourselves as a duo playing with two strings against certain disruptive components.
You are also this year impulses Festival invited to Graz. What are you gonna play there?
Barbara Riccabona: In addition to the small performance clips “situations” by François Sarhan already mentioned, we will perform a piece by Bernhard Lang that we have only been able to play very seldom so far due to the corona pandemic. There will also be a world premiere of Mauro Hertig’s play, which was rewritten for the duo.
Sophia Goidinger-Koch: He rewrote his duo for two saxophones for us when he heard us in Salzburg and we realized during a break that we were playing together impulses Festival would be in Graz.
Barbara Riccabona: That’s how things turn out. In addition, we each give a solo piece: I “Zeitenverwesung” by Judith Unterpertinger and Sophia “Doppelbelichtung” by Carola Bauckholt.
The repertoire for strings&noise is therefore developing relatively specifically into a unique selling point for the duo.
Barbara Riccabona: A lot of people come to us with a lot of creative energy. That’s what I like most about it. The ideas for that Crossroads Festival for example were really great. There were 32 applications for which it was necessary to explain why the composition was specifically for which ensemble. You can already feel exactly who comes along with which energies. This is how original, tailor-made pieces were born.
“The access actually works via the extra-musical elements.”
strings&noise want to increase interest in new music and make it accessible to untrained ears. Both of you also work as teachers. Is there a special access?
Barbara Riccabona: Access actually works via the extra-musical elements. This plus enables us to capture something that then also plays with humor or history or with pictures. Immediate access is just insanely difficult. But we so often have completely new audiences and then thank each other for being able to explore new acoustic fields. Our people alone are often the bridge and we acquire something more than the musical material.
You were selected for the program in 2020 NASOM – The New Austrian Sound of Music selected.
Sophia Goidinger-Koch: After being included in the catalog of Austria’s cultural forums distributed worldwide, artists are supported for two years with regard to performances outside of Austria. The ensembles have to work actively for this. It was a great pity that this support fell during the pandemic period for us. Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult to go back to the pre-pandemic times, as many organizers no longer exist or there is much less money available…
Barbara Riccabona: … or the queues are long, in which the musicians stand in front of the organizers.
You stand on your instruments and you stand on your instruments. How did violin and cello come about in the first place?
Sophia Goidinger-Koch: My aunt, ten years my senior, was a very big role model for me. Then there was no greater wish for me than a violin and when I unpacked it on my 6th birthday, I was still a bit hesitant to have to tackle this instrument now. My desire to study there was only decided when I was 18, because my time before that at the music high school in Innsbruck was accompanied by a very difficult teacher. When I was almost 21, I moved to Vienna, passed the entrance exam and from then on I enjoyed the best of company. It was clear to me relatively quickly that I wanted to go into new music, that came about through choral music, in Innsbruck I had experienced a convincingly progressive choir director, which I really liked. During my studies in Vienna I also took improvisation lessons from Gunter Schneider and Burkhard Stangl, which was eye-opening and broadened my horizons. And after my bachelor’s degree, I went on to do a master’s degree in contemporary music, which makes me very happy.
Barbara Riccabona: My path was super classical, including orchestral auditions and a large youth orchestra. I completed my bachelor’s degree at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. After that I did a two-year master’s degree in Germany with Conradin Brotbek and that’s when I encountered new music. As a personality, I could better find myself expressing myself in new music. The large crowd in the orchestra can be very intimidating, the extreme comparisons in classical music are horrible. Finding originality in expression in this situation seemed almost impossible to me. I’m very happy not to be sitting in the tutti in the orchestra now. In the New Music ensembles, everyone thinks straight and is involved with everything. It comes so much closer to what music is supposed to be. In the meantime, I also really enjoy making programs much more lively in my chamber music projects, breaking with many conventions and getting rid of ballast.
strings&noise (c) Maria Frodl
In other contexts you also build a bridge between old and new music. What does it do to a person to deal with a given canon in a competitive sense on a daily basis – in contrast to the search for an expression for the present?
Barbara Riccabona: One conditionally affects the other. The classical background is very helpful for playing new music. Above all, you can influence each other very much. Nevertheless, with New Music you need a lot more presence and mental alertness.
Sophia Goidinger-Koch: What always helps is a visual medium, a story. I was in Milan with my grandmother at the Expo and had played a solo program with Franco Donatoni and Luciano Berio in front of an audience in the Austria Pavilion. That was super difficult, my grandma just looked blank. Then we stood in a museum in front of a very abstract picture by a contemporary painter and my grandmother was enthusiastic as a passionate watercolor painter. I explained to her that this picture is the same as my music. I realized at that moment that humans can close their eyes but not their ears. It is hardly possible to ignore it, hearing goes much deeper than looking and is more immediate, one cannot defend oneself and decide. That’s why I think it’s so important to engage with the audience and have empathy and understanding for the fact that not everyone has the time and interest for it every day. As an artist, I also have the task of fully conveying my concerns.
Barbara Riccabona: A friend who attended the concert at Alexander J. Eberhard’s recently said to me: “Wow, what a step out of the comfort zone.” We take this step and enjoy it.
Thank you very much for the conversation.
Sylvia Wendrock (Talking Gold)
Term:
Saturday 8 July 2023
Cultural Summer Vienna
Congress Park
Werke vo Malin Bång, Alexander Kaiser, Kaija Saariaho, François Sarhan, Chatori Shimizu, Caitlin Smith
Tuesday, July 25, 2023 at 5 p.m
impulse festival, Graz
KUG . TIP . Theater im Palais
Leonhardstraße 15, 8010 Graz
Works by Carola Bauckholt, Mauro Hertig, Bernhard Lang, François Sarhan and Judith Unterpertinger
Links:
strings&noise
impulse 2023