Prague Offspring: Ensemble Modern I
Bread and salt: two masterpieces by Enno Poppe, Prague Offspring’s Composer-in-Residence 2027, and four world premieres of works commissioned by the Prague Spring.
Programme
- Enno Poppe: Brot
- New works commissioned by the Prague Spring : Marek Krajňák, Marie Nečasová, Daniel Skála, Jana Kmiťová
- Enno Poppe: Salz
Performers
- Ensemble Modern
- Enno Poppe – conductor
The three-year residency of the Frankfurt-based Ensemble Modern at Prague Offspring, a two-day contemporary music format held during the Prague Spring festival, will culminate in 2027 in an exceptional concentration of creative energy. Enno Poppe, one of the most striking and most distinctive figures on the current European music scene, will come to Prague to assume his role as Composer-in-Residence. His fascinating world of sound, in which precise and highly complex structures blend with irony, humour and an almost visceral vulgarity, will form the imaginary axis of the entire programme. In addition to pivotal works by Poppe, the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Holešovice will also come alive with music by five Czech and Slovak composers, who have written brand new works commissioned by the Prague Spring.
Bread and salt as the concert programme
Can music in the hands of a composer rise like dough and taste like salt? A look at the programme for the first concert might prompt us to ask questions like this. The concert will open with Poppe’s composition Brot (Bread) – a short piece for French horn, trumpet, trombone, piano and percussion, whose soundscape resembles a free jazz session. In reality, however, it is based on music from Poppe’s opera Arbeit Nahrung Wohnung (Work Food Lodging), which deconstructs the story of Robinson Crusoe and, rather than focusing on the practicalities of surviving on a desert island, examines the psychological processes in Robinson’s head.
Poppe wrote Salz (Salt) in 2005 as a commission from the Salzburg Festival and it remains one of his most frequently performed pieces. This masterful study of gradation, in which he “took his microscope and put things under it that were actually too big”, is formed of 125 “increases”, carefully composed gradational waves, which progressively overwhelm us and conjure up impressions oscillating between predictability and chaos. The wall of sound that rushes at us is then underscored by the almost inhuman sound of a microtonal Hammond organ. “Salt is essential to our lives. But at sea, we die of thirst,” Poppe states in a commentary on his work.
Four world premieres
In the first concert Poppe will assume his role as conductor, channelling his energies into four new works commissioned by the festival. Three shorter pieces will be written by the following composers: Marek Krajiňák, who attracted attention with his composition Nactureca during the Reading Lessons workshop in 2026; Marie Nečasová, a talented composer and harpsichordist with experience in Austria, France and the Netherlands; and Daniel Skála who, as one of the most sought-after cimbalom players on the scene today, appears regularly with Ensemble Modern, yet he is collaborating with them here for the first time as a composer. A longer and more substantial piece will be written by Jana Kmiťová, an established Slovak composer living in Vienna, whose music, with its distinctive aesthetic and characteristic poetic sound, is performed by such ensembles as Klangforum Wien, the Arditti Quartet and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; her works are also presented at various music festivals, including Wien Modern, Warsaw Autumn and the Munich Biennale.
