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Olga Neuwirth
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Olga Neuwirth
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Olga Neuwirth (Austrian German: [ˈɔlɡa ˈnɔʏvɪrt]; born 4 August 1968) is an Austrian contemporary classical composer, visual artist and author. She is famed especially for her operas and music theater works, many of which have treated sociopolitical themes. She has emphasized an open-ended, interdisciplinary approach in her work, collaborating frequently with Elfriede Jelinek, exploiting live electronics, and incorporating video. In her opera Lost Highway, she adapted David Lynch's surrealist film with the same name. She has also written music for historic and contemporary films. Luigi Nono has inspired her both musically and politically.

Key Information

Biography

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Youth

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Neuwirth was born in Graz, the daughter of Griseldis Neuwirth and pianist Harald Neuwirth. She is the niece of Gösta Neuwirth and the sister of sculptor Flora Neuwirth.[1][2] As a child at the age of seven, Neuwirth began lessons on the trumpet but was forced to abandon her original plans to study trumpet after an accident that left her with a jaw injury.[3]

Studies and formative experiences

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As a high school student, Neuwirth took part in composition workshops with Hans Werner Henze and Gerd Kühr.[2] At the age of 16, she met writer Elfriede Jelinek, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the two artists have since enjoyed an artistically "fruitful collaboration".[4][5] The then-17-year-old composer named her first commissioned composition Die gelbe Kuh tanzt Ragtime.[6] The work was composed for the opening of the steirischer herbst festival in 1985.[7]

In 1985/86, she studied music and art at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with Elinor Armer. She also studied painting and film at the San Francisco Art College.[8] She continued her studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna[8] under Erich Urbanner while studying at the Institute for Composition and Electroacoustics. Her master's thesis was written on the film score of Alain Resnais's L'Amour à mort.

In 1993/94 she studied with Tristan Murail and worked at IRCAM, producing such works as ...?risonanze!... for viola d'amore. She received significant inspiration in this period from Adriana Hölszky (Nicht beirren lassen! Weitermachen!)[5] and Luigi Nono, who had similarly radical politics, and who she said was a strong influence in her life.[9][10]

Adulthood and advocacy

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Neuwirth has served as a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna since 2021.[11] She is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts,[12] the Academy of Arts (Berlin)[13] and the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.[14]

Neuwirth has long reflected on the everyday life of professional composers, especially women composers, who are marginalized within contemporary art circles. She has conveyed her thoughts on this issue in a number of texts. She frequently expresses herself on political issues more broadly, calling for vigilance in the face of social and political changes (for example, with a speech in front of the Vienna State Opera at a mass protest held on 19 September 2000, entitled "I will not be yodeled out of existence").[15]

Music

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Neuwirth has created several full-length music theatre works, including the video opera Lost Highway (2003), based on David Lynch's film; Bählamms Fest (1993/1997), drawing on the work of Leonora Carrington; The Outcast, referencing Herman Melville; and American Lulu, her free adaptation of Alban Berg's Lulu. She collaborated with Elfriede Jelinek on the opera Bählamms Fest.

Neuwirth's opera of David Lynch's film Lost Highway incorporates both live and pre-recorded audio and visual feeds, alongside other electronics. Its premiere took place in Graz in 2003, performed by the Klangforum Wien with the electronics realized at the Institut für Elektronische Musik (IEM). The American premiere of the opera took place at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and featured further performances at Columbia University's Miller Theatre in New York City, produced by Oberlin Conservatory and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. The surround-sound recording released by Kairos was awarded the Diapason d'Or. The UK premiere took place at the Young Vic in London in April 2008, in a co-production with the English National Opera, directed by Diane Paulus and conducted by Baldur Brönnimann.

Neuwirth's opera Orlando, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, is the first full-length opera composed by a woman and commissioned by the Vienna State Opera to be performed in Vienna. The world premiere took place on 8 December 2019.[16][17] It was later selected as the world premiere of the year in an international critics' poll conducted by the trade journal Opernwelt.

She also has numerous chamber music works released on the Kairos label.

Style

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Neuwirth's original compositional style is characterized by the use of diverse compositional techniques and hybrid sound materials, with a constant questioning of artistic and sociopolitical norms. She refers to an "art in-between".[18] Stefan Drees remarked:[19]

The catastrophic, the plunge into unfamiliar regions with all the attendant consequences, is therefore a fundamental mood of her compositions, winding like a red thread through her works.

Openness

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Usually assigned to the category of contemporary classical music, her works since the late 1980s have sought to transcend the genre restrictions imposed by the music business. She has drawn from a range of sources for inspiration, including "art, architecture, literature and music, intellectual history, psychology, natural science, and everyday reality".[4] Her aim has been to create works that are both distinctive and multidimensional. For example, in Le Encantadas o le avventure nel mare delle meraviglie (2014), Neuwirth has been described as creating a "fictional adventure novel through multiple spatial sound effects", drawing on Herman Melville's novella The Encantadas (1894) and Luigi Nono's sound world, especially that of his 1984 Prometeo.[20] The starting point of this composition is an acoustical survey (Neuwirth: "preservation of acoustic heritage"[20]) of the Chiesa San Lorenzo in Venice.

In the 1990s, Neuwirth began crossing genre boundaries between theatrical drama, opera, radio drama, performance art and video. She has expressed interest in a broad spectrum of stimuli and possibilities of expression. This has been reflected in the titles of her works, for example in The Outcast, a musicstallation-theater with video.[21]

Innovative means

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Neuwirth often set herself the goal of breaking up established forms of concert presentation in order to arrive at a "fluid form".[18] For example, during the breaks in her two "portrait concerts" at the 1998 Salzburg Festival, the sound of wind-up toy instruments on a reinforced metal plate was transmitted into the concert hall's auditorium by means of several loudspeakers, with visuals projected live onto a screen, creating an immersive listening experience. In addition, "prompt texts" for the audience's behavior, written by Jelinek, were inserted into the work.

Neuwirth's works have expanded from the concert hall into public spaces, for example in Talking Houses (1996), a sound installation for shops along the main square of Deutschlandsberg, Austria (created jointly with Hans Hoffer), and in the sound installation ...le temps désechanté ... ou dialogue aux enfers (2005) at the Place Igor Stravinsky in Paris (near the Stravinsky Fountain). For this latter work, commissioned in 2005 by IRCAM Paris, a motion-capture camera was used to allow electroacoustic sounds to interact with the streams of people moving through the square. As the number of passers-by rose, a musical transformation was set in motion. However, the Paris police ultimately ordered the sound installation to be shut down.

Interdisciplinary collaboration

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Neuwirth frequently collaborates with artists working in other disciplines or mediums, such as architect Peter Zumthor (Bregenz 2017),[22] the New York architects of Asymptote Architecture (ZKM 2017), and the computer music and audio/acoustics research artist Markus Noisternig. She worked with video artist Tal Rosner to create the interactive installation Disenchanted Island[21] at Centre Pompidou in Paris (2016).

She is interested in the relationship between music and visual art and has continually expanded the scope of her activities by writing texts and film scripts, producing short films, and organizing performances and photo series. In 2007, she participated in the documenta 12 contemporary art exhibition, for which she produced a sound/film installation.[23] She recently[when?] collaborated with French installation, video, and conceptual artist Dominique Gonzales-Foerster on the multimedia installation ...ce qui arrive.…[24]

Film scores

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Olga Neuwirth has also composed a number of film scores, including music for the silent films Symphonie diagonale (1924), Maudite soit la Guerre (1914) and City Without Jews (1924), as well as soundtracks to films by Kurt Mayer and Josef Dabernig. The composer also wrote music for the feature films Das Vaterspiel by director Michael Glawogger, which was screened at the Berlinale film festival in 2009, and Ich seh, Ich seh by directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, which premiered in 2014 at the Venice International Film Festival.

Reception

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Commissions and music residencies

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Neuwirth has received commissions from international institutions including Carnegie Hall, the Lucerne Festival, the Salzburg Festival, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Vienna State Opera and many others. She was composer in residence at the Salzburg Festival in 1999, the Koninklijk Filharmonisch Orkest van Vlaanderen in Antwerp in 2000, the Lucerne Festival in both 2002 and 2016, the Festival d'Automne in 2011, and the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Wiener Konzerthaus in 2019.

Performing relationships

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Her works have been performed by the conductors Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Daniel Harding, Matthias Pintscher, Valerij Gergjev, Susanna Mälkki, François-Xavier Roth and Alan Gilbert, among others. Leading orchestras and ensembles have included Neuwirth's compositions in their programs, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berliner Philharmoniker, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Ensemble Modern, the ICE Ensemble, the Talea Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Musikfabrik, the Phace Ensemble and the Arditti Quartet.

Numerous soloists, including Hakan Hardenberger, Antoine Tamestit, Thomas Larcher, Jochen Kowalski, Robyn Schulkowsky, Marino Formenti, Claire Chase and Andrew Watts have participated in performances of Neuwirth's works.

Awards

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Selected works

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Most of Neuwirth's works have been published by Ricordi[8] and Boosey & Hawkes:[40]

Stage works

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  • Körperliche Veränderungen and Der Wald (1989/1990), two operas with Elfriede Jelinek
  • Bählamms Fest (1997/98), music theatre in thirteen pictures after the work of Leonora Carrington, with Elfriede Jelinek
  • Lost Highway (2002–2003), opera based on David Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway
  • American Lulu (2006–2011), free adaptation of Berg's Lulu
  • The Outcast – Homage to Herman Melville (2009–2011), a "musicstallation theatre" with video, libretto by Barry Gifford and Olga Neuwirth, and monologues for Old Melville by Anna Mitgutsch
  • Kloing! and A songplay in 9 fits, Hommage à Klaus Nomi (2011), a music-theatre evening
  • Orlando (2019), opera based on Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography, commissioned by Wiener Staatsoper
  • Monster's Paradise (2026), satire/horror opera about a king-president in an oval office; libretto by Elfriede Jelinek

Concertos (or soloist and orchestra)

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  • Sans soleil (1994) for two ondes martenot, orchestra, and live-electronics
  • Photophorus (1997) for two E-Guitars and orchestra
  • locus...doublure...solus (2001) for piano and orchestra (version for orchestra)
  • Zefiro aleggia...nell´infinito... (2004) for bassoon and orchestra
  • … miramondo multiplo … (2006) for trumpet and orchestra
  • Remnants of songs...an Amphigory (2009) for viola and orchestra
  • Trurliade – Zone Zero (2016) for percussion and orchestra
  • Zones of Blue (2026), Rhapsody for clarinet and orchestra[41][42]

Orchestra

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  • Clinamen / Nodus (1999)
  • anaptyxis (2000)
  • Masaot/Clocks without Hands (2013)
  • Keyframes for a Hippogriff − Musical Calligrams in memoriam Hester Diamond (2019) for orchestra, countertenor and boys´ choir

Mixed ensemble

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  • Elfi und Andi (1997) for speaker, e-guitar, double bass, bass clarinet, saxophone and two playback-CDs (voice from tape: Marianne Hoppe). With texts by Elfriede Jelinek
  • The Long Rain A video opera with surround-screens (1999/2000) for 4 soloists, 4 ensemble groups, live-electronic, after a story by Ray Bradbury
  • Construction in space (2000) for 4 soloists, 4 ensemble groups and live-electronic
  • Hommage à Klaus Nomi (2009) Chamber orchestra version
  • Ishmaela's White World (2012)
  • Eleanor (2014/2015) for a female blues singer, drum-kit-player, ensemble and samples
  • Aello – ballet mécanomorphe (2016/2017) for flute, 2 trumpets, strings, synthesizer and typewriter

Chamber music

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  • Akroate Hadal (1995) for string quartet
  • Ondate II (1998) for two bass clarinets
  • Hommage à Klaus Nomi (1998) for countertenor and small ensemble
  • voluta / sospeso (1999) for basset horn, clarinet, violin, violoncello, percussion and piano
  • ...ad auras... in memoriam H. (1999)
  • settori (1999) for string quartet
  • Zwei Räthsel von W.A.M. (1999) Text: W. A. Mozart, Leopold Mozart; for coloratura soprano, alto, viola, cello, cymbals, tape, and live electronics[43]
  • ... ce qui arrive ... (with a interactive live video by Dominique Gonzales-Foerster) (2003/2004) for 2 groups, samples and live-electronic after Paul Auster
  • In Nacht und Eis (2006) for bassoon, cello with ringmodulator
  • Kloing! (2007) for computer-aided CEUS-piano and interactive live video
  • Hommage à Klaus Nomi (2009) for chamber orchestra
  • in the realms of the unreal (2009) for string quartet
  • Quasare / Pulsare II (2017) for violin, cello and piano
  • CoronAtion Cycle (2020) CoronAtion IV/Version I, a 9-hours-long live sound installation for Robyn Schulkowsky and Joey Baron

Solo works

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  • Marsyas (2003–2004, revised 2006) for piano
  • Trurl-Tichy-Tinkle (2016) for piano

See also

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References

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Further reading

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Olga Neuwirth

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Olga Neuwirth is an Austrian composer known for her pioneering interdisciplinary works in contemporary classical music, particularly her operas and music theater pieces that fuse live musicians with live electronics, video projections, and multimedia elements to create immersive audiovisual experiences. Born in Graz in 1968, she studied composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and San Francisco Art College, with additional training in painting and film, and private studies under composers Adriana Hölszky, Tristan Murail, and Luigi Nono. Her music draws from diverse sources including literature, visual arts, natural sciences, film, architecture, and popular culture, often addressing themes of identity, gender, memory, power, social discrimination, and existential conditions through layered, heterogeneous sound worlds and subtle black humor. Neuwirth first gained international recognition in 1991 at age 22 with two short operas based on texts by Elfriede Jelinek premiered at the Wiener Festwochen, marking the beginning of her long-standing collaboration with the author. Her notable works include the operas Lost Highway (after David Lynch), American Lulu (a reworking of Alban Berg’s Lulu), Bählamms Fest (after Leonora Carrington), and Orlando (after Virginia Woolf), as well as orchestral pieces such as Clinamen/Nodus, Masaot/Clocks without Hands, and multimedia works like Le Encantadas. Her compositions have been commissioned and performed by leading orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and London Symphony Orchestra, and presented at major festivals such as Salzburg, Lucerne, Donaueschingen, and the BBC Proms. She has received numerous honors, including the Grand Austrian State Prize for Music in 2010 (the youngest recipient and first woman in the category), the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 2022 for Orlando, the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2021, and the Robert Schumann Prize in 2020. Neuwirth has also served as composer-in-residence at institutions such as the Lucerne Festival and created works for major venues including the Vienna State Opera, where Orlando marked the first opera commission by a woman in the theater’s history. In addition to composing, she is a professor of composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and is known for her active engagement in cultural and socio-political discourse through public speeches and writings.

Early Life and Education

Family Background and Childhood

Olga Neuwirth was born on 4 August 1968 in Graz, Austria. She grew up in a family deeply rooted in music in Graz, where her father, Harald Neuwirth, was a renowned jazz pianist. She is also the niece of the composer and musicologist Gösta Neuwirth. As the daughter of a prominent jazz musician in Graz, Neuwirth experienced early exposure to music within her family environment, including listening to her father's playing and attending concerts with her parents, which immersed her in jazz and other musical forms from a young age. This musical heritage in a family of musicians laid the foundation for her artistic inclinations.

Trumpet Training and Career-Altering Accident

Olga Neuwirth initially trained as a trumpeter and aspired to a career as a jazz musician. A serious car accident at the age of 15 shattered her jaw and ended her ability to play the trumpet, forcing a pivot from performance. She was subsequently inspired by a composition workshop with Hans Werner Henze, which prompted her to begin composing as a means of processing the trauma and redirecting her musical path.

Studies in San Francisco and Vienna

In 1985–1986, Olga Neuwirth studied composition and music theory at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under Elinor Armer while simultaneously taking courses in painting and film at the San Francisco Art Institute. This period marked her initial immersion in interdisciplinary artistic practices, combining musical training with visual and cinematic elements. Returning to Austria in 1987, she pursued composition studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna with Erich Urbanner through 1993, earning her diploma and completing a master's thesis titled “On the use of film music in L’amour à mort by Alain Resnais.” During these years, she also engaged in electroacoustic music studies at the Vienna Institute of Electroacoustic Music. She drew important creative impulses from contact with composers Adriana Hölszky, Luigi Nono, and Tristan Murail. In 1993–1994, Neuwirth continued her training in Paris, studying with Tristan Murail and participating in the Stage d’informatique musicale workshop at IRCAM.

Career

Early Compositions and First Recognition

Neuwirth's compositional career began with her first commissioned work, Die gelbe Kuh tanzt Ragtime (full title Der rosarote Zwerg auf dem Weg nach Garanas oder Die gelbe Kuh tanzt Ragtime), which premiered at the steirischer herbst festival in 1985 when she was 17 years old. Commissioned by Forum Stadtpark in Graz, the piece reflected her early creative impulses in a semi-scenic format following her shift from trumpet performance to composition. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Neuwirth initiated a significant collaboration with writer Elfriede Jelinek that would shape her early output. This partnership produced short theater pieces and mini-operas, including Der Wald – ein tönendes Fastfoodgericht (1989–1990) and Körperliche Veränderungen (1990–1991), composed when Neuwirth was around 22. These satirical "Handtelleropern" (palm-of-the-hand operas) incorporated unconventional elements such as live electronics—including the amplified sound of a crushed Coca-Cola can—and toy instruments alongside unusual character constellations. The two works were initially scheduled for performance in 1990 but were cancelled before being premiered to international attention at the Wiener Festwochen in 1991. These premieres marked Neuwirth's first major recognition, establishing her as an innovative voice in contemporary music theater at the age of 22 and drawing notice for her integration of media, electronics, and dramatic text.

Breakthrough in Music Theater

In the early 1990s, Olga Neuwirth pioneered interdisciplinary music theater by systematically integrating live electronics, video projection, surround sound concepts, and intermedial elements, creating audio-visual experiences that fused live musicians, electronics, and video at a time when such approaches encountered strong resistance in contemporary classical music. Building on her initial collaborations with Elfriede Jelinek in 1991, Neuwirth expanded these innovations into more ambitious, immersive formats that blurred boundaries between acoustic and electronic sources, real and synthetic sounds, and traditional performance disciplines. Her work drew from multiple aesthetic fields including film, literature, visual arts, architecture, and science to produce uncategorizable, three-dimensional acoustic-visual spaces. This breakthrough crystallized in Bählamms Fest (The Feast of the Lambs), her first full-length intermedia music theater piece, conceived in 1992–1993 and substantially composed from 1993–1998. With a libretto by Elfriede Jelinek adapted from Leonora Carrington's surrealist play Baa-Lamb’s Holiday, the work premiered on June 19, 1999, at the Wiener Festwochen as a commission from the Vienna Festival. Described as an "animation opera" in thirteen tableaux, it explores themes of patriarchal violence, bourgeois entrapment, and boundary dissolution between human/animal and reality/fiction through a sadistic family narrative set in an isolated, dilapidated house. Bählamms Fest exemplifies Neuwirth's pioneering audiovisual composition in the 1990s with its 24-channel surround sound concept, video projection and morphing, live electronics applied to three instruments and female voice, and real-time sound processing including voice morphing from countertenor to animal sounds. The piece employs a diverse instrumental palette—featuring theremin, detuned viola d’amore, electric guitar, glass harmonica, toy instruments, and synthesizers—alongside multimedia elements such as lighting and video to create a pandaemonic sound-space with fragmented quotations, noises, and blurred natural/synthetic textures. These innovations, developed through collaboration with writers like Jelinek and integration of influences from visual arts and film, established Neuwirth's signature style of immersive, boundary-challenging music theater that anticipated later developments in intermedial performance.

International Prominence and Major Commissions

In the late 1990s and 2000s, Olga Neuwirth achieved growing international recognition through residencies and portrait concerts at major European festivals. She was featured in two portrait concerts at the Salzburg Festival in 1998 as part of the Next Generation series. She later served as Composer in Residence at the Lucerne Festival in 2002 and again in 2016, where her works were prominently performed and new pieces received their premieres. In 2019, she was a focus composer at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. Neuwirth has received high-profile commissions from leading institutions including the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, Carnegie Hall, and Vienna State Opera. Her orchestral piece Masaot/Clocks without Hands was co-commissioned for the Vienna Philharmonic and received its US premiere at Carnegie Hall. The Vienna State Opera commissioned her opera Orlando, which premiered there in 2019, marking the first such commission to a woman in the house's 150-year history. Her compositions have been performed by major orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic and Berliner Philharmoniker, often under conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Péter Eötvös, and others. Since autumn 2021, Neuwirth has served as professor of composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

Notable Works

Operas and Music Theater Pieces

Olga Neuwirth has established herself as a leading figure in contemporary opera and music theater through works that fuse acoustic music with electronics, video projections, and literary or cinematic adaptations, often challenging traditional genre boundaries. Her early collaborations with Elfriede Jelinek produced short operas that gained international recognition starting in 1991 and served as precursors to her more expansive stage pieces. Her first full-length music theater work, Bählamms Fest (1997–1998), features a libretto by Jelinek after Leonora Carrington and received its premiere in 1999 at the Vienna Festival. This was followed by Lost Highway (2002–2003), a video opera based on David Lynch's film of the same name, which premiered on October 31, 2003, at the Helmut-List-Halle in Graz with Klangforum Wien conducted by Johannes Kalitzke and directed by Joachim Schlömer. American Lulu (2006–2012), a re-interpretation and completion of Alban Berg's unfinished opera Lulu transposed to an American context, premiered in 2012. The Outcast – Homage to Herman Melville (2009–2011, revised 2012), described as a musicstallation-theater piece drawing on Melville's life and writings, also premiered in 2012. Orlando (2017–2019), a full-length opera subtitled "a fictional musical biography" after Virginia Woolf's novel, with libretto co-written by Catherine Filloux and Olga Neuwirth, received its world premiere on December 8, 2019, at the Vienna State Opera. This production marked the first time an opera by a female composer was premiered at the Vienna State Opera.

Orchestral, Concerto, and Chamber Works

Olga Neuwirth's orchestral, concerto, and chamber works highlight her distinctive approach to instrumental writing, often characterized by intricate sonic layering, explorations of memory and fragmentation, and innovative instrumentation that extends traditional forms. Several pieces form interconnected explorations of fragmented memories, creating multidimensional sound worlds that incorporate quotations, microtonal elements, and theatrical gestures without relying on conventional dramatic conflict. Her concerto output includes …miramondo multiplo… (2006), a trumpet concerto composed for Håkan Hardenberger and premiered by him with the Wiener Philharmoniker under Pierre Boulez at the Salzburg Festival on 20 August 2006. Structured in five movements titled "Aria," the work draws on references to composers such as Miles Davis, Alban Berg, Gustav Mahler, Olivier Messiaen, George Frideric Handel, and Igor Stravinsky to evoke a kaleidoscopic admiration of the world ("miramondo multiplo"), emphasizing peaceful coexistence and freedom over rivalry between soloist and ensemble. Remnants of songs...an amphigory (2009) is a viola concerto that belongs to the same thematic trilogy on fragmented memories. Trurliade – Zone Zero (2015/16) is a percussion concerto commissioned by Roche Commissions, premiered on 27 August 2016 at the Lucerne Festival by soloist Victor Hanna with the Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy conducted by Susanna Mälkki. Lasting approximately 30 minutes, the piece features an expansive percussion setup and theatrical elements inspired by science fiction, automated systems, and visual artists, with "Zone Zero" denoting the soloist's breakthrough from isolation. Among her purely orchestral compositions, Masaot/Clocks without Hands (2013) was premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic under Daniel Harding in Cologne in 2015 and addresses the interplay of political remembering and forgetting in connection with personal and artistic identity. Earlier works include Clinamen/Nodus (1999), composed for Pierre Boulez’s 75th birthday and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, scored for strings, two micro-detuned zithers, and percussion in an exploration of fragmented memory structures. Sans soleil (1994) is scored for two Ondes Martenot, orchestra, and live electronics. In chamber music, Neuwirth has produced works such as in the realms of the unreal (2009/11), a string quartet. locus … doublure … solus (2001) is composed for solo piano and ensemble in seven movements, premiered on 8 September 2001 by Thomas Larcher with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group conducted by Pierre-André Valade in Schwaz, Austria. The piece serves as a compendium of pianistic techniques, incorporating a sampler keyboard to introduce microtones and an unconventional ensemble to create fluid, disorientating structures through superimpositions and rapid shifts in perspective.

Film Scores, Silent Film Adaptations, and Multimedia Projects

Neuwirth has composed scores for contemporary feature films, including Das Vaterspiel (2009) directed by Michael Glawogger. She provided the film music for the horror feature Ich seh, Ich seh (2014) directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. Her work extends to creating new musical accompaniments for silent films, often presented as film music war requiems or restored scores performed live or recorded. In 2014 she composed the score for Maudite soit la guerre by Alfred Machin (1914), described as A Film Music War Requiem, which premiered in Paris at Cité de la Musique. She wrote music for Viking Eggeling's abstract silent film Symphonie diagonale (1924) in 2006, with a premiere in Stuttgart in 2007 and later screening at the Viennale festival in 2008. For the restored version of the 1924 silent film Die Stadt ohne Juden she composed accompanying film music for small ensemble and samples, which premiered in 2018 at Konzerthaus Wien. Neuwirth's multimedia projects include sound installations and audiovisual works that integrate film projection, electronics, and motion-capture technology. …le temps désechanté... (2005) is a sound installation featuring film projection and motion-capture camera. In 2020 she produced the CoronAtion Cycle, a series of five short pieces created during the COVID-19 pandemic and presented through streamed and live premieres in 2020–2021. Her longstanding engagement with film and video stems from her initial studies in film.

Artistic Style and Influences

Reception and Legacy

Awards and Honors

Personal Life and Activism

References

  1. https://www.ricordi.com/en-US/Composers/N/Neuwirth-Olga.aspx
  2. https://www.boosey.com/composer/Olga+Neuwirth
  3. https://www.ojaifestival.org/olga-neuwirth/
  4. https://www.nyphil.org/about-us/artists/olga-neuwirth/
  5. http://www.olganeuwirth.com/about.php
  6. https://www.boosey.com/composer/Olga+Neuwirth?ttype=BIOGRAPHY&sl-id=4
  7. https://www.suntory.com/culture-sports/suntoryhall/article/detail/001207.html
  8. https://www.grafenegg.com/en/composer-in-residence/2026
  9. https://www.boulezsaal.de/en/festival-of-new-music/festival-of-new-music-olga-neuwirth
  10. https://www.hollywoodbowl.com/musicdb/artists/3862/olga-neuwirth
  11. https://kenanmalik.com/2013/09/08/behind-the-scenes-of-american-lulu/
  12. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/arts/international/olga-neuwirth-maintains-eclectic-path-in-her-music.html
  13. https://www.boosey.com/cr/news/Olga-Neuwirth-Her-Life-and-Music/101559
  14. https://schoenblog.com/?p=3192
  15. https://www.boosey.com/composer/Olga+Neuwirth?ttype=BIOGRAPHY
  16. https://ressources.ircam.fr/en/olga-neuwirth
  17. http://www.olganeuwirth.com/text18.php
  18. https://archiv.steirischerherbst.at/en/editions/1985
  19. http://www.olganeuwirth.com/bio0.php
  20. https://brahms.ircam.fr/en/work/bahlamms-fest
  21. https://www.ricordi.com/en-US/News/2021/09/Neuwirth-Bahlamms-Fest-Ruhrtriennale.aspx
  22. https://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/en/ensemble/detail/olga-neuwirth/
  23. https://www.ricordi.com/en-US/Catalogue.aspx?sc=composers%5B0%5D=Neuwirth%2C%20Olga
  24. https://www.boosey.com/pages/opera/moredetails?musicid=31012
  25. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/24/vienna-opera-house-virginia-woolf-orlando-olga-neuwirth
  26. https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Olga-Neuwirth-miramondo-multiplo/47626
  27. https://www.ricordi.com/en-US/News/2016/07/Olga-Neuwirth-Trurliade-Zone-Zero.aspx
  28. https://seenandheard-international.com/2016/09/neuwirths-percussion-concerto-focuses-on-visual-theatrics-and-sonic-investigation/
  29. https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Olga-Neuwirth-locus-doublure-solus/17208
  30. http://www.olganeuwirth.com/works.php
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