The Music of Ákos Rózmann, live in Asbury Hall

Name: The Music of Ákos Rózmann, live in Asbury Hall
Start: 2025-04-10T20:00:00-04:00
Location: Asbury Hall

Schedule

Thu, 10 Apr, 2025 at 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Asbury Hall | Buffalo, NY

Please join us for this ambitious project featuring the premiere American performance of the extraordinary and ground-breaking work of master Hungarian composer Ákos Rózmann. This one-of-a-kind event is conceived and produced by Buffalo's own musician and scholar David Bailey. Do not miss this historic concert experience!
Ákos Rózmann:
De Osynliga Tradarna
(The Invisible Threads) 1980-1983
for flute, soprano, violin, viola, cello, harpsichord, and tape
KULOR. Nagra Studier Framfor Helvetes Portar och Sorgetoner
(Balls. Some Studies in front of the Gates of Hell, and Mournful Tones) 1981-1984
for 2 violins, viola, cello, 2 contrabasses, 2 crotales, and tape
Two very special ensembles have been created to activate this material, featuring members of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Buffalo Chamber Players, and the fra/ctured String Quartet.
Shannon Reilly - Violin
Isabel Ong - Violin
Janz Castello de Armas - Viola
Nicolas Jones - Contrabass
Ed Gnekow - Contrabass
Matt Reimer - Soprano
Maria Lihuen Sirvent - Flutes
Antonella Di Giulio - Harpsichord
These musicians will be joined by special guests Cellist Betsy Rettig, currently based in Los Angeles performing with the Isaura String Quartet and Conductor Peiwen Zou, currently studying at the Eastman School of Music.
Throughout his life Rózmann dedicated himself to musique concrète, developing one of the largest and most rewarding bodies of work in this, the most alchemical of all musical genres. In the early eighties, Rózmann started to build a private electroacoustic studio which he installed in the basement of the Catholic Cathedral whilst continuing to work in tandem at the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS Sweden) where he produced his earlier masterpieces.
With an unwavering commitment to the creation of music Rózmann would often lock himself up in his windowless studio working into the night in order to achieve the results he desired. He did not seek the approval of his peers nor the satisfaction of his audience with the only concern being the perfect articulation of his vision. This combination of vision, passion and stubbornness resulted in one of the most singular catalogues within the field of musique concrete.
Ákos Rózmann's music has been released on the labels Ideologic Organ, Phono Sueicia, and Fylkingen Records.
Presented in part with underwriting support from Peter Forbach, Honorary Hungarian Consul of WNY, and Katilin & Laszlo Mechtler.
Thursday, April 10 at 8:00 pm
$25 general admission, $20 students/seniors, $18 members
BIO:
Ákos Rózmann (Hungarian:16 July 1939 – 12 August 2005) was a Hungarian-Swedish composer and organist.
Rózmann was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 16 July 1939. He studied composition with Rezső Sugár at the Bartók Béla Secondary School of Music between 1957 and 1961. From 1961 on, he attended the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, studying composition with Endre Szervánszky and organ with Sebestyén Pécsi. He graduated in both subjects in 1966. After gaining his diplomas, he worked as a teacher of score reading at the Teacher's College of the Liszt Academy in Szeged. At the end of the sixties, he composed film music for Mafilm (Hungarian Film Studios). His Improvisazione for flute and piano was published in 1971 by Editio Musica Budapest.
In 1971, he went to Sweden for postgraduate studies in composition. His teacher was Ingvar Lidholm at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. In the college studio, he discovered the tools of electroacoustic music making. He also started to work in Elektronmusikstudion (EMS, the Stockholm Electroacoustic Music Studio). The first result of his experiments was Impulsioni, a cycle of short electronic pieces from 1974, which won third prize at the Bourges Concours International de Musique Électroacoustique in 1976.
After finishing his studies at the Royal College of Music in 1974, Rózmann settled in Stockholm, spending the rest of his life in and near the Swedish capital. From the seventies on, he thought of recorded electroacoustic music as the only suitable medium for his creative ideas. His first conspicuous public appearance as a composer was the premiere of Bilder inför drömmen och döden (Images of Dream and Death) on 9 March 1978. The concert was held in Cirkus, a large event hall in Stockholm.
From 1978 for nineteen years he was an organist at the Stockholm Catholic Cathedral. Here he met the choir-leader and musicologist Viveca Servatius, who later became his life partner. 1978 also saw the beginning of his second large-scale work, Tolv stationer (Twelve Stations), the first one to use recorded sounds of acoustical origin (while the previous two used entirely synthetic material). Its composition engaged Rózmann until as late as 2001, resulting in a work with a playing time of more than six hours. The first parts premiered at the Stockholm Culture House in 1984. In 2014 Editions Mego records released a 7-CD box set of the entire series of the Stations.[2]
In the early eighties, Rózmann started to build a private electroacoustic studio which he installed in the basement of the Catholic Cathedral. Besides, he continued to work in EMS where he remained a frequent visitor until the end of his life.
Between 1980 and 2005, he composed a series of eight electroacoustic works, each with the title Orgelstycke (Organ Piece). Sounds from his main instrument, the organ, were his much appreciated basic material, besides the human voice and the sounds of bowed zither and prepared piano.
Rózmann's third piece of epic length, Rytmer och melodier (Rhythms and Melodies) was composed in 1987 and premiered at the Berwald Concert Hall in 1988. In 1990, a series of three author's nights dedicated to Rózmann was held in the Stockholm centre for contemporary music, Fylkingen. Six of his pieces were played on that occasion, three of them for the first time.
While almost all of his nearly thirty compositions were performed in Sweden in his lifetime, only one was played in public concert in his native country, Hungary. Trumpetmusette was composed for the Budapest Electroacoustic Music Festival of the Hungarian Radio, and was premiered there in 1994.
In 1997 he left his service of the Catholic Cathedral and moved with his private studio to Skogås, a suburb of Stockholm. It was in the same year that he finished one of his most concentrated works, De två med tre instrument (Two, with Three Instruments). In January 2005 he completed his last work, Orgelstycke nr III/a (Organ Piece Nr. III/a), going back to an idea conceived in the eighties. In February he still lived to see one of his biggest and most celebrated concerts. During five consecutive afternoons of the Stockholm New Music festival, were played his huge Gloria cycle preceded by Orgelstycke nr IV (Kyrie eleison), under the collective title Mässa (Mass). The Gloria cycle, an extensive musical setting of the corresponding liturgical text, was composed between 1989 and 2004, and requires some seven hours to perform.
In the summer of 2005, Rózmann was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died on 12 of August. In accordance with his own wish his ashes were scattered to the wind.
The uncompromising nature of Rózmann's character can easily be traced both in the reports about his behaviour and in his music. As a fervent devotee of his work, he shut himself up in windowless studios for hours, often working until late in the night. In his late years he did not participate in the events of official musical life, he did not even attend his own premieres. In his work, he looked neither for the approval of the professional, nor for the pleasure of the audience. The only thing that counted was the perfect articulation of his vision.
This vision was inspired by the (recorded) sound itself, originating from many different sources. As this raw material had been worked out and made to be specially plastic, an extremely powerful drama evolved, especially in Rózmann's large-scale works. A drama that reproduces the most basic conflicts of human existence, gives a shocking insight to its darkest depths, and shows that sin and purity, darkness and light walk side by side, their qualities mutually presupposing each other. The play is often elaborated in a symbolical and pictorial way with quotations from Buddhist and Christian liturgical music on one side, violent clashing, snarling and devilish laughter on the other. Put between these forces, the cry of the struggling human soul is heard.
Hallwalls Music Program is made possible through public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and a generous grant from New Music USA. https://newmusicusa.org/