Composer Seminar: Closing Concert

How should we approach contemporary music? As Dieter Ammann suggests, we can listen to it “as if we were watching a thunderstorm.” At the outset, we don’t question the underlying physical processes, but “see what happens,” he says. “Contemporary music is often complex in structure, and that is precisely why it can be heard in a very  ‘elemental’ way: sound events emerge, are replaced, dissipate, build up, and resolve.” Unsuk Chin, who co-directs the Lucerne Festival Academy’s Composer Seminar with Ammann, additionally observes: “I don’t have to understand this music right off the bat. But I must care about it, it has to stir something in me.” At this afternoon event, you can get to know eight young composers from seven countries who are at the very beginning of their careers. How things will continue is still open: an open end. And because Ammann and Chin seek out a diversity of voices when selecting participants in their Composer Seminar, you will encounter widely varying compositional styles: a panorama of what classical music can be today.