Croatian Cantus Ensemble has been developing successful artistic collaborations with several related ensembles in Europe and the world for years. On Monday, October 9, 2023 they were joined by the flute ensemble Kölner Gesellschaft Für Neue Music – KGNM.
In the preface of the program we read about the witty combination of tones of the German ensemble and Cantus at HDS (Croatian Society of Composers): “Ka-Ge-eN-eM + Ce-A-Ha-De-eS = NEW MUSIC!” is the winning formula of the first concert of the new season under the conductorship of the artistic director of the Cantus Ensemble, Berislav Šipuš”.

The following compositions were performed:

KGNM: Magdalena Buchwald – Syrinx II
KGNM: Igor C. Silva – We Live in a Bubble
Cantus Ensemble: Zlatko Tanodi – Cyborg
KGNM: Georg Heike – Stimmungen

KGNM: Anne La Berge – Conduits
Cantus Ensemble and KGNM: David Batinić – Echoes of alienation (first performance)
Cantus Ensemble and KGNM: John Hawkins – Divisibility

The announcement of new music is always exciting, because it opens up a field of synchronicity with the present moment. In the company of lucid art theoretician and excellent music connoisseur Dr. Kruno Martinac, we problematized the relationship between the “old” and the “new”. Dr. Martinac stated the point of view that old music in every performance is always new music at a given moment. The interesting point of view in which the old is intertwined with the new and actually apostrophizes tradition as a process, I personally considered insufficiently distinguishable: what, in my opinion, appears as new in New music has its own syntax that is not only manifested in the way of performance or synchronizing the old with a new moment, but contemporaneity and synchronicity are already given in the composition, in the manner of indeterminacy and aleatorics. Tonight’s concert still brought some overtones of the already mentioned “matrix of new music”, I would say like Cage (Water walk in We Live in a Bubble) or as Dr. Martinac felt it like Stockhausen (Stimung, although the vocal performance in Stimmungen “was like singing into an instrument”)…
Tonight’s new music types are all written compositions that mostly control “chance”, but the musicians experimentally exposed themselves to the audience’s proximity and feedback during the all-sensing, interactive performance of Heike’s just-mentioned composition Stimmungen – entering the audience.
Digitization of sound is part of the imaginative performance of We Live in a Bubble, and the humane perception of technology was contributed by Cantus’ performance of the Zlatko Tanodi composition – Kiborg.

NGO Culture, Media and Education – ARTHEA president Dr. Vesna Srnić is honored with an agreed collaboration with the Cantus Ensemble on the spring performance in 2024.

PhD. Vesna Srnić, Media-Via editor