NÖN: Right after New Year’s there is another reason to celebrate, namely your 80th birthday. Are there cakes and champagne and wishes? Or is there (also) music?
HK Gruber: There will probably be congratulations. But since I’m not a birthday party, I settle for “Happy Birthday” in the narrow circle of friends!
In any case, there will be music two months later, when the Lower Austrian spring festival Imago Dei celebrates you – with your “Frankenstein” and your “Nebelsteinmusik”. Both are not 80 years old, but 47 and 35. Why do we still have to hear them today?
“Why has polyphonic music existed for seven centuries? Because listeners like to solve puzzles!”: Composer, conductor, chansonnier and Rosenburger HK Gruber.
Photo:
Jon Super
Gruber: The two pieces are on programs all over the world, not because you have to hear them, but because there are artists and promoters who see messages in them that they want to represent.
What messages are these?
Gruber: In “Frankenstein” there are nursery rhymes that HC Artmann has alienated and behind which larger themes are hidden. It came out in 1968, when there were still Nazis in society…
But you have also composed “shows” and chamber works, large concerts and “small” anagrams, episodes and “castles in the air”. And you not only put the music on Artmann, but also on Horvath. What do they have in common? And what is missing?
Gruber: The musicality of the words inspired me in the lyrics. It has always been about an intelligent use of music. But my interest in musical theater projects – as well as in the splendor of orchestral sound – is still not satisfied!
You have also directed almost all of your work. Does that make it easier?
Gruber: Since I know my works well, it makes sense for me to direct them. And I still do my “Frankenstein” non-stop! What conductors basically need is respect for the work of those whose scores they conduct.
In the beginning though, it was the bass for you. Namely the double bass in the Tonkunstler Orchestra of Lower Austria. Wasn’t one tool enough for you? Was it too boring for you in the orchestra?
Gruber: With my work as a double bass player I was able to finance myself as a composer and make myself independent of giving in to constraints or following fashions.
Therefore: In the beginning there was singing. You always came back to it as a chansonnier. Doesn’t the concert scene in (Lower) Austria need even louder contemporary voices? And what else do you need?
Gruber: Even as a choir boy, I considered myself a professional musician. And I leaned towards singer-actors like Lotte Lenya or Ernst Busch. But I also do concerts very often, where I take the music apart and put it back together. This is the best way to get to know them! And it’s incredibly exciting where a sound is created. That’s why you should sell samples at the same time! However, I suspect the new music is more of a handicap for the organisers. I don’t think there is no curiosity about it!
Keyword: concert. In the new year, HK Gruber will also perform in the summer, in Grafenegg, where you were Composer in Residence 12 years ago.
Gruber: I have had a close relationship with the Grafenegg Festival from the beginning. Hakan Hardenberger and Colin Currie, with whom I have a long-standing artistic friendship, have included the music of Ligeti and myself in the Grafenegg Academy program to celebrate so-called “round” birthdays. Every year a composer works in Grafenegg. That means New Music always has one foot in the door. There was also the INK STILL WET workshop. In the meantime Grafenegg has also become the residence of the European Youth Symphony Orchestra, which has shown great interest in contemporary music with great success. And as part of the Academy, almost exclusively music from the 20th century up to “Ink Still Wet” is developed and presented. As I have experienced it, this development was intended from the beginning: as a work in progress…
And what’s next?
Gruber: At the moment I am writing a clarinet concerto. I write everything by hand, rubber is my dearest companion. And I’d be interested in a modern form of operetta, so I’m still looking for a libretto…
