Getting your Gruppen On

A performance of Stockhausen's spatial masterpiece.

I'm out of New York this weekend, so I wasn't able to attend the Philharmonic 360 concerts at the Park Avenue Armory. Normal Superconductor coverage resumes next week. (Even bloggers get a vacation!)

To tide you over, we are proud to present this Youtube video of Stockhausen's Gruppen, featured in the concerts. This unique work is written for three separate orchestras with three conductors and the audience in the middle.

Enjoy.

Concert Preview: Philharmonic 360

A return to an old venue and an amazing 2012 finale.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A seating chart for the Philharmonic's upcoming concert at the Park Avenue Armory.
All images © 2012 the New York Philharmonic.

The New York Philharmonic are ending the 2012 season in grand style with Philharmonic 360, a concert presented in collaboration with the Park Avenue Armory.

It will host the orchestra for two performances on June 29 and 30. The concerts feature an unusual program bridging three centuries of music-making, and an unusual venue, the drill hall of the Armory, itself an historic building dedicated in 1880.

These concerts mark the orchestra's first performances of Gruppen by German composer and enfant terrible Karlheinz Stockhausen. This work (first played in Gotham by student orchestras) is written for three seperate orchestras, with the audience seated in the middle. Talk about sensory overload.

Stockhausen is an important 20th century German composer who was a pioneer in the field of electronic music, creating dense, complicated sound structures that are nonetheless eerily beautiful. His more unusual compositions include the 7-day opera Licht which includes a string quartet incorporating helicopters. Stockhausen's piece won't include any air support, but it still requires three conductors: music director Alan Gilbert, composer-in-residence Magnus Lindberg, and Matthias Pintscher.