Transart26 - Opening with Haydn

Transart26 opens its edition with CRASH, an evening devoted to sound and audiovisual research, presented in collaboration with the Haydn Foundation of Bolzano and Trento. In Italian premieres, two works challenge the conventions of the traditional concert: Piano Concerto by Simon Steen-Andersen and Gotham by Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison, both performed by the Haydn Orchestra conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni.

Piano Concerto (Simon Steen-Andersen)

Piano Concerto (2014) by Danish composer Simon Steen-Andersen weaves live performance, video and sound research into a radically experimental work. Pianist Ning Yu plays an intact, tuned instrument, while on screen a second performer engages with the remains of a piano dropped eight metres onto a concrete floor. The digital counterpart is Nicholas Hodges — a key figure in contemporary piano performance who premiered the work at Donaueschingen in 2014 — in a "double concerto" that sets the precision of the undamaged instrument against the shattered material of the "wounded" piano. The orchestra absorbs and amplifies this energy, shaping it into a dense, precise score that expands the event through space and time.

Gotham (Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison)

Gotham presents early twentieth-century New York through the collaboration of composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison. Archival footage of a city in transformation — construction sites, smoke-filled skylines, lifts gliding between skyscrapers, and sudden pastoral scenes such as a flock of sheep in Central Park — merges with an orchestral score that grows and shifts, at times fragile, at times overwhelming. Gotham does not romanticise the city; instead it captures its dust, noise and relentless rhythm in an immersive experience of memory, movement and wonder.

The ticket includes access to both performances.